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I was wondering if anyone could comment on any of the following for use as shank extensions and/or stem inlays: lacewood, jobillo, butternut, or bird's eye maple. I was looking through Woodcraft's site as I don't have one near me and those caught my eye but I have no idea how they would work in extensions and inlays. Has anyone used any of these in either pipes or other projects?

Without Wax,
Nathan

Hey Nathan,

Don't be afraid to try anything at all for an extension or inlay. You may discover something new and differrent.

Rad

I doubt anyone cares but I went on a little Woodcraft pen-turning blank shopping spree and I made some tampers to get an idea of how each wood worked and finished before I attempted an inlay or extension and I thought I would report my results. I don't have a lathe so they are not as precise as they could be and some shapes definitely came out better than others (the cutout on the Holly is less than precise and the spirals on the Maple are not quite evenly spaced). All of them worked fairly easily with my soft-backed 5 inch disc and 1x30 belt sanders but I can't comment on how they turn since I don't have a lathe. All of them were finished with a single coat of shellac and then tripoli and carnauba. They all polished nicely though the Butternut is much more coarsely grained than the others. Anyways, here they are:



Sorry about the size difference in pictures, not sure what happened.
Pic 1 L to R: 1)Black and White Ebony(I like this one a lot), 2)American Holly (very light color and almost no grain makes it look almost like ivory), 3)Butternut, 4)Jobillo



Pic 2 L to R: 1)Bocote(lots of people use this one already), 2)Curly Maple(I bought some Birds eye maple also and I like it better than the curly. it has a more interesting grain in small pieces), 3)Lacewood(definitely a favorite. the grain is amazing and unique and it polishes nicely), 4)Sycamore (sounds boring but the cross grain is really nice with a distinctive checkerboard like pattern that is hard to see in this pic.)

what are you using for the metal piece at the bottom?

mathias65 wrote:what are you using for the metal piece at the bottom?

For the ones that have that, I just cut the spade part off one of those cheap aluminum pipe nails and epoxied the tamper portion into the wood.