I think this ended up being more or less a Lovat. Unfortunately, as I bored and turned I discovered thus ebauchon had major flaws, some of them in the chamber itself, but I elected to finish the pipe anyway for the experience.
I knew I wanted a lathe, but never more than now! This 6" Atlas metal working lathe is for sale, but this shank was as long as I could do on it, the throw on the tail stock was very short, and it was difficult to position, and the travel on the tool rest was a bit roof. So I'm still looking. I was hoping to find an old metal working lathe that would work well for stummels as well as stems, but I'm starting to see why so many of you end up with two lathes! Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I don't have the money together, but want to know what to shoot for. Any chance of getting one lathe that works well for both stummels and stems without spending a fortune?
The insert is Yellow Heart (I think). I hope to get some Boxwood before too long. I also have some Paduck, and now I'm wondering if the deep red of the Paduck might have tied in nicely with the red highlights where I buffed off the black stain of the high points of the rustification.
While still not great, the rustification turned out much better than my other attempts. I did this using the tool made from concrete nails as described by Tyler here:
http://www.tylerlanepipes.com/modules.p ... ustication
He mentions it originally came from Brian Ruthenberg. Really works great compared to other things I've tried. After liberal use of the tool I went over it with a fine wire wheel. I buffed some of the back die off after it had dried, which yielded some decent dark red highlights.
I did a little better with keeping things symmetrical this time, but still have a long ways to go. The narrowing of the shank is intentional although I am now starting to regret it. I'm not happy at all with the bottom of the bowl in relation to the shank, but I ran out of room. The story here is I could not see well, having forgotten to bring a flashlight with me, so I ended up drilling the chamber a little too deep. That made me concerned about getting the bottom of the bowl too thin, otherwise I would have taken a little more off the bottom of the bowl. I think that would have worked better with the shank.
The pipe is tilted in the pics bellow, and that makes the stem look off center with the bowl, when in real life it's very close.
Specs in inches:The bowl 1.4 wide and 1.63 high. The chamber diameter is .75 (3/4) by 1.45 deep. The overall length is 6.2.
Having forgot to bring a flashlight I ended up getting the chamber a little past the draught hole. I've also discovered part of my chamber alignment problems seem to be the related to the Pimo modified spade bit I have is ground slightly off center. All my chambers end up with exactly the same slight drift at the bottom, even after getting most of the way there with a HSS jobbers bit.
I was going to try a hand cut stem, but ran out of time with the lathe. Hope to do that next time. Thanks to all the great info here, I used Delrin for the tenon on this one, and also modified it some. I really like the fit and feel of the Delrin, and it sure was a lot easier than trying to get a good fit with the PTT. I still want to learn to cut an entire stem from scratch on the lathe without using the Delrin. Still wondering about the asthetics of using Delrin instead of cutting in the tenon, but it sure enough works great!
So, another great learning experience. Making some progress, with much more to be made, and having a great time all the while... Please tear it up folks. I'm here to learn!
