Started smoking my first pipe with handmade stem this weekend. The draw is amazing! It is incredible how the constant airflow makes a difference.
There is a feint plastic taste to it though. Was wondering if that is usual for acrylic stems? I'm thinking that it will probably disappear after a while.
Without this forum and its members I would never even think about making my own stems. So, a BIG thank you to Kurt and everybody for their time and professional advice!
And once you've got a few of those under your belt, you'll be able to modify a factory molded stem so that it smokes just as well as a fully handcut stem.
An unmodified factory molded stem will smoke like crap 95% of the time, and they all can use work to make them better. Once you figure out how to do it, though, they can be just as comfortable as hand-cut stems, and will smoke just as well.
Chuck your prefered size of tapered drill bit in your lathe or drill press. Keeping a firm grip, at relatively slow speed, hand feed the stem onto the drill bit, removing it frequently to clear the chips. When you start to feel the moving bit through the sides of the stem, you've probably drilled enough. Widen the slot with needle files. Take care when drilling, it is very easy to crack the tenon.
Regards,
Frank.
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Grouch Happens!
People usually get the gods they deserve - Terry Pratchett
Yep. I've grenaded more factory stems than I care to remember trying to drill out the airway. Some stems simply can't be drilled out very far before they decide to self destruct.
Of the pre-fabs I have tried it seems that the stems are too tight in shape (especially saddles) to open without several mishaps. The other side of the coin seems to be so much meat on them to begin with that opening them up is easy but slimming them down to shape is as much work as one from rod.
I have noticed that the density of the pre-fab stems is nowhere close to SEM's ebonite. When SEM secured the Mont Blanc account they claimed that their Ebonite was so superior that they not only got the account but that Mont Blanc was also replacing their existing stock. SEM attributed their superior product to the fineness of their Ebonite Dust. With the pre-fabs I have found that that it is much easier for a chisel to grab and dig in and it has never happened with a rod of ebonite.
The sulfer content used in vulcanizing rubber I understand ranges from .5 to 2.5 parts per hundred. To me that would be hard rubber on one end of the range and a tire on the other. Admittedly there are other additives that I have no clue about but a higher sulfer content produces shorter polymer chains which I take to mean it make the product more flexible. (Softer) It makes me wonder if stem oxidation is from varing amounts of sulfer (which I do not think really vary that much between the two hard rubbers vulcanite/ebonite) or as SEM indicated finer Ebonite Dust. It is also reasonable to think that the denser product allows less penetration of sunlight, air or even spit to enter the product.
Just some observations made without a great understanding of the vulcanization process but I do not think of ebonite and vulcanite as the same material anymore. They may both be hard rubber but there is a huge difference in quality.
