Well, I had a little time this afternoon, and I decided to do a quickie stem for one of my old pipes out of that Absylux® rod stock I bought recently. And wow, was it an interesting experience.

They were right about Absylux being easy stuff to work with. On the lathe, it turns a lot like ebonite: smooth as silk. No need to worry about cutting too fast and chipping things up like acrylic does. Instead, it will make a dig, but it won't just blow up like acrylic does when you cut too fast.

Boring the draft hole was a breeze. No galling, no stuck drill bits. With a straight drill bit, it clears chips better than anything I think I've ever drilled. And with a tapered drill bit, it "loaded-up" like you expect tapered drill bits to do, but it still didn't gall up like acrylic tends to do. So there's not much need for cutting fluid if you take your time and clear your tapered drill bits from time to time.

If anything, Absylux was a little TOO easy to turn: first, you quickly wind up with a wad of black Brillo pad wrapped around your piece, closely resembling a badly birdnested baitcasting fishing reel; and second, if everybody knew how easy it was to make a stem from this stuff, that might be real bad for professional pipemakers. So shhhh.

And very little smell. If I had to guess, I would say that the smell is about 1/4 as strong as when you're cutting acrylic or vulcanite, and comparable to when you're cutting ebonite. Less "chemically" than acrylic, and a lot like the inside of a styrofoam cup. But light while you're working it, and it seems to disappear entirely, by my nose, after about an hour.

Filing, again, this stuff works a lot like ebonite. Real smooth.

Sanding was ... different. On a big belt sander doing rough tapering, some stock sanded clear off, and a little bit melted and clung on, similar to acrylic, I would say. But no biggie. Hand sanding after filling, I found that it liked wet-sanding slightly better than dry sanding, but again, no real problem there. I think I just found that finer sandpaper didn't load-up as quickly when it was wet, than when it was dry.

Buffing was a breeze. The only thing I noticed was that Absylux didn't respond as well to tripoli as ebonite or lucite. But once you switched to a soft cotton buff and some carnauba, the depth of the blackness and the shine really popped -- see pictures.

In the teeth, for better or for worse, Absylux feels nearly identical to ebonite. It's quite comfortable, but I could also picture this stuff wearing-through a lot like ebonite. It might even wear through a little faster.

Or maybe not. Because, interestingly enough, Absylux also gives Delrin® a run for its money. I cut this tenon about four-thousandths of an inch oversize, slid it into a freshly re-cut mortise on my old pipe without any wax, whatsoever, and it was real smooth. Like Delrin-smooth.

So depending on how Absylux wears in the teeth -- more like Ebonite or more like Delrin -- I can definitely picture myself switching over to Absylux on all my pipes. I'm really just waiting to see how my own stem holds up, wear-wise.

And also how well that bend holds up over time.

I'm also reserving judgement until I hear how some of your experiments with Absylux or other generic ABS rod stock work out. Then I'll make my own determination about using Absylux on my for-sale pipes.

Oh yes, I also did a due-diligence flammability test on Absylux, just to satisfy my own curiosity. They make a flame-resistant version of Absylux, but it's not FDA approved. So I bought the non-flame-resistant version that is FDA approved, but I wanted to do a quick comparison of sorts.

Basically, I held a lighter underneath a piece of scrap, and it took about 15 seconds for the piece to burn on its own. But compare that to the 5 seconds it took for an old vulcanite stem I had lying around to burn on its own.

So, yeah, I think that's acceptable: less flammable than vulcanite/ebonite, by my own, not-so-scientific test, anyway.

Wow, that looks great! And so far it sounds very promising. I'll be very interested in hearing how it holds up over time, but if it holds up as well or better than ebonite I'll definitely be giving it a try myself.

Thanks very much for the update! Keep us posted!

Hey, I discoverd something interesting today. I don't think it will amount to anything, but there is a large manufacture of Bowling Bowls is in Hopkinsville, KY, about 1 1/2 drive from me. It caught my eye because the name of the company is Ebonite International: http://www.ebonite.com/

Reading through some stuff it doesn't sound like they actually use Ebonite any longer, but they do have all kinds of High Tech formulas for their "coverings" (sounds like Polyester Resins with various particles added). Pretty wild to drive by this large factory with the huge Ebonite sign out front

Excellent work, Robert. What a beautiful shine.

Seemingly all the advantages of both ebonite and acrylic, without the sulphur. Hopefully your "field testing" over time will show it to be a worthwhile replacement stem material. If it holds its shape and has the same "mouth feel" as vulcanite/ebonite, you might have a winner.

Out of curiosity:

What is the height of your slot?

What is the height of the stem right behind the button?

Are you going to do a bite-through test?

Thanks guys.


Yeah, that's too bad they don't use ebonite anymore. But they probably still have some sort of interesting scrap. It might be worth sending them a letter to find out, huh?


Okay, the slot-height on this one looks like about .065 inches, and the height of the stem behind the button is .172 inches.

I would have thinned it down a bit more, but like I said earlier, this was just a quickie stem for one of my old pipes.

But that's good that you reminded me to measure, because that will give me a reference point to compare to later.

And yes, I'm already going out of my way to chew through it. So we'll see how that goes.

That looks fantastic! Hopefully it will last well. Could be a great discovery!

Robert
Great looking stem; excellent shine. Please do let us know how the test turns out. I can't wait to learn if this will be the material or not.

And since I have to use the softie bits can you determine if ABS reacts to other soft materials chemically?

Excellent stem. It really is beautiful. So what is the price of the material?

That's a better gloss than I would have expected from ABS. I also would not expect it to hold up to bite wearing very well, but I could be surprised there, too. In the pictures, it looks a little grainy, as though it is not pure black. Is that an artifact of the photo?

I'll see what I can come up with. According to the spec sheet, ABS is fairly stable, chemically. But I think I have a few softie bits laying around somewhere, and it would probably be good to know whether or not they're compatable, so I'll see if I can put the two together for awhile.


Thanks. In 8-ft lengths purchased from Industrial Safety and Supply, it runs:

$3.97 per foot for 3/4"
$4.99 per foot for 7/8"
$6.58 per foot for 1"

However, when I called them at 1-800-243-2316 ext. 674 and spoke to David, he quoted me about 20 percent less than those prices, if I remember correctly.


Yes, it buffed well, and I think that's the photo that looks grainy, rather than the ABS.

But you're right about the color, and this is something that I hadn't noticed until I put this stem next to one of ebonite in bright light. But it's about one shade less black than black. That's about the best way that I can describe it.

And I know this is going to be a deal-breaker for a lot of guys. It's not discernible when you look at it by itself, but a really close look in bright light, next to ebonite, and you can see it.

However, the more that I have been chewing around on this one, the less concerned I am about wear-through.

When I first made this one, I started thinking that, if it machined so easily, it would "tooth machine" easily too.

But now I'm starting to think that it withstands micro-abrasion fairly well, and if anything, a tooth just mashes material around without breaking any free.

And that it takes a sharp edge of a tool or good sharp sandpaper to actually break material loose.

But yeah, I think the color being less black than black is going to put a lot of guys off on this stuff.

However, and this might be well worth researching, the manufacturer, Westlake Plastics, can do custom colors.

So either a few of us could approach them about making a batch that's a blacker black. Or what might even be more interesting would be to see if they can do something marbled, like a Cumberland type marbling, or maybe a mix of medium and dark browns.

But anyway, I would still like to see some guys try this stuff out and see what they think. And right now I'm thinking what I might do is make a few pipes with two stems, one of ebonite or acrylic, and one of Absylux, just to get some feedback.

This might sound like a big waste of time, but not really. I've found that I can fit certain stems, like this one here, for instance, in almost no time at all. And since I can crank out a stem from Absylux in about two hours, why not just send out a few pipes with two stems to see what people think.

It could be that the combination of a nicer tooth-feel from a plastic, the fact that this stuff won't oxidize like vulcanite or ebonite over time, the overall machinability knocking the socks off of acrylic, and the silky smooth tenon qualities, might trump the fact that the color's not quite as rich a black as we're used to.

I'm thinking about trying it myself.

Thank you *VERY* much, Robert. I really appreciate all the the time you've spent researching and working ABS (as well as manzanita). I think I'll pick up a few feet to do my own experimentation with. I haven't made myself a pipe in ages, so this would be a good excuse.

Sure thing, Kurt. And thank you for keeping us a place on the web where we can bat this kind of stuff around.

That seems to be pretty reasonably priced compared to vulcanite that is becoming more scarce. I plan to order some and try it too. Get a couple of pipes made for the shop and chew away huh!

Does it bend at about the same temp as vulcanite?

I just bought a couple of 2 ft lengths of ABS ($7.40/2ft lengths...3.70/ft) from the same place I buy Delrin...
http://www.indplastic.com/index.cfm?id= ... &pageid=40

Yeah, it bends about like ebonite, I think. A little bit easier than acrylic.

I just hold the stem about a half an inch over an electric stove burner for a couple minutes until it seems like it's starting to sag. And usually I hold the stem by the tenon, so I can watch about not getting the tenon too hot. Then I use a pot holder to hold the stem and bend away.

And sometimes it takes me a couple tries before I get the bend the way I want it.

But I don't know what the temperature is, exactly.

Does it have a memory like ebonite does? Can you simply reheat a bent stem and have it straighten out?

It took me two tries to bend this stem here, and if I remember correctly, it relaxed a little bit during the second heating. But I didn't give it a whole lot of time to see if it would return precisely to its original shape.

Did you use a tripoli compound to begin the polishing process? If so what grit?

He said he used brown trip, if I remember. I took note because he said that it did not have the same effect. I wonder if a more coarse wax than brown trip would be a better starting wax.

Pierredekat What did you mean by it had little effect? Do you think it was too coarse and therefore didn't develope a shine? Was it not coarse enough?