Clean shop, ready for pipe making..
Woods to be used, Amboyna Burl, African Blackwood, Padauk, maybe some red palm…
Drawing the rough shape
Cutting it out with a fret saw
Some rough sanding
Putting it on the 4 jaw chuck and turning the bowl on the lathe
Putting the drill chuck on the lathe and drilling the bowl
Setting the boring tool, and boring the bowl out to the correct diameter
Turning the base of the stem
Drilling the mortise for the stem
Boring the mortise
Completed holes for eventual stem and bowl insert
Coffee break
Rough sanding with the 4 jaw self centering chuck, and padded sanding disc
Roughing the shape out some more with a detail rasp
Refining the shape with some detail files
Some Tools
Switching to a finer grit sanding disc to smooth out the shape a bit and get rid of scratches from the rasp
I lick the wood to check the grain pattern, lookin’ nice!
My hand, for scale
Another view of the mortises and partial air holes, with my safety glasses in the background
Rough block of African blackwood in the chuck, this will eventually be the bowl insert
Turning the outside diameter and the face
Drilling a hole to make it easier to turn the inside diameter with hand tools
Custom made turning tool for the inside of bowls
Bowl roughly turned
Drilling out the air hole at the bottom of the bowl
Cleaning up the inside
Special tool for cutting a groove on the inside of the bowl for the metal screen
Sanded down the bowl a bit on the disc sander to shorten it before fitting the bowl insert
Super fine amboyna sawdust
More tools
Measuring the bowl depth with a digital caliper
Measuring again to determine what the length of the bowl insert will be
Marking some guidelines
Using a parting tool for the rough shaping of the outside diameter
Determining the outside diameter that the bowl insert will be
More measuring and turning
Using the left hand cutting tool to square up the corners
Using a diamond point tool to turn the bowl details
Using the boring tool to turn the rim of the bowl that will eventually be fitted with a lid later on
This is how it looks after some fine sanding with 600 grit
Cutting the bowl insert off with a fret saw
Lookin’ pretty good, this block of African blackwood has a lot of nice gray tones that I like
It fits!
Now time for something stressful, connecting the air holes
First hole at 90 degrees
Drilling the air hole to the stem at an angle after lining it all up and clamping it down
Didn’t mess it up!
Drilling the air hole to the bowl
Perfect, the air hole is offset so that moisture buildup and resin in the bowl will drop down into the larger hole where it can easily be cleaned out with a pipe cleaner. This is also important for a pipe of this design, because without it your pipe would make a gurgling noise when you use it.
The air holes from the bottom
After cleaning it up with a detail file
Having some milk, haha
Cut out a piece of copper with a hacksaw, this will be a rim for the bowl, and also hold half of the lid hinge assembly
Hammering it out
Annealing the copper with propane torch to soften it again. Hammering will harden copper pretty quickly, so this is a necessary step when you’re cold working copper.
Letting the copper cool on a bed of sawdust, the copper will react with the carbon from the burnt sawdust to create some really nice colours
Hammering it out again
After sanding on the belt sander
After more hammering, annealing, and sanding
Final hammering, going for a nice consistent pattern
Final annealing
After a light sanding with 600 grit to bring out the pattern
Bent into a ring to fit the bowl insert
Some colour experiments, using sawdust and heat
Testing the colour, nope I like the first version better
Hammering and filing out the shape of the hinge
Ready for silver soldering
Acid flux is applied to the sanded surfaces, and then silver solder slices are placed on the joint. I prefer this method of soldering to the traditional method of holding the wire in your hand because I’m less likely to overheat the copper. If I overheat the copper the color that I worked so hard to get earlier will be ruined and I would have to start over again.
All melted
Letting it cool in sawdust for no real reason other than it feels a bit like archaeology when I take it out later, haha
Lookin’ good, but still rough
After some sanding and filing, I try out the fit
This angle shows the nice deep red coloring
Lookin’ good!
Turning the African blackwood plug for the bottom of the pipe
Drilling the hole for the inlay
Filling the base of the hole with packed sawdust
Juice break…
Quartz crushed with a hammer on the anvil
Placed the best quartz fragments into the inlay with tweezers, with a piece of mussel shell and added gold dust to fill the cracks
I put a drop of liquid glue onto the inlay, and let it dry
After sanding on the disc sander to reveal the inlay, then sanding up to 1200 grit. Used a micro file to shape the plug to fit seamlessly.
Turning and drilling the accent for the base of the stem
Drilling some padauk. A sharp drill bit is your best friend here.
After gluing and turning the padauk
Cut off with a handsaw, turned around, and clamped into the self centering chuck
After some work with some detail turning tools. High lathe speed and sharp tools get you a nice smooth surface without sanding.
Ready to be glued
I used wood glue, and then clamped it in the vice
While that dries I start working on the bowl lid
Here is the hot working process. I just heat it in the torch and hammer it out.
Drew an approximate circle on the copper, cut it out, and sanded it down on the disc sander
Hammered it out a bit, then drew another circle as a guide for sanding
Drilling the vent holes
Annealing the copper
Using a needle file to carve the vent holes
A little more hammering and filing
Using the vise to help hammer out a dome shape
Then refining the dome on the anvil
Another guideline for sanding
After some hand filing it fits
Sanding down the stem with sanding discs ranging from 100 grit to 400 grit
Using a hand cut rasp to fine tune the inside of the bend a bit
Sanded to 600 grit
Turning some red palm on the lathe for the stem
Turning it around and using the self centering chuck to turn the other end
Red palm is a very difficult wood to turn, to reduce chipping I coated it with glue that will soak into the wood fibers
Using a small parting tool to cut some decorative grooves
Checking the fit. After seeing it with the rest of the pipe I tossed this stem into the garbage because I thought it didn’t look quite right. Failure is a common part of the process, haha.
I decide to leave the crafting of that part of the stem for later. I start work on the bent part of the stem by cutting some African blackwood squares on the chop saw
Drawing a guide for the hole
I use a cutting bit on the drill press to cut a groove along my guide
Final groove, all cleaned up
After cutting out the rough shape
Refining the shape
I line up the grain patterns for a seamless look later on, and glue the two halves together
When dry, I roughly cut out the other half and then sand it down again
More refining of the shape, getting ready for turning
Some weird turning here. I used a wooden wedge which is temporarily glued onto my chuck to help securely hold the stem. Often I have to customize my tools slightly throughout the crafting process in order to adapt to difficult situations like this. An enjoyable aspect of making one of a kind pieces.
Carefully turning the stem in very small increments
Turned it around and did the same thing on the other end
Done, phew
After some rough sanding I added a padauk accent to the top of the stem
Using a couple files to round out the shape a bit more
Taking a look at what I’ve got so far, contemplating what to do for that stem
I decided that purple heart would be a nice compliment to the golden yellow/orange colour of the amboyna… and it also goes well with black
Cutting it out
Onto the lathe
Checking the fit, visualizing the shape
Sharp tools are essential for avoiding chipping while turning small details in purple heart
Coming along
Drilling the air hole
Drilling the mortise that will fit the bent part of the stem
Drilling a hole in vegetable ivory (tagua nut) for the stem accent
A bit of sanding for a perfect fit
Gluing it all together
After using a few files, and sandpaper wrapped around a foam block
Still needs a mouthpiece, hinge assembly, and a couple accents, but it’s coming along nicely I think!
African blackwood for the mouthpiece, roughly turned
I ramp up the lathe speed for using hand tools to define the final shape
After shaping with hand tools, I drill the mortise
Sanding smooth
Cutting the mouthpiece off with a fret saw
I use the disc sander to shape and smooth the end
Close up of the tenon and square hole, which I think looks pretty neat
This glue is inert when dry, and perfectly safe for using on the mouthpiece
While that dries, I plan out the hinge assembly
Here is half of the hinge, starting as a rough piece of copper
After a bit of initial hammering
Annealing
Using some water to cool down the copper after Annealing
More hammering and filing
After annealing, the copper sometimes turns this bright pink colour if you quickly submerge it in water
More hammering and annealing
Using some files to refine the shape
Using a center punch to mark where I will drill a tiny hole for a saw blade
And the hole is drilled
After inserting the saw blade, I cut a groove for the hinge assembly
I use a flat piece of brass to hammer the groove flat on the inside, and get it to the correct width
Sanding down the other half of the hinge
After some filing and sanding, they are almost ready to be pinned together
Drilling the hole. It takes great care to get the hole just right, I tape the hinge onto the lid so that I know it will fit perfectly later on. There is no room for error in this step, If the hole is 1mm off, I would have to make the hinge assembly all over again…
Came out good!
I put a piece of music wire into the vice, and use a hammer to mushroom one end of it, this will be the hinge pin
I insert the rough pin, and make some marks with a sharpie so that I know where to solder the hinge to the lid
The glue had dried, so I took a quick break from metalworking to finish the mouthpiece
All the parts, ready for assembly
After some refining, it all fits together nicely, ready for soldering
This is a method that jewelers use for delicate soldering jobs. A sliver of solder is placed between the joint, and acid flux is applied to the copper surfaces
Here it is after I used a propane torch to evenly heat the two halves and melt the solder
A quick bath in acetone to clean off the acid flux
I used a hammer and anvil to delicately mushroom the other end of the hinge pin, this secures the pin in place so that it won’t fall out
And the bowl is done
Some final sanding on the amboyna wood, I intentionally left this rough earlier, because during the crafting process the wood picks up a lot of dirt and oil from your hands, and you would have to sand it at the end to get rid of that anyhow
Here it is after I sanded it to 1200 grit
Here is my buffing system, for this pipe I am only using two wheels with progressively finer polishing grits. The first wheel uses tripoli compound, and the second uses white diamond compound
First I use a coating of linseed oil to darken the wood and give the grain a more 3D look
Here is the pipe after the polishing wheels
Here is the bowl, ready to be glued in.
After gluing the bowl in, I heat up a bowl screen to darken it, and get rid of any residue from the manufacturing process
I insert the screen, and the pipe is complete!
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