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At what point do you guys bend your stem? I've been roughing it and finishing the sanding after it's bent. I'm not sure if this is the most effective way. I've finished the stem then bent it, but then it seems to require much more sanding.

Briarfox wrote:At what point do you guys bend your stem? I've been roughing it and finishing the sanding after it's bent. I'm not sure if this is the most effective way. I've finished the stem then bent it, but then it seems to require much more sanding.

If a stem is sanded and polished properly, you should be able to bend it after brown tripoli and before white diamond. This is the point at which I bend my stems.

Todd

I bend mine after final sanding, and before brown tripoli.

Are you finding that the stem requires sanding due to scratches becoming evident, or that you're fine tuning the shape after bending?

The first problem can be solved by making sure you've properly sanded the stem - as Todd said. Not sanding to a high enough grit, or not fully sanding through each grit, could leave a rough surface than can get singed by the heat - especially if you use a flame or heat gun. The smoother your stem at bending time, the less the heat will affect the surface negatively.

Because it's slightly more difficult (for me anyway) to buff the stem after bending, I bend after compound buffing. Then I touch up quickly with white diamond again, if necessary.

Thanks guys. I'll give finishing it before bending a try. I was finding that I always needed to tweak the shape after bending.

For what it's worth, Takeo Arita bends the stem after very rough shaping and uses a series of (mostly) round files to achieve the final shape. He might tweak the bend a bit after final shaping. Essentially, though, if you heated one of his stems to straighten it back out, it would still be contoured. This works for him because of his methods--literally no power tools larger than a hand drill--but I wouldn't suggest it as standard operating procedure for most.

Todd

I bend after sanding up to 1200 grit and just before brown tripoli. I find brown tripoli useful for fine tuning the shape.

wdteipen wrote:I bend after sanding up to 1200 grit and just before brown tripoli. I find brown tripoli useful for fine tuning the shape.

Save yourself some time and stop at 600 grit. You're actually regressing to a coarser medium when you polish a stem that's been sanded to 1200 grit anyway. Add to that the fact that you're accomplishing very little by sanding with 1200 grit unless you're wet sanding. I know a lot of guys like to have pissing matches about how high they sand. While the other guy is sanding with grits higher than 600, I'm usually shaping another pipe. That's just food for thought from the business side of things.

Todd