Going to try bamboo.

[n80]

Ordered some bamboo today. Never worked with it before. I suspect I'm in for a whole lot of frustration. I do have a couple of questions:

1. How do you face the bamboo at the stummel-bamboo junction and the bamboo-stem junction? I'm assuming that you cannot put bamboo in a lathe chuck so I have no idea how to face it.

2. I also ordered some stainless steel tubing. Does it need to run the entire length of the bamboo or just glued into the ends?

3. How is it finished?

If it sounds like I have no idea what I am doing.....that is correct.

George

[DocAitch]

I face the bamboo with a counterbore with a 3/16” pilot on a drill press.(see photo) This is a home made clamp that I also drill my stummels on.
The most secure way to do the bamboo is with a piece of tubing entirely through the length and protruding on each side to make the connections, but this pretty much limits you to straight pieces of bamboo.
If you have to, you can use shorter pieces of tubing to make the connection.

I can PM you some more photos if you want them.
DocAitch

[DocAitch]

As for finishing, the bamboo has a thin skin and you don’t want to sand though it, so you have to be careful matching stummel to bamboo and at the mortise end where you have to use something to reinforce the bamboo.
I like to carefully grind out the dark spots with a burr (sort of like doing a cavity in a tooth), then just use a little shellac, others just leave the dark spots.
DocAitch

[n80]

Thanks Doc. I'm pretty sure this is going to be a misadventure but it will be fun giving it a try.

[seamonster]

I drill the bamboo with the bit in the lathe chuck, like in freehand drilling, constantly turning the bamboo 90 degrees, back and forth, to be sure it is going straight, and cutting slowly, and carefully, as there are parts where it catches and pulls.

Once drilled, I soak the mortises with thin CA glue to stabilize, bamboo is soft. Sometimes, I redrill to clean up that hole. Then chuck the bamboo up on a pin gauge, and you can face that way. I've done it on a wood lathe, with a flat tool, or on my metal lathe. Both work.

[LatakiaLover]

If you want to get serious about bamboo, pin it instead of glue it. Zero failures over infinite (effectively) time.

Failed glue, on the other hand, is something I get sent to fix with distressing frequency.

(this isn't some beginner piece, btw, but a world top-50 maker who's been at it 20 years)

[n80]

Does the pin cross though the airway?

[LatakiaLover]

No.

You insert a drill rod blank into the airway, then press-fit/seat cut-to-length soft metal pins into the opposing holes, and stake all four ends into little mushrooms simultaneously with a single whack using a mallet & setting tool. Mechanical permanence in .001 seconds.

[n80]

"Mechanical permanence in .001 seconds. "

I had to laugh at that one. In my hands I think that would read "mechanical mayhem in .001 seconds".

But, I understand what you are saying. Have you made a video on this?

[LatakiaLover]

No.

I might, but I've been around long enough to realize that such a demonstration would doubtless be interpreted as criticism by a segment of the pipe making world.

Let me back up a sec... there are two kinds of pipe makers: practical tool and shop-minded guys with a gift for shaping; and artistes who view the process of converting their designs into tactile objects a necessary aggravation.

The latter sort tend to rationalize practicality in both the final result and the techniques used to achieve it. In short, if glue makes realizing their artistic goals easier, then Glue Is The Answer. Period. Even if their pipes come apart in the course of normal use. (Whether they think such things are intrinsic to smokable art; or blame it on user abuse, a bad production batch of glue, an unforseeable flaw in a natural material, etc. I don't know.)

Then, George has started a war.

Gettin' too old for that shit, the me.

Or, put another way, I've been around long enough to know that leading horses to water is the best I can do. Trying to make them drink is hazardous business.

[n80]

Got it. My pipe making journey has been a matter of trying this and trying that. I do it for fun. And I like trying different techniques. I now thread my delrin tenons into tapped stems. I tried it. It works and I think it is better than gluing alone. All of which is to say that if I can figure out how to pin bamboo then I will do it.

But I'll screw up a lot of bamboo in the process.

[caskwith]

I'll take a glue failure over an ugly pin any day

[LatakiaLover]

No worries. Everyone knows that style trumps substance over there.

Location: 20 Fenchurch Street, London, England

Cost: More than $250 million

Constructed: 2009-2014

Issue: Heat amplification and wind tunnel creation

Date of incident: 2013

Especially confusing is how this project ever came to pass, given that the way light reflects from and can be amplified by glass is commonly understood in the building design and construction industry.

In this case, the curved glass exterior of a building designed by Rafael Viñoly basically turned into a giant magnifying lens, intensifying light so much that it harmed humans. In addition, besides this death ray effect, a de facto wind tunnel was created via the venturi effect which turned the neo-futurist building into a multifaceted menace.

Constructed between 2009 and 2014, the building earned the nickname "Walkie Talkie Centre" due to its appearance. The concave shape of building meant that when sunlight shone directly on it, it acted as a mirror and focused the light onto the street below. Temperatures reached over 160 degrees Fahrenheit, famously melting a man's Jaguar, and getting so hot that journalists were able to fry an egg on the sidewalk. The funneled winds it created at street level were so strong they blew over street signs, trolleys, and pedestrians.

[caskwith]

I've been up that building, they have a "sky garden" viewing area at the top, very nice and it's free for visitors too.

[LatakiaLover]

I've been up that building, they have a "sky garden" viewing area at the top so you can gaze upon the vast piles of scorched, smoking bodies that collect at the base and are hauled off every few days. Very nice and it's free for visitors too.

[caskwith]

Your dry, twisted sense of humour would fit right in if you lived in the UK, once you lost that terrible accent

[LatakiaLover]

I'm not sure if that would be enough, given how confused things are already in that regard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7G4z5uEQnE

[seamonster]

You insert a drill rod blank into the airway, then press-fit/seat cut-to-length soft metal pins into the opposing holes, and stake all four ends into little mushrooms simultaneously with a single whack using a mallet & setting tool. Mechanical permanence in .001 seconds.

Forgive me, I'm trying to wrap by brain around this. I am assuming, the pins will hold the stainless in the bamboo, and act as a reverse tenon, yes?
and then a mortise and tenon glue joint still to add the extra transition bit of ebonite to the bamboo, since there will be no force placed upon it, that glue joint should hold.

Do you see failures at the bamboo/stummel joint? or not so much, as there is no movement there? I imagine the forces of removing and replacing a snug-fit stem are quite high...

Okay, thanks.
Jeremy.

[LatakiaLover]

Pinning requires that the shank have a tenon, and the bamboo a mortise.

Slip the one over the other, THEN proceed with what I described.

There's no stainless steel tubing involved.

(Ignore the weird, shitty colors... some sort of conversion thing destroyed thousands of pics on my machine. They look fine ON my machine, but like drab puke any time I try to post them, regardless of the pic host used. )

Seeing the tiny pin is the point in any event.

[seamonster]

So, no pin on the stem end?? Or sleeve the bamboo with briar, then stem-tenon as usual?

But then to get a drill blank in, you have to have perfectly straight bamboo..... not typical.

I'm missing something.

Sent from my bloopty-bloop, using hooty-hoo.