Well, it IS actually a pipe...sort of...

Alan L · Post by **Alan L** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 4:33 pm

A pipe tomahawk, that is.

I hadn't made one for a while, and in honor of spring I thought a nice dogwood blossom inlay would go well.

The head is forged from a strap of mild steel, with a high carbon steel bit welded in, the bowl was forged from iron pipe and finished by filing, the dogwood blossoms are sterling silver with brass thingies, and the bands and mouthpiece are cast-in-place pewter.

I did another one at the same time, but turned the "bowl" from solid steel, making it a hammer poll instead of a pipe:

You really don't want to see what my workbench looks like.

pennsyscot · Post by **pennsyscot** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 9:24 pm

Awesome!

Ryan · Post by **Ryan** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 11:40 pm

Is it funtional hatchet also?

Alan L · Post by **Alan L** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 8:00 am

Ryan wrote:Is it funtional hatchet also?

Oh, yes they are.

Hardened, tempered, and razor sharp. Just the thing when someone tries to tell you not to smoke.

Post by **KurtHuhn** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 9:45 am

Hey now, that's a perfect kitchen utensil! Chop vegetables AND smoke at the same time. No uni-tasker this item. Alton Brown would be proud!

Frank · Post by **Frank** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 2:07 pm

KurtHuhn wrote:Hey now, that's a perfect kitchen utensil! Chop vegetables AND smoke at the same time. No uni-tasker this item. Alton Brown would be proud!

My all-time favourite food show, although tobacco does not make Good Eats.

Olivier · Post by **Olivier** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 10:02 am

That's really awesome. I've been thinking about making one of these. Have you ever smoked one and if so how do they smoke?

Hehe, that aint no peacepipe.....

Alan L · Post by **Alan L** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 11:58 am

Olivier wrote:Have you ever smoked one and if so how do they smoke?

They smoke okay, but it's really tough to clench 'em in your mouth while you work...

It's a wide-open draw. The hole through the handle is 1/4" (6.5mm) in diameter, and 18" (46 cm) long. I use a 5/32" (4.5mm) drill to drill the hole in the bottom of the bowl into the handle, and widen the part in the wood connecting the bowl to the "stem" to 3/16" (4.7mm) to allow for wood movement with humidity.

They work best if you inhale, as it's hard to get that huge amount of air moving enough to light the tobacco otherwise. And yes, the bowl gets too hot to touch pretty darned quickly. The smoke is pretty cool, though. Gotta love Bernoulli!

I did once use one for a "peace pipe" ceremony at a knifemaker's get-together, instructing them about the sacred power of tobacco and that you must inhale deeply to achieve the altered state of consciousness that made tobacco the medicine of choice for so many Native American groups. I packed it with finely shredded Gawith XX black rope, because I'm mean that way.

It was fun watching pack-a-day cigarette smokers turn green after two or three deep hits of Sam's finest.

It didn't help that my instructions were "toke it like a bong hit, man."

Not that I'd know anything about that sort of thing, of course...

Olivier · Post by **Olivier** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 4:17 pm

Alan L wrote: They smoke okay, but it's really tough to clench 'em in your mouth while you work...

LOL. I hear ya. Need a powerfull jaw to accomplish that. I gather from the construction that the pipe hawk's handle is at least a three piece in order for you to be able to drill a hole all the way through. I know you Americans have a lot of strange and wonderful tools but I cannot imagine a drillbit that long.

What keeps the lot together?

Alan L · Post by **Alan L** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 5:07 pm

Where'd you gather it was three pieces? It's a single piece. Some guys will split the handle lengthwise, rout out a channel, and glue it back together, but the first time you whack something it'll split again. The cast pewter banding can help hold it together, but I wouldn't trust that.

You can get drill bits up to 24" (61cm) long, but I used to use one I made from a short bit brazed onto a rod. Now I just buy the handles predrilled, after I had a spate of bad runouts and ruined $75 worth of handles.

If you want to do it the hard way, it just takes careful alignment, slow feed with many many stops to clear chips, and good luck. The folks I buy from drill the blanks when they are 2" (6cm) square by 20 inches long, then turn them on a five-axis pantograph profiling lathe. I'll pay the $30 they want rather than $15 for an undrilled and risk much cursing.

Many of the original 18th and 19th century pipe hawk handles were made from small Ash limbs, which have a natural pith channel up the center. Burn that out with a hot iron rod and you're good to go. The fancy ones with the figured wood handles were drilled the hard way. It's not hard to make a long drill bit, it's just hard to keep 'em going straight!

You can see how I do it here: http://forums.dfoggknives.com/index.php ... =9559&st=0

JimBridger · Post by **JimBridger** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 11:16 pm

Wow! Fantastic pipe. Where do you get the wood? That is some top notch stuff.

Olivier · Post by **Olivier** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 2:06 am

Hey thanks Allan. I looked at the silver bands and thought it was there for a purpose other than embellishment.

Sorry if I hurt your feelings. I could see that this one is not split lengthwise and kinda took for granted it must have been assembled from shorter sections. We're so out of touch with the technology of the civilized world here on the Dark continent that it's sometimes difficult to comprehend everything outside the box.

Alan L · Post by **Alan L** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 1:35 pm

JimBridger wrote:Wow! Fantastic pipe. Where do you get the wood? That is some top notch stuff.

Thanks! I get it from Dunlap Woodcrafts. They're online, but click on the link in my previous post to get a better idea of how to deal with them.

Olivier wrote:Sorry if I hurt your feelings.

Not at all! I hope I didn't come off that way.

It actually took me a while to figure out how you were thinking about the pewter banding, but that does make sense, especially from a pipemaking perspective. I did once make an Ulmer-style pipe using the stummel and two interlocking stem extensions for a three-piece construction, and I've seen take-down canes and pool cues done that way, with threaded ferrule connections. It never occurred to me to do a hawk handle that way, so we're even!

Tsunami · Post by **Tsunami** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 1:45 pm

What do you charge for one of those if you don't mind me asking. They really are quite beautiful. I love excellent craftmenship.

Alan L · Post by **Alan L** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 2:14 pm

Tsunami wrote:What do you charge for one of those if you don't mind me asking. They really are quite beautiful. I love excellent craftmenship.

Thanks!

For a fancy one like the dogwood, usually in the $400-$500 range, depending on how fancy it is. When this one hits the sales floor, (it's in an exhibition at the moment) I was gonna ask $450. The plainer ones are correspondingly cheaper, for instance the birdseye-handled hammerhead hawk is gonna be $350.

Want first dibs?