pipemakersforum.com

Do any of you use a practice material to develop basic shapes or experiment with new concepts? I know a wood like oak is more fibrous than dense granular like briar but I wonder if there is a suitable material out there to use in practicing your skills rather than tearing up briar.

My practice material is paper and pencil. Then I can sketch everything out exactly how I want it before I start into the briar. When I first started out, I drilled a few 2x4's to make sure I knew what I was doing. And I've used scraps of wood laying around to try out other things. When you're first starting out, use cheap briar. No sense taking a chance on a $30 block until you know what you're doing. Unless you're extremely exceptional, you're going to mess up several blocks of briar at some point.

You can make pipes from many fruit woods, such as apple or pear wood and they will actually be smokeable when you're done. In short, you can try out most things on whatever pieces of wood you've got handy. Look up the toxicity beforehand if you plan to smoke from it, though.

Thanks, Jeremiah. Thus far, I have carved everything free hand with a Dremel & file and I have certainly bunged up several blocks of nice briar. I'll see if I can track down some Pear wood or oak to further hone my techniques and experiment.

Just buy some cheap briar, you can get it for as little as a few dollars a block, the grain is very poor and it will likely be full of spots but nothing is better for practise than actual briar.

Steve Norse is running a deal on briar that is hard to pass up. I can't say if he has any left of the packages he was offering, but if you want to check him out, go to vermontfreehand.com to see what is what.

I do have some reject minis for 2.50 each

I was going to mention the reject minis as well. I've actually been pleasantly surprised to find that about half of the reject minis are actually useable for pipes so far. I've even gotten a really super blast with one of the blocks so far.

There you go, perfect material for practise and chances are you might even get some nice pipes from it, I you use Oak or a 2x4 then no matter how good your shaping and drilling you will never get a usable/sellable pipe.

Listen to the Pommie, he's right, as usual!

Fuck off, I'm never right, or so my partner tells me.

I started with Cherrywood burl I pulled out of my dad's woodpile. It made several usable pipes, and cost me nothing. I practiced until I was pretty confident, then tried Briar.

LIL here. Cherry and other fruitwoods aren't bad to practice with. Osage orange is nice, too. Problem is, unless you have a good local source and can break down the stock yourself, getting a small piece thick enough for a pipe will set you back almost as much as reject briar blocks. I mean, if you have a few basic woodworking tools (e.g. band saw or table saw) and you can get your hands on some cherry or osage orange, by all means try making some pipes out of them. But you'll find that their working characteristics are very different from briar, so you may not be getting as much good practice as you think.

Briar

I used briar. There really isn't a reasonable substitute for it. You need to develop more than just carving skills. Sanding, finishing etc. Use cheap briar if you have to, but use briar.