It turned out OK, but after a few days I decided it wasn't truly right. I smoked it to see if it was worth keeping (it was), so finally just chucked it in a drawer to deal with later.
Yesterday was the day. I came across it when looking for something else, and realized it had either grown fat and ugly while sleeping, or I had deluded myself into thinking it was finished when it wasn't.
Since pipes don't eat much, the latter seemed far more likely. It was so obvious it was ridiculous. "WTF was I thinking?" was the phrase that kept running through my head. The pipe looked like shit. It looked abandoned, not completed.
So, out came le tools and off came more wood and acrylic. As Sixten Ivarsson reputedly said years ago, the pipe wasn't bad looking, it was just still inside trying to get out.
The first time, it weighed 39.7 grams. Now, it weighs 34.3. That's a 13.7% reduction. One SEVENTH of the old pipe is now gone.
Does it look better? Closer to "right?" I think so. Is it all the way there, yet? Actually, no. While messing with it this morning, I noticed a couple areas where still more material should have been removed. I'll probably do it eventually. (Too much KC show prep to mess with today, though.)
The moral of the story? Besides the obvious business of knowing what tools to use and how to use them to impose your will on a block of briar, YOUR OWN MIND is an enemy in this pipe-making game. It will try to trick you incessantly to stop working... not because a pipe is finished, but because you subconsciously WANT it to be finished. And if you are an amateur, you'll fall for the lies offered up by your Inner Rationalizer every time
This one thing, I think, is the closest thing to a secret that the pros have.
We'll soon know by their reaction to this thread. A sneaky bunch, those pros.
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Here's where I stopped the first time:
And here's the pared-down version:
