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Hello everyone. This is a pipe I just finished. It is inspiered by the lines that you'll typically find in a blowfish, but it's symetrical instead of asymetrical.

In some areas I'm very happy with this pipe, for example, the stain is even as far as I can tell, and the pipe is polished to a very shiny, mirrory finish. There are some areas that I'm not happy with however. One of these things is the lightening of the stain along the sharp lines (I asked about this in another thread yesterday), and another thing is the shank face which looks like crap.

I should also mention that this pipe has the same problem as my last one (rhodesian here in the gallery) in that the shank face is angled strangely compared to the direction the shank is going, and this is because this pipe was started at the same time as the rodesian, and somehow my thinking was flawed at the time! The result it a stem/shank transition that disrupts the flow of the pipe and it looks really off!

Please tell me what you think!

/Albert

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Looks nice. I think the angle of the shank face works okay on this one because the lines flow upward with the shank. You've overbuffed the edges in some spots but other than that it's a solid piece. One thing that I'm finding works to prevent over-buffing the edges is to sand to a higher grit, stain with top coat, then buff at a medium speed with a buff that only has a small amount of red compound on it and use a light hand.

I like it a lot. You have the same issue I had with using a stem that has an inlay of an exotic hardwood and getting it to sand flush with the shank. I think it needs to be stabilized before finish sanding, though I'd need to try it again myself to know if that fixes the tiny gap between shank and stem.


The shape itself is interesting, but I don't know how much sense the flat sides make. While they do show off the grain, they don't do anything to separate the straight grain from the birdseye, so I don't think they make sense.

I do like the stem and button work, though. Nice and shiny. Keep up the good work!

IAWJ.

My critique has to do with the way the chamber interrupts the lines of your panels. After the interruption, the lines of your panels follow the bevel on the rim on their journey towards the front of the bowl (away from the smoker). When you interrupt the lines of a panel, it should appear that, if you remove the interruption, those lines would connect. It doesn't look that way on this piece and it's jarring.

How tall is the button? It looks a little high to me.

Plus, sand your chamber! I can't believe Wayne missed it!

d.huber wrote:IAWJ.

My critique has to do with the way the chamber interrupts the lines of your panels. After the interruption, the lines of your panels follow the bevel on the rim on their journey towards the front of the bowl (away from the smoker). When you interrupt the lines of a panel, it should appear that, if you remove the interruption, those lines would connect. It doesn't look that way on this piece and it's jarring.

How tall is the button? It looks a little high to me.

I agree with everything you say, and the "discontinuation" of the lines is a stupid misstake that wouldn't have been hard to do correctly if I hade payed closer attention! The button is 7 mm high, which I think it's comfy, but I had the "button to high critique" on my last one aswell, so I'll probably make it a little less tall from here on out, since that seems to be the general consensus! thanks for the critique!

d.huber wrote:Plus, sand your chamber! I can't believe Wayne missed it!

I always sand my chambers last thing, I don't know why it slipped my mind with this one!

A lot of guys including myself aim for .25" or 6 mm. Give it a shot to see if you like it.

If you kept the top and bottom of the shank parallel that angle of the shank face wouldn't be quite as visible. It would also bring the stem into the middle of the shank. Your observation is correct though: the stem comes in too low. While it could use some tweaking, I do think the stem work is crisp and clean.