Some repairs (first post -- I'm new here)

[LatakiaLover]

Hi, all.

I have made a pipe---exactly one---but am a repairman, not a carver. Just finished building a full-service shop, in fact, and am currently going through the paperwork part of licensing, bank accounts, and website design/implementation.

Anyway, though carvers are expected to show lots of pics, repairmen don't often. Not sure why, though, to me it's just as interesting. Here are two recent work orders:

First is a churchwarden with a mortise that is not axially aligned with the shank. Meaning when assembled, there's an "elbow" where the stem and shank meet. The first two frames show a snug-fit drill bit bottomed in the mortise to illustrate the problem, and a straight edged piece of sandpaper in the frame for reference. Look closely, and you can see that the bit is offline about 3.5 degrees vertically, and 2 degrees horizontally:

(click on any pic to enlarge to 1200 wide)





Here's the pipe after fixing the problem, showing it with a new stem from all angles plus a close-up of the stem/shank junction:














Next is a pretty little Dunhill-era Parker Straight Grain that needed its frozen vulcanite bit removed (it was stuck); a new Lucite bit made, the draft opened a la Newcombe; and an overall rejuvenation treatment.

Also in the frame is the pipe's original bit, and a chunk of Lucite that's identical to the one the new bit was made from:













So. Others with an interest in repairs, comment away. I love talking about repair strategies, equipment, and so forth, as well as pipes in general.

[KurtHuhn]

Excellent job on that churchwarden! How did you get the stem and shank to line up again?

[LatakiaLover]

Excellent job on that churchwarden! How did you get the stem and shank to line up again?

Thanks, K.

The "correct" way to have done it on most pipes would be to re-drill the mortise, of course. I played with the idea, but the outside of the shank not being either truly round in cross section or a true cylinder lengthwise (it tapers) made chucking a real challenge. Plus, even though 3.5 degrees isn't much, a larger bore that was enough larger to "incorporate" all the surrounding wood got into the dangerously thin mortise wall zone. The thinness is what finally settled it for me. (Why risk doing one cosmetic fix---the elbow---only to likely cause a new cosmetic problem---a band---later?)

Plus, the $ consideration: after re-drilling, assuming it went OK, a new stem would still have to be made.

So, I took the easy way out (and the only reasonable one for a $200 pipe), and simply cocked the tenon the right amount, and manually faced the shank to match. To avoid making the heated tenon egg-shaped when applying sideways pressure, I slipped a short length of slip-fit brass tubing over it first. The only tell-tale the work was done is when removing the stem because it "helicopters" a little, but it beats the price of either a custom set-up re-drill + new stem, or a new pipe. Plus, there's no reason to take apart a pencil shanked cw often, anyway, imo. (I made the rep stem a near-flush depth fit in the mortise---.5mm---to reduce as much as possible a tar and cleaner fuzz gathering point with that in mind.)