Got a very decent block and although it has a couple very small flaws, still looks nice. One flaw was about 1/4" from the shank face right into the mortise, so I stabilized it and added the nickel band. What a shame. I think the grain orientation is fairly good, but probably could have been tweaked. It has nice birdseye on the top and bottom with a fair amount of straight grain on the sides. DaGamba requested a 'virgin' finish on it, which is my first. Didn't find any info on here about virgin finishes, but Wayne answered my questions and gave me some tips. This is also my first 9mm filter pipe. I didn't have any metric bits, so for the future I will be ordering them. It was quite a learning experience! Oh, and the pictures are slightly more saturated than should be, tried to correct but could only get so far. So the pipe is slightly more 'bland' than the pics would suggest.
Two of my specific questions are: how is the bowl/shank transition for this pipe, and how about the stem length? With the tighter lines I have on the rest of the pipe, I kept the transition pretty snug. I now see the stem is about 1/4-1/2" too long (IMO), however I think the band may help a little to balance it.
Of course, any comments/critiques are encouraged. Thanks!
I will keep that in mind and do better on the next!
I like the thin bit part as well, looks like added comfort.
