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Hello everyone.
Before I write anything else, I'd like to say this: What I'm about to describe is a trick that's probably very old and "non-revolutionary". If that is the case, I apologize for a post describing what everyone already knows, but hopefully someone will learn something!

Ok, this is about turning oval or catseye shanks on your pipes with a metal lathe and preferably a pipe chuck (I don't have a pipe chuck yet so you can do without, but I think it would be easier with one). The idea came to me today when I was shaping an oval shank the regular way (files) and thought about if you could do it on the lathe.

What your gonna do is you'll take your block of briar and draw the shape and the lines, and mark the center-point (where the airway meets the chamber), just like you would on a round shanked pipe (pic 1).
After that your gonna make two more markings on the block, one above the center-marking, and one below (pic 2). These should be at a 90 degree angle to the direction of the shank, and it's important that these markings are the same distance from the center marking because otherwise you'll end up with an oval that is not centered on the mortis hole. The distance from the center-marking depends on how big your shank will be, but I put mine about 1/2 a centimeter from the center.

Now it's time to turn the shank. Start just like you would a round shank pipe, put the point of your chuck in the center-marking on the block and tighten it. turn the shank to round, but larger than you want the final shank to be, and drill your mortis and airway. Now remove the block from the chuck and reclamp it with the point of your chuck in one of the other markings on your block (above or below the center-marking doesn't matter).
start turning again, and stop to check often how far you want to go. Now do the same with the third marking on your block, making sure that the shank is always on the same axis (I did this with the tail stock on my experiment piece, and what I mean is clear on my 3rd picture). Also, be sure to check the backside of your block when re-chucking so you keep the distance between the markings the same on both sides of the block. That's it, now you should have a cats-eye shank that can be easily modified into an oval shank (pic 3).

I really suck at explaining so if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask, and if this is a well-established method, well, I'll feel like a fool, but that doesn't matter!

/Albert

Yup, it's a nice trick, but you have to do it very precisely to get a good result. Otherwise the oval will be thicker on the top or bottom, or it could get narrower towards one end, you really need to keep you alignement spot on on all three axes to get a good result.
In the time it takes to set it up and do the three cuts correctly, you could almost make your oval by hand if you have some experience.

You may be right, but my test piece didn't take very long at all to set up. I'll try this on a real pipe one of these days and see how it turns out, both result- and time-wise. I mostly think it's cool that it can be done!

Freehand would be so much easier. Even with having done this on the lathe, you still have to deal with the crease.

It's not too hard to do it freehand, just shape one side as close as you can and keep flipping the stem around to match.
But, I am glad you pointed out the name for the Catseye shank! I've been trying to find the right word to describe it.

It's not that I find it super hard to do freehand, I just think it's a neat thing to do with a lathe that normaly make things round
And I'm glad to help with the name!

Good trick except that a vertical oval is odd.

wdteipen wrote:Good trick except that a vertical oval is odd.

But the oval becomes horizontal with this meathod, not vertical

Albert.A wrote:

wdteipen wrote:Good trick except that a vertical oval is odd.

But the oval becomes horizontal with this meathod, not vertical

Oh yeah. I see. The photo of the shank threw me off. I see it's a test piece of briar.

I like it! Good thinking.