Before I start I should introduce myself. My name is Karol Tarka, I'm from Slovakia, living in New Zealand with my little Kiwi family. I've been lurking on the forum for awhile and now it's time for my first post. Yes, I finished my number 0!
Photos are here:
http://www.pipemakersforum.com/modules. ... _album.php
Sorry about the varying photo quality and cliche setting, I relied on natural light and during the shooting the sun disappeared behind the clouds so some photos are lacking the sparkle.
I purchased couple of briar blocks from Jan Zeman http://www.zemanpipes.com/ few weeks ago, one of them being roughly
finished as Jan discovered a fairly big sand pit in this piece of briar in the late stages of shaping (right from the lathe and band saw I suspect) and sent it to me together with a rough block as something I can start working on. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of this block before I started so you won't be able to see how much work has been done for me (quite a lot actually...). I was so keen to start working on this that before I realised I should take photos I already knocked off all the edges. Both block were pre-drilled with impeccable precision. Pipe cleaner slides in without any problems and the smoke canal is right at the bottom of a perfectly drilled bowl. Seeing this together filled me with a relief that opted for a pre-drilled block. Jan is a great person to deal with and his advice was very helpful in every respect.
Tools
The only tools I'm using are couple of budget files and a set of sanding papers. No vice, no drill, no saw. It was hard, as you can imagine, but not quite bad enough to discourage me. For the second block I bought a coping saw as the amount of material I needed to take off was just too much for the file itself. It's an incredibly powerful tool. I've found 80 grit sanding paper strips to be actually quite a fast way to alter the shape where I needed it, faster the a file in fact. I worked down to 1000 grit which produced beautiful satin finish.
Stem
Stem is pre-cast one too, which worked out very well. I'm in no hurry to cut my own, surely not for the pipes where the pre-cast one will fit sizewise. Shaping the stem was actually lots of fun. I love little fiddly details and vulcanite is a nice material to work with in this respect. I should add that for button work I used a set of 12 small files and finished off gradually down to 1000 grit paper again.
Staining
This was paaaain!
I tried leather color which admittedly worked well but the constant staining and sanding was driving me crazy. I persevered for 8 layers and then just to change the pace I diluted the stain a little with some water. This surprisingly helped a little to get more contrast out of the briar. I assume it's because slower drying time allowed thewood to absorb more stain. Of course, after staining I discovered that few lines were not flowing as good as I wanted so I had to alter the shape slightly and stain the whole thing again! Shaping shouldn't be rushed I guess, it would be a good idea to put a pipe away for few days and look at it with refreshed eyes. Making sure the shape is ok certainly saves time later
Finishing
I don't have a buffer wheel so I had to figure out how to work with carnauba. :boohoo: Not knowing that carnauba is hardest wax known to man I failed on the first attempt but after quick Googling I diluted some of the wax in turpentine. I added a splash of flax oil to the mixture and ended up with a fairly brittle yellowish mixture that's soft enough for "hand" application. In fact, the best way to apply is to pinch off a little piece, squeeze it between the index finger and thumb. It melts in ~3
seconds and can be applied to the surface of the pipe very easily. Polishing is than a matter of softly wiping the pipe with a cloth. Turpentine smell disappeared *completely* after 30 minutes. Of course it's not ideal, layer of carnauba is not even and it's almost impossible to achieve glass shine finish. But it's close enough. Interestingly polishing increased the contrast a little, revealing uneven staining caused by excessive sanding on some places. This is especially visible on the inner edge of the bowl. I'm hoping that the briar will darken after a while, hiding all this. At this point I wasn't prepared to sand this all back start staining again.
Flaws
I ignored all the flaws discovered during the process as they are not effecting the smokeability and I'm not planning to sell this pipe. There are 3 pits clearly visible on the photos. As I mentioned already I just simply ignored them as the biggest one is too big to be fixed, rendering other flaws insignificant.
Originally the pipe was turned to have the surface of the briar root on the top of the bowl. I really liked it at the beginning but after couple of rounds of staining I changed my mind and chopped it off. That's why the top of the bowl ended up asymmetrical. Whenever I was contemplating a serious change in shape I tried it in Photoshop first. Shortening the
bowl didn't really work with the rest of the pipe so I left it as it is together with all the little flaws such at that black swirly thing visible on the top of the bowl.
Another concept I had in mind before blocks arrived was that I want a rustic pipe. I really love deep brave rustic (Peterson does that really well) on pipes and it would certainly help to hide the flaws. I just couldn't bring myself to put rustic on such beautiful grain. I couldn't believe myself... Plus the second pipe I'm working on currently has such a killer grain that it won't be rustic either.
All in all I had great fun and can't wait to try this this pipe for the first time. I never smoked a pipe without any coating in the bowl so that'll be interesting, no doubt.
I'd like to thanks everyone who contributed to this forum with their experience and knowledge. :thumb: It helped enormously. I'm solidly hooked on pipe making now and hopefully will contribute in the future to this forum as well. I'm planning to purchase a small drill press and slowly build my workshop to a level where I would be able to do everything myself. Okamura Yukio's workshop looks pretty simple http://www.fumeursdepipe.net/pipiersOokamura.htm and his work is very inspiring. Shortly after I looked at his pipes, workshop, style and process I was convinced I can try to make the first pipe literally in my hand.
OT: I noticed few people here are flyfishers. Well, I'm too a keen flyfisher
My recently neglected (I'm making pipes you see...) fishing blog is here: http://www.instinctive.co.nz/thefin . Another WEB site I'm running is an old Internet pipe club,recently resurrected from the no longer existing hosting server: http://www.instinctive.co.nz/vkf
