My First Two Pipes

souljer · Post by **souljer** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 4:25 pm

Here are my first two pipes that reached a completed stage without being broken by me or some unknown forces of nature (such as being hurled to the floor at 3400 rpm).

<img>http://can't get it to work.com</img>

Another picture can be seen on my website www.TotemStar.com

Please let me know what you think.

P.S. Yes I tried to post a picture but it is too frustrating and I am too rushed right now to figure it out. If anyone can post the picture here, you have my permission to do so.

April 25
P.P.S. It looks like one of you fine people got one of my pix posted here from the Gallery. Thank you!

So anyone else who wishes to see the pipes can just scroll down now rather than clicking the link above.

achduliebe · Post by **achduliebe** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 4:38 pm

Here you go.

achduliebe · Post by **achduliebe** » Mon Apr 24, 2006 4:40 pm

By the way, very nice pipes. I really like both of these pipes but am kind of partial to the pick-ax shape. Very cool...pretty amazing for your first two.

Can't wait to see your next pipe.

souljer · Post by **souljer** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 3:09 am

Thank you for the comments.

A lot of people like the pick ax styled one. It is # 1, followed about a week later by the poker. It's not really a pipe I would buy, but the wood happened to fit this idea I had, so I went with it.

The pick ax has some very nice grain on the sides. I really got lucky with centering it and finding the grain. It has a small detail of steps where the shank joins the bowl and that seems to be a favorite point to some who have seen it.

The poker had ugly grain and many pits so I rusticated it. I smoothed out the plateaux points on top and left the foot on the bottom smooth. The poker is more the type of pipe I like. I like the way the red stained top and bottom edge of the foot work with the red band while the rest is basiclly black. Both stems are acrylic, by the way.

They look a lot better in real life as the pictures came out pretty bad. lol But that's another forum!

souljer · Post by **souljer** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 4:49 am

Okay I've posted some pictures in the gallery here so I'm going to give posting the pix in the thread another try.

Nope. The best I could do tonight is a ? It was supposed to be picture 2.

Can anyone else get it over here from the Gallery?

And if you could, how the hell did you do it??

Thanx,
Gunnar

sethile · Post by **sethile** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 9:14 am

Wow Gunnar, Those are very nice pipes! Hard to believe they are your first two. Very original and from what I can tell, very well executed! Here is the second pic from your gallery.

It's a bit tricky to find the actual location in order to enter it here. Try right clicking it and selecting element properties, then copy and paist from the location listing.

Really looking forward to seeing more of your work. Beautiful grain on the ax. The flow into the stem, and your treatment of that transition are very nice. I like the shape of the Poker also. Interesting stem treatment too. Are those hand cut or pre-molded? What are the red inserts, and how did you do that? Keep up the great work!

souljer · Post by **souljer** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 2:09 pm

sethile wrote:Wow Gunnar, Those are very nice pipes! Hard to believe they are your first two. Very original and from what I can tell, very well executed! Here is the second pic from your gallery.

First off, thank you so much for helping me get the picture posted. When I quoted you above, the actual code for the image came up and that gave me some more clues as to what I was missing. Thanx again.

sethile wrote:Beautiful grain on the ax. The flow into the stem, and your treatment of that transition are very nice. I like the shape of the Poker also. Interesting stem treatment too. Are those hand cut or pre-molded? What are the red inserts, and how did you do that? Keep up the great work!

Yes I got lucky with #1. I wasn't sure it was going to work out but it did in the end. This block also had several pits and checks come and go. However there is a large flaw on the other side down below the level of the shank. You can see it in the first picture in the Gallery.

The stems are hand cut from black acrylic rod stock. I cut the rod insert the red acrylic piece and then shape. The parts are held together by a special glue that basically chemically welds the acrylic parts into one solid piece. It is the same glue that I use on the pipe displays. Once done correctly the parts are no longer separate, but act as one solid unit. The transition between the colors is even a little soft or blurred.

I knew I would not have stamps, etc. for my pipes so I decided to make the stems with the red band as a sort of trademark/ logo that would identify my pipes from others. It's a lot of extra work and it takes two days but people seem to like it.

As I said on my first post; these are the first pipes that I have not broken. They are about my 7th or 8th attempt at making something. The bits are the same; it took several attempts to get it to work without bubbles and other issues.

Thank you for you comments. As others have said, I'm here to learn so please feel free to be constructively critical.

P.S. After reading Tyler's posts below I have now edited the code in Sethile's quote so the picture posts correctly.

Post by **Tyler** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 5:03 pm

I still don't see anything in the above post. Is it me?

I will give it a go:

Did that work?

Tyler

Post by **Tyler** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 5:06 pm

OK...I see the photo in my post, but not in any of the others. Anyone else?

Here are the other two in the gallery:

Nice work!

Tyler

Post by **Tyler** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 5:12 pm

The trick to imbedding images is having the actual location the image resides sitting between the image tags. In other words, the gallery page that shows the image is not where the image actually is sitting. (That would be this URL:
http://www.pipemakersforum.com/modules. ... _photo.php )

Instead, one needs to go to that URL, right-click on the photo and hit properties. From there, you can copy the address of the image location ( http://www.pipemakersforum.com/albums/G ... .sized.jpg in this case.), and then come back to the thread, and insert that between [img]and[/img].

Easy as pie! 8O

(I can see the links that Seth made and I wonder if Souljer hasn't edited his gallery account since Seth posted. It looks like Seth used the right process, but that link is no longer active. As if the gallery account changed.)

sethile · Post by **sethile** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 5:23 pm

Hmm... Yup, Tyler is right. At first the pic was in a different "generic" directory and it's now associated with his name.
It was: http://www.pipemakersforum.com/albums/a ... pe_1_2.jpg

Now it's here : http://www.pipemakersforum.com/albums/G ... pe_1_2.jpg

Very interesting about the stems. They look great, especially for early efforts. I just finished my first hand cut and found it very challanging, but also fun. Do you think the special acrylic glue is safe and certain not to taint the flavor? I worried over that with the epoxy I'm using for inserts and when using Delrin tenons. I just try to make sure none of it is in contact with the smoke stream. Not sure how much of an issue this is, just a bit concearned about the potential.

Really looking forward to seeing more of your work Gunner!

bvartist · Post by **bvartist** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 5:25 pm

Tyler wrote:OK...I see the photo in my post, but not in any of the others. Anyone else?

Thought my computer had blown up! I wasn't seeing them either!

souljer · Post by **souljer** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 8:02 pm

bvartist wrote:
Tyler wrote:OK...I see the photo in my post, but not in any of the others. Anyone else?
Thought my computer had blown up! I wasn't seeing them either!

Nor did I! And I was just about to scream when I realized what happened, which is exactly what Tyler said; This morning I saw my album was "Untitled" and figured out how to name it. So I did. But as stated that made all the previous links that did work, now broken.

So even though we haven't learned much about pipe making in my thread, we've learned a ton about posting pix! Yea for us!

souljer · Post by **souljer** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 9:20 pm

sethile wrote:Very interesting about the stems. They look great, especially for early efforts. I just finished my first hand cut and found it very challanging, but also fun. Do you think the special acrylic glue is safe and certain not to taint the flavor? I worried over that with the epoxy I'm using for inserts and when using Delrin tenons. I just try to make sure none of it is in contact with the smoke stream. Not sure how much of an issue this is, just a bit concearned about the potential.

Really looking forward to seeing more of your work Gunner!

Hi,

I do believe the acrylic glue is safe and does not taint the flavor. I can't say I've got the most sophisticated of palates, however just understanding how the glue works and why it's different than other glues, like epoxy, helps.

Any chemists in our group can correct me if I'm not correct, but this is how I see it:

With conventional glues, you are dealing with a separate (third) material that is supposed to hold the first two (or more) pieces together. Usually this is done by being really, really sticky and grabbing onto the parts really, really tight. When all is done you end up with layers; part/glue/part, etc. That glue layer is always there in the smoke stream and will never go away. If it ever does go away, the pieces come apart.

This glue is not designed to glue everything or even most things together (like super glue and epoxies). This only glues acrylic to acrylic and it does this by chemically welding the parts together. When the job is done there is no glue layer to interact with the smoke stream. There is only one piece of acrylic ready to be shaped. Thusly I surmise there will be no more flavor tainting than with any other conventional acrylic stem.

When done right the "line" between the two colors is soft or blurred, because the parts are basically mixed at that point. After polishing you cannot feel any split. Problems can happen when air is trapped in the gluing and curing process (it shrinks and air is sucked in) and then frozen in the piece. It's discovered the next day while you are forming the stem or sanding and polishing and still seeing a definite split or crack between the two parts. That join is weak and not done correctly. I also found that different colors react differently and are of different hardnesses. So shaping and sanding must be done carefully or you will create deformities with multicolor pieces. This is probably way more than you wanted to know so I'll stop now.

Regarding epoxy, I've seen broken shanks repaired with epoxy, so I don't think there is too much to worry about as far as tainting the flavor is concerned as long as you wait until it is completely cured of course.

If I was mounting a band onto a stem down by the tenon I would probably use epoxy too.

One question I had for you is why Delrin? What is the purpose of creating a Delrin tenon v. keeping the tenon out of vulcanite or acrylic?

marks · Post by **marks** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 9:22 pm

Very nice pipes. I like them both.

mahaffy · Post by **mahaffy** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 11:52 pm

Souljer,
Are you into serigraphy, too, or are those computer-derived iron-ons?

souljer · Post by **souljer** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 5:19 am

Hi,

The T-shirts are silk screens of original drawings I made. I was going to make several different kinds, however I've been having troubles with my printer so I may stop soon or just do the churchwarden next and stop.

Depends how things go in Chicago.

sethile · Post by **sethile** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:47 am

Souljer wrote:One question I had for you is why Delrin? What is the purpose of creating a Delrin tenon v. keeping the tenon out of vulcanite or acrylic?

The short anwer is becuase the Delrin is stronger, self lubricating, and much easier to deal with if you don't have a lathe to cut tenon's with. At least on mine, the feel of the tenon/stummel fit is MUCH easier to get nice with the Delrin, and it's much more consistant. This is in large part becuase I don't have a lathe yet. Using the Pimo Tenon Tool I have is a great inexpensive option, but also a tough way to get a good fiting tenon. I won't go into a lot of depth on this becuase it is dealt with very well in several threads in the Stem Work area. Fantastic information on the hows and whys of using Delrin Tenons. Highly recommend you take a look.

The only real drawbacks I have found discussed are that the Delrin is so strong that there is a higer possibility that if a pipe is droped you will crack the shank instead of the tenon section of the stem, making for a ruined pipe instead of being able to make a new stem.

My take on Acrylic is that it is too hard and brittle to make a really great tenon. One interesting note is that Stanwel went to Delrin shortly after they started using acrylic stems, sighting the hardness factor. I think Ebonite and Cumberland stems are a different matter. Once I get a lathe I'll try cutting tenons on my Ebonite and Cumberland stems and see how that goes. Pretty evenly mixed oppinions on this topic amongst the more experienced pipe makers. My little jury of one is still out :dunno:

souljer · Post by **souljer** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 2:00 pm

Interesting. I will take a look when I have some time.

As for acrylic being brittle, yes it is hard, however everything can be broken. It's just a matter of how much force is hitting at just the wrong place.

As you said having a tenon that's stronger than the shank means that the shank is the weakest link and will break first.

I was considering going with vulcanite myself as I did not want to make my stems out of inferior, or experimental material, but I didn't know where to find it. Then I remembered that Castello and Mark Tinsky -just to name a few notables- make their stems exclusively out of acrylic. So I thought if they think it's okay, it's okay with me. I just do it my way, but it's the same material.

I still do think about vulcanite. I'm just a beginner; probably everything will change...