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I've seen a few pipes over the years (always European) that didn't mask blast margins, but had gradually tapered-to-smooth ones. I wish I had a pic, but if you've seen it you know what I'm talking about.

It looks vastly better than an abrupt line, imo... more sophisticated, retains a pipe's visual lines better, and has a more organic feel.

Anyone who knows this trick care to divulge the technique? All I can think of is to mask normally, then smoothly pull the nozzle away from the work (increase the distance) as the mask is approached. That would take a lot of practice to master, methinks, but would be worth the effort to learn.

I'm asking because I'll soon be blasting my first pipe, and want it "to be all it can be".

Thanks.

From what I can gather it is usually done by those who make the stems after they have blasted the pipe so the sandlbasted area is simply smoothed by sanding.

You can do it (sort've) the way you are describing it. Takes practice, its easy to mess up.

Are you referring to the appearance of some of Bo Nordh's blast work (stanwell blast on the main body stummel and Bo doing detail work) or are you talking about the sanded appearance that you sometimes see on rusticated pipes near the stem junction?

caskwith wrote:From what I can gather it is usually done by those who make the stems after they have blasted the pipe so the sandlbasted area is simply smoothed by sanding.

Definitely not that. Sanding flattens the tops of the bumps and ridges. Looks like someone either screwed up or didn't care, imo. What I'm talking about is a gradual reduction in the intensity & depth of the blast in the quarter inch or so leading up to a border.

andrew wrote:Are you referring to the appearance of some of Bo Nordh's blast work (stanwell blast on the main body stummel and Bo doing detail work) or are you talking about the sanded appearance that you sometimes see on rusticated pipes near the stem junction?

Yup, Bo is one of the few I've seen. (Which is why I can't pull a pipe out of my rack to illustrate. )

Definitely not sanding.

LatakiaLover wrote:

caskwith wrote:From what I can gather it is usually done by those who make the stems after they have blasted the pipe so the sandlbasted area is simply smoothed by sanding.

Definitely not that. Sanding flattens the tops of the bumps and ridges. Looks like someone either screwed up or didn't care, imo. What I'm talking about is a gradual reduction in the intensity & depth of the blast in the quarter inch or so leading up to a border.

If you mean the above, I believe Chris is correct. I tried to achieve this effect once by doing the reverse - not at all the result I wanted. The catch is you have to leave extra meat in the unblasted area, so when you sand it flat it will just catch the tips of the surrounding blasted area. (You'll notice they failed to do so on the shank.) It might be a bit of sand, blast, sand, etc. too.

HI George,

You might try just avoiding the area you don't want blasted as best you can, and do it with much lower pressure. There will always be overspray on the "unblasted" part, but you can then sand that area back to finish it. I did this once on a pipe that had a great smooth birdseye top that faded into a blast on the bottom half.

The key is keeping the smooth part as smooth as possible, so when you go back to finish it, it doesn't look like you've been sanding a blasted area.

Rad

I remember seeing somewhere that Bo used to carefully rusticate the masked areas after the blast, imitating the blast character as he did so. So on his pipes you will see a very little transition from the blasted area right up to the stem.

I think I remember reading that Stanwell was doing Bo's blasting, like they do for a lot of the other Scandinavian pipe makers.

sethile wrote:I remember seeing somewhere that Bo used to carefully rusticate the masked areas after the blast, imitating the blast character as he did so. So on his pipes you will see a very little transition from the blasted area right up to the stem.

I know the sort of thing you mean. It's the only practical way to re-finish blasted pipes that have had their bowls topped (shortened) because of damage. (To truly re-blast, you'd have to know the original media used, pressure, and so forth in advance to get a matching texture.) Doing it by hand is just copying what you see.

I checked my pic vault and found an example, in fact. A smokestack Dunhill that came to me with a huge scallop on the front edge as deep as half a dime. Chop, chop; buzz, buzz; stain, stain:







It's a tedious business to make 100% convincing, though. Easier on a new pipe than an old one because there'd be no color matching to worry about, but oh well. I'm into the damn thing this far, so might as well do it right.