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He forgot to drill the airhole lol.

Seriously though, I never understand drilling the chamber first, it offers no advantages in my mind.

I like the tailstock turret, I have often considered buying one but they are rarely accurate enough for pipe work it seems and I know I would tear up the back of my hand on a sharp drill bit.

caskwith wrote:Seriously though, I never understand drilling the chamber first, it offers no advantages in my mind.

He just wanted to show off his mad etch-a-sketch skills. In all seriousness, cool video. It's always heartening to see the process of guys who know what they're doing and having it look familiar

I often think a toolmakers lathe like that would be beneficial but really I do prefer a screw cutting lathe, much more versatile in the long run.

caskwith wrote:He forgot to drill the airhole lol.

Seriously though, I never understand drilling the chamber first, it offers no advantages in my mind.

I like the tailstock turret, I have often considered buying one but they are rarely accurate enough for pipe work it seems and I know I would tear up the back of my hand on a sharp drill bit.

For some reason I always drill the chamber first and then the airhole. Probably because I shape the stummel side first, drill the chamber while doing that, and then switch to the shank, which includes drilling mortise & airway...

I saw one commercial pipe making operation in the early 1970s (in New York, possibly Brooklyn). They drilled the tobacco chamber first and used that to attach the block to the frazing carver, cut the rough shape, then the mortise. Then some guy drilled the airway freehand just like Rainier Barbi in a video that George posted.
DocAitch

DocAitch wrote:I saw one commercial pipe making operation in the early 1970s (in New York, possibly Brooklyn). They drilled the tobacco chamber first and used that to attach the block to the frazing carver, cut the rough shape, then the mortise. Then some guy drilled the airway freehand just like Rainier Barbi in a video that George posted.
DocAitch

Does anyone have photos of a frazing carver? I was wondering if they work like the fishing lure duplicator in this video. https://youtu.be/-OUOQhXtCfw

If you go to about the 4 minute mark you will get an idea of how it works. I had a neighbor that was from Norway and he had something like this to make lures. With his help we built one to make duck decoys, huge thing.

https://youtu.be/QtZl7f0lJ3E#t=6m23s

Frazing process at 6:23; pictures of frazing cutting tools at ~5:45

Thank you, it was not what I expected, it was a lot more refined process than I had thought it would be.

Gubbels in Roermond, Netherlands has a badass multi-pipe frazing machine, which copies the template pipe onto 8 new blocks simultaneously.

There's a pretty good video from their factory which shows this machine in detail from 1:41
https://youtu.be/tvpg-AMldn8?t=1m42s
But the rest of the clip is certainly worth a watch as well!

I know because I was lucky enough to be invited to a tour around their factory a few years back with the dutch/flemish pipesmokers forum. Local TV even came to film, so yours truly is in this clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvWST9Z1F2Y

That IS a badass machine!

Bjorn Thurmann was one of the greats sadly he passed a year ago in order to do it like that he told me
that you have to set your compound a little fast and loose some people may not like the compound that loose
due to play and run out. truly a gentleman who was well loved in the danish pipemaking comunity. HIS son now has taken over
the business. He was a great inspiration to me.

Ratimus wrote:https://youtu.be/QtZl7f0lJ3E#t=6m23s

Frazing process at 6:23; pictures of frazing cutting tools at ~5:45

The frazing machine that I saw in New York was similar in principal to the fishing lure machine, basically a 3 dimensional key cutter. Here in the Chesapeake region there are decoy duplicating lathes. The gun stock industry uses another similar machine.
That Chacom set up was amazing. I can’t imagine the machinist hours that went into producing each of those cutting heads.
DocAitch

Doc you would be supprised just how easy it is reletevly speaking
basic metal working for someone with the right tools.

Although Mr. Johnson et al like to keep things super duper black ops secret squirrel, I have a suspicion that Briarworks uses something similar to this:
https://youtu.be/nVMmb1u6rt8

That's the type of machine Molina? use. It produces a rather rough blank that still needs a fair bit of refining.

Spot on Chris, they have 2 or 3 of them that do 10 at a time as well as traditional machinery
As seen in the Chacom factory There's only a few ways to accomplish commercially it's not that big a secret.

If that's the case then I consider Gubbels' machine a bit more "handmade" than these, they at least require 1 completed stummel as an example, which is still made by hand if I'm not mistaken.

One day maybe I will build a copy machine. I would love one for the workshop just because I have certain shapes that I repeat and get asked for a lot. Be nice to have a master copy for those shapes and be able to turn out a rough blank in a few minutes. Same goes for stems, a machine that I could use to rough out my own stem blanks would be great.

What? Don't you guys have briar pixies doing the job for you?