Thanks guys!
The calabash shapes are getting hugely popular with folks that have seen them in person. I did one for a customer that asked "Have you? Would you?" and that got me started on it. I actually experimented on a block of cherry before doing one in briar just to figure out how the heck I had to do things. Since then I've gotten requests for a good half dozen more. I think I just found a nice niche.
They're somewhat difficult to get bored and drilled due to the way you have to create the inner chamber, but it is straightforward once you have it all sorted. They're time consuming, since you have to spend a lot of time with the foredom/dremel hollowing out the interior, but there's nothing inherently difficult about them. There's a lot to take into consideration, so you kind of have to think three steps ahead of yourself. And you have to use two blocks of briar....
The bowl and cap are one piece, made from a nice wide hunk of briar, and the body is made from a second piece. That o-ring is a #17, which just fits in a 1/16" groove once it's stretched over the bowl. The fit is tricky to get just right, but it's better to be a little snug than a little loose in my opinion. It's got to be airtight in order to give a good smoke. And I've been told that they smoke like a *dream*. I should hope. I sure spent enough time kvetching about how to create the airway and the inner chamber.
For the blast on the first one, the briar dictated that one. It would have made a nice smooth, except for some shallow pinpricks with disappeared after it was blasted. I've found that most small flaws like that completely disappear with a blast - you just have to be careful that they don't grow while you're blasting. It didn't take to well to the first media I hit it with, but when I went back at it with a finer grit and lower pressure, it responded much quicker.
As you can see, the growth rings are very close together, and that makes it difficult to get a deep and detailed blast. However, I still prefer it over rustication since it dopesn't hide the wood structure (personal preference). Ideally, I would have liked teh rings to be about three times as far apart, but we can't have everything.
