I finished this pipe yesterday. This one has taken a long time to finish for several reasons. First of I had to make the tool for the rings on the bowl, and then I had to make a cut-off tool to make the decoration ring. And as if those time consuming tools wasn't enough, I then moved on to mess up three rings untill I got it right.
And finally to top it all of, I sanded the whole pipe and stained it, only to discover sloppyness in the shaping of the shank (asymmetry that wasn't supposed to be there). I was going to leave it, but then I came to the realization that if I want to constantly increase the quality of my work, I can't leave shit like that, so it was back to the sanding disk.
I learned alot doing this pipe (like really checking the shaping before finishing the pipe) and there are also alot of firsts with it (like the type of stem, style of shank, type of decoration ring, first pipe with "bulldog rings" etc).
In the end the pipe came out alright. I have noticed that as my quality increase (at least it does in my mind), so does my self critisism, so you guys tell me if its good or not.
Oh, and the decoration ring is made from tagua nut, and the stem is ebonite.
On a positive note, the bowl looks really well done and so does your stem work aside from the button which is still acceptable (but the design is going to narrow your market a bit which is the number one reason to go more traditional here.) Your tagua nut shank ring looks nice. I gave up on tagua nut because it's so brittle when you thin it down. It's a beautiful material but a real pain to work with.
Always cracks me up when I see one listed with the stem upside down.