Italian-esque "Bot" or "Pilliard"... can't decide which

[LatakiaLover]

The first pipe---the stack---has been a smoking favorite for 25 years. Many times I've caught myself wishing I had a shorter-bowled version of it, though, for when I didn't have time for a long smoke. (yellow line)

So, I finally broke down last week and went ahead and made one. Smokes great.

Decided this afternoon to take some pics because of how good the randomly-chosen wood turned out (a friend of mine gave me a box of blocks years ago in trade for something. Can't remember what.) The grain tilt is obviously off a bit---flame on one side and straight on the other---but the coverage is good and there isn't so much as a pin-prick flaw anywhere on it.

I used the tall one as a pattern (as I so often encourage new carvers here to do), and drilled the internals in a way that's the best of all worlds, imo. Large diameter through the stummel, then tapered down to "normal" size over the full length of the stem to the base of the funnel using a really long reamer. The design grabs more smoke then squeezes it down. Or something. It certainly seems to. The flavor from the pipes I've drilled that way is noticeably more intense and yummy, anyway.

Which comes back to why dicking around to make a new pipe seemed like the way to go. Gettin' too old to care much about collecting brands anymore, I just want to draw a straight line to the best experience a given measure of tobacco can deliver. Which also includes mouth comfort. I'm a clencher and have settled on the thickness, button shape, and so forth that I prefer.

.

[Adui]

Deleted - not correct

[KurtHuhn]

[UnderShade]

Great work George. The stummel is beautiful... but that stem- Jesus. The symmetry of the taper, the polish and the button. Your buttons are what I strive for. Amazing man. Make another one!

[JMG]

Are you freaking kidding me?

[UnderShade]

Are you freaking kidding me?

Care to elaborate?

[Sasquatch]

Italian-esque shaping (far too careful and symmetric to be a real Castello, you'll have to work on your forgery, George) and Venturi-effect internals?

I know a guy who makes a LOT of that kind of thing.

[JMG]

Are you freaking kidding me?

Care to elaborate?

No. I'm sure George understands me.

[n80]

Italian-esque shaping (far too careful and symmetric to be a real Castello,

Agree. I like it better than the Castello. If you don't mind divulging, what is that magic number for thickness for the bit area?

[LatakiaLover]

...what is that magic number for thickness for the bit area?

In the same way that wattage isn't the whole story when it comes to amplifiers, or horsepower when it comes to engines, the thickness behind the button isn't the end-all when it comes to pipe stems.

Marketers love to simplify things because the public demands (requires?) it, though.

In general, for an average-sized pipe, thinner than .150" only invites premature destruction with no benefit. (Yes, there's the occasional high maintenance smoker who demands ribbon thinness, but pipe makers shouldn't try to preemptively accommodate them, imo. Much better to deal with them as exceptions.)

Thicker than .170" is the same sort of situation. A few smokers want a "dog bone" they can feel and grab when clenching. I recommend treating them as exceptions as well.

Pretty much everything ELSE to do with comfort is shape/contour related. Indeed, a sub .140" stem can be a miserable experience if it is badly shaped, never mind not last long.

Where to start? Avoiding sharp edges will go farther to make your stems comfortable than anything else. By far.

FWIW, the pseudo-Castello in the pics is Grp 5 sized (6" long, 51 grams) and the behind-the-button measurement is .162". It "disappears" when clenched.

[n80]

Thanks LL, that helps. That stem is truly a work of art and as Undershade said, something to aspire to.

[Sasquatch]

4mm is pretty standard amongst the guys I've talked to. No one good at stems makes them fatter than that except JT Cooke and he can do whatever the fuck he wants, honestly. But the rest of us regular joes shoot for 4mm or less, which is right around that .160 mark that George is talking about, and as he says, the geometry of the thing being just so is more important than hitting some set of numbers by rote.

[n80]

It would be interesting, and probably helpful, to see cross sections of a stem like that every eighth of an inch from the button forward the first inch.....I'm mean a drawing.....not with a band saw.....

[LatakiaLover]

[n80]

Thank you. Need to look into a tapered reamer.

George

[pipeluv]

Dear George,
My roomy from Chicago 2016! That’s a beautiful pipe. It’s impeccable in my opinion. Thanks for sharing. Your photos are excellent, your writing is thorough, the diagram of the stem amazing. I’m glad you decided you needed a new pipe.

[LatakiaLover]

Dear George,
My roomy from Chicago 2016!

Yo, Kent!

I didn't know you were in the mix, here. Welcome.

And thanks for the pipe props. I'm not a maker at all (this was my third if you count one I fumbled through in 1978), but there's a lot of repair overlap tool & technique-wise, so I figured why not give it a go. If they don't sell what you want then make it yourself, right?

Do you have a site or web page or something? I recall you were turning out some high level stuff quite quickly because of your woodworking background and artistic imagination. I'd love to see your latest.

[JMG]

I'm not a maker at all (this was my third if you count one I fumbled through in 1978),

This sentence is what prompted the, "Are you freaking kidding me?" remark. (Well, knowing this was only his third pipe anyway.)

[LatakiaLover]

It all comes back around to copying something being the best way to learn a craft. The target is unambiguous, and the result---the feedback---is immediate and dispassionate.

Since collectable grade pipe repair is mostly copying stuff to the point you can't tell if it's original or not, producing a whole pipe is just a matter of packaging the right replicative repair tasks into a single piece.

But I am not a pipe maker in the modern, artistic sense. Not even close. That requires a type of 3-D imagination I don't have (or don't have the patience to unearth/develop with years of effort). In this case, instead of shortening a stack's bowl, I just used the bottom part of it as a pattern. It was 100% a technical exercise, not truly making a pipe at all.

[DocAitch]

But you “truly made” a very nice pipe. As expected, your stem work sets a high bar.
DocAitch