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I was rusticating some estate pipes today and became curious about the preferred method of rustication used by you guys. A dremel seems fastest and easiest, yet I prefer the hand rustication with a cluster of sharpened concrete nails.Depending ont he nail size and quantity it can yeild some iteresting results and to me its much more natural than using a dremel. Chime in if you have a favorite rusticating tool or technique you would like to share.

Chew on it?

I don't care for rusticated pipes.

I love rusticated pipes, so Bruce is wrong.

To my eye, the problem with almost any dremel tooling is that because the tool is by nature circular, you are very limited to the types of cuts you can make, the shape of the resulting depression. So unless you're doing something really unusual, the result is a pretty uniform, and pretty boring rustication. Take the Savinelli Roma type of look as an example of this, or Peterson's current incarnations (Kapet pipes for example).

Hand carving allows all sorts of textures. The rustication on the new era Kaywoodie Thorn series pipes is incredible - deep, sharply detailed.... it's lovely. Even the old Sea Rock is pretty nice to look at and in the hand, but it's definitely fairly laborious.

I've gotten rock-like textures, bark-like textures, and textures that are simply... carved.

Not all blocks are up to smooth grade, not all blocks are gonna make a nice blast, so it's a way to highlight the best parts of a block and add some tactile interest to the pipe.



I use a 1/4" short bent gouge, a 3/8" straight gouge, and a 3/8" skew and have gotten lots of decent rustications out of them in various combinations.

Sas,

I had always wondered if people used carving tools for rustication, or if it was an "accepted method". I've seen people use modified drill bits, phillips bits that had been cut and sharpened, all sorts of stuff. But I had never seen anyone use carving tools.

Myself, I've only used a Dremel thus far, and I see what you mean about the boring texture. The bits are, by default, round, and thus leave a rounded depression.
I had tried a group of nails sharpened and silver-soldered together, but as I wasn't working on briar at the time, it just wasn't working, at all. (Ebony is quite hard and dense)
Now that I've got a bit of briar, I need to expand my techniques, and see what others use is surely to help!

And I too love rusticated pipes, as well as blasted. Smooths, well, their just smooth, and how fun is that?

Lots of variants of the nail-group tool exist, and the main trouble with it is that it yields up basically an identical texture, which is to say, a lumpy Sea Rock type of rustication, basically no matter what.

I never tried actual carving tools until I saw some pictures of Luigi Radice carving an Underwood.

Well first off that's a nice pipe Sas, looks quite familiar to me

I have been experimenting with hand-rustication using a couple of tools I made on the advice of TaHarris.
I used this stuff:
http://i1154.photobucket.com/albums/p53 ... f1/RT1.jpg

To make these:
http://i1154.photobucket.com/albums/p53 ... f1/RT3.jpg

In combination with a Dremel and a wire brush, I'm finding a lot can be done. And they're cheap

Sasquatch wrote:Lots of variants of the nail-group tool exist, and the main trouble with it is that it yields up basically an identical texture, which is to say, a lumpy Sea Rock type of rustication, basically no matter what.

I never tried actual carving tools until I saw some pictures of Luigi Radice carving an Underwood.

Welcome, Spillproof, good to have you aboard.

Hudson wrote:Welcome, Spillproof, good to have you aboard.

Thanks Hudson. Good to have gotten the nod.

Welcome indeed! My personal take on rustication(in my limited experience) is a dremel works great for initial texturing(if you use the right bits and angles) but I feel it lacks depth(the micro textures). I'm starting to experiment with a mixture of dremel and Yeti toenails.

I just use regular toenails... maybe my rustication would look better if I used yeti toenails....

mine is a secret

One single blunted nail leaves a random pattern. Make sure the nail is blunted, otherwise you are just separating the wood fibers and they will close up later with moisture. The blunted nail crushes the fibers and the look will stay. Use a sort of rebound action with a small hammer and let the nail bounce to a new spot after each hammer blow. Go slow around the edges.