Shaping seems difficult.

[CastAxe]

So i recently acquired a 3 foot long piece of walnut from my local lumber yard and i attempted to shape my pipe today only to be disappointed in the fact that it did not look good at all. What am i doing wrong, i sketched out what i wanted the pipe to look like on the wood and then sanded away on my home made disc sander only to be frustrated with the final product. Any tips?

[bregolad]

practice this really is all there is.

[CastAxe]

Well then i guess this hobby of mine is gonna get expensive really quick , but if that is what it takes to become a good pipe maker then i am all for it

[Sasquatch]

Make more pipes. That's all a guy can do to get better. Proper tooling and great materials is nice, but really, it comes down to practice.

[KurtHuhn]

The best tools in the world won't make even a halfway decent pipe maker. You need to practice, talk to other makers, practice some more, and get honest feedback on your work. You can make stunning pipes with nothing but a dremel, or you can make the worlds crappiest piece of garbage with $200k worth of tools.

Nobody is born with the knowledge of how to use their tools, how to construct a pipe, and how to shape it. Most of the time, this can't even be taught save for the basics of tool operation. You have to do it once to find out that you don't know how, then you have to do it often to exercise the demons of inexperience. There's no way around it, unfortunately.

[CastAxe]

Is walnut a good wood to make pipes out of? I know that briar is the primo wood to make pipes out of but that isnt readily available where i live, it is also out of my price range. I got a 3X3X3 piece of walnut for $8.00. Or should i quit wasting my time and buy a briar block.

[Sasquatch]

You can get a briar block for less than that.

Walnut is neither especially heat resistant nor especially flavor-transparent.

[CastAxe]

Yeah i noticed while shaping my walnut pipe that the sawdust tasted really bitter.

[KurtHuhn]

Briar isn't especially expensive, and it is the primo wood.

Walnut has lots lots of tannins, so it isn't especially good for light tobaccos.

Apple, Cherry, and Maple are better woods if you can't find briar in your budget, and they don't contribute much flavor to the smoke.

[CastAxe]

I had no idea that maple would be a good wood to make a pipe out of. I also have read that some woods can be carcinogenic and are not good to smoke out of.

[Sasquatch]

Smoking is carcenogenic.
But some woods are certainly allergy sensitizers and carry all kinds of nasty crap in them. A lot of exotics make for bad pipery - rosewood, cocobolo, that kinda thing.

[Tano]

Sasquatch, where do you suggest a person can buy briar for under 8 dollars?

[Sasquatch]

PIMO for example. 8.50 for their small ebauchons. JH Lowe is even cheaper - http://www.jhlowe.com/briar.htm

You can briar for 2 bucks a block if you talk to the big boys in Greece. But I don't speak Greek, and I like pretty briar, and I don't wanna buy 2,000 blocks at once.

My point is merely that you can "save" money by practicing on wood that makes poor pipes and then have to re-learn everything when you do your first briar, or you can just bite the bullet and get a briar block to play with in the first place.

[Tano]

Good advice

[CastAxe]

I agree, excellent advice.

[Abi Natur]

You could try of course olive wood ,it gives a smooth and unique aroma as a pipe and non of the cancer and allergic talk sticks to it ,yet it is somewhat expensive and hard to find in huge quantities of good quality regarding the clean structure and percentage of rest-humidity.I cure my own olive wood so i am very well aware of the painful search for it and the long drying process.

Here is a link to a online store from Germany with some fine offerings in olive wood ; http://www.edelholzverkauf.de/index.php ... 2a1cb1ccdc

[DaGamba]

Thanx for that link, Abi. It's exactly what I've been looking for!

[Amalgam]

I am a newbie too and what I am going to do is order the piece of briar the get a piece of cheap wood like poplar, cut it with the exact shape that the Briar came and practice with this before damaging the real deal

[Daniel Y]

Just a note on the potentialy "Nasty wood" subject. this is a link to a list of many Toxic woods.
http://www.mimf.com/archives/toxic.htm

[koop]

PIMO for example. 8.50 for their small ebauchons. JH Lowe is even cheaper - http://www.jhlowe.com/briar.htm
My point is merely that you can "save" money by practicing on wood that makes poor pipes and then have to re-learn everything when you do your first briar, or you can just bite the bullet and get a briar block to play with in the first place.

So why would you have to relearn everything moving from maple to briar? Aren't there basics that would carry through for every hard wood?

I just have lots of maple and would rather ruin that then buy briar then toss it out after I made a mistake.