Ramping the draught hole....

[sethile]

Hello all,
I'm interested in how you folks look at ramping draught holes to align them after drilling. Not in terms of intended design, but in terms of recovery. I've always tried hard to avoid the need for this, but I've been seeing it in pipes done by some excellent pipe makers.

It seems when I miss dead center it's nearly always high relative to the mortise due to the angle needed, and a lack of space needed to achieve it . Believe me, I'm taking steps to correct this. Meanwhile I've got a really beautiful pipe here that is nearly perfect otherwise. I've carefully ramped the draught hole so that a pipe cleaner passes perfectly. My understanding is that this may cause some extra turbulence, but I've seen this done on occasion by several pipe makers with excellent reputations with seemingly no apologies for it. The pipes I've made, kept, and smoked with this situation are excellent smokers and I can't detect any significant difference in the smoking qualities. They tend to be bone dry like others with more precisely aligned air ways.

Certainly this ramped air way is no worse than leaving a gap between the end of the tenon and mortise in terms of the potential for problems. I'm darn persnickety about that, but I know others, some of whom seem to do excellent work other wise, are not.

On a related note, I have also seen excellent makers leave nicks or intentional groves in the outside bottom of the mortise to facilitate draught hole alignment. I am also interested in this issue in terms of aesthetic and the standard of the art. It may be in my attempt to avoid this I am making my other alignment issues more difficult.

I've created a poll, but would love to hear any of this expanded on.

[KurtHuhn]

When making a pipe that has a bend past a certain point, a ramped airway is a simple fact of life when using straight drills. Wether that ramp is made by the drill or with a diamond ball on dremel is almost unimportant. (I'm sure this will spawn disagreement). This is especially true if you are unwilling to notch the mortis.

I think you've hit on one of the worst kept secrets in pipe making - ramped airways do not contribute significantly to a wet or poor smoke. Being a big fan of quarter and half-bent pipes, I've seen a lot ramped airways. None of the ones I've made myself have had a problem with a wet or gurgling smoke. I have bought a couple that smoked hot and wet, but opening up the airway in both the stem and the stummel solved that problem.

As far as notching the mortis to make room for the airway bit, again it's almost a fact of life. As long as you can hide the notch once the pipe is assembled, I don't consider it a problem. If the notch clearly shows when the stem is on the pipe, I personally would not consider it attractive (in all instances I can think of right now). And stems aren't the only way to hide the notch - shank end caps (sometimes called 'godets') are a great way of hiding notches, and adding some visual interest to boot.

[TreverT]

At Rheinbach, I just looked at tables upon tables full of Eltangs, Barbis, Bangs, etc, and nearly all of them had seriously ramped airhole passageways. It's all part of the Great Disconnect between some collectors and reality, namely:

"A ramped airhole is a sign of poor craftsmanship." or "I hate seeing a notch in the upper rim of the mortise. This is poor craftsmanship."

In reality, neither is the case. If you want to get a straight drill through a curved shank, something's got to give *somewhere*, and buyers want these sexy curved shapes, so it's part of the package.

Disguising a mortise notch is not necessary, IMO (Unless it somehow actually shows when the stem is in place, which would be awful) and it can also produce problems. Granted, you can drill that notched mortise out larger and insert a mortise lining that's pristine, or add a shank cap to cover your notch, but by doing this you've made it impossible to ream the airhole with a drill bit over time. Five years of smoking down the road, this can be a real problem, as the airhole cakes and there's no way to insert a drill bit in to perfectly ream it back to original spec. So, while shank caps and inserts may make the picky collectors mollified going in, they're actually shortchanging themselves in the longer run.

The same problem occurs with curved airholes - non "user serviceable".

My own personal solution has been to move my tenon inlets around, which works great and usually lets me avoid both ramping and notching.

[hazmat]

This is a bit off-topic, but still relevant to a certain extent as we're discussing what's appropriate on a saleable pipe and what's not.

At what point does a maker determine "be damned the finicky collectors!" and just do their thing in this respect? I understand that there's certain departures from traditional methods/materials that would keep some buyers/collectors from making "your" pipe their purchase but at what point are you just selling yourself short for fear of "collector rage" over... a ramped airway, a notch in the mortise wall, a draft hole that's 2/128ths off center in the bottom of the baccy chamber.. etc..etc. At what point do you just say to yourself.. I know what I'm making is good work. I know that what I'm offering smokes well and is as well-engineered, carved and finished as it can possibly be at this point. I mean.. past a certain point, you can't get much better at drilling two holes in a piece of wood. Everything else beyond that is a factor of ability and attention to details. So.. at which point does a pipe maker not worry about the buffed internal airway police and just make pipes people love to smoke?

[RadDavis]

I ramp a lot of airways, and I nick the top edge of a lot of mortises. I've never had a customer complain about either.

I saw a Cavicchi at the Briary in Homewood, AL on my way back from Columbus. It was a full bent Oompaul, and the smoke hole was dead center in the bottom of the mortise, and if I remember correctly (maybe Skip will correct me) there was no drilling nick on the top edge of the mortise. I was very impressed.

I want to know how he does that.

Rad

[sethile]

This is great to hear, guys. Thanks very much! I'll keep working on getting away from ramping and notches when possible, but it's very re-assuring to here I'm not alone in this! I really appreciate the help!

[Skip]

It was quite a surprise to see Rad show up at our store. What is no surprise is the drilling perfection that we get on all of Claudio Cavicchi`s pipes.
Here is the deal. None of the pipes have ramps......never! Full bent pipes have the hole flush to the bottom and are not elongated. I can not imagine how he avoids extra tall holes in a full bent pipe. All of the pipes will pass a cleaner and on a rare occasion a slight twist could be required to slip the cleaner all the way into the bowl. He does not use a curved drill bit.
Claudio has been making pipes as long as I have been selling them. I hope when I have been doing it that long I could do as well. What am I talking about, I hope I am still vertical in another 33 years.

Skip

[Frank]

Full bent pipes have the hole flush to the bottom and are not elongated. I can not imagine how he avoids extra tall holes in a full bent pipe. All of the pipes will pass a cleaner and on a rare occasion a slight twist could be required to slip the cleaner all the way into the bowl. He does not use a curved drill bit.

I read somewhere that one of the Danish/Swedish pipemakers (possibly the late Bo Nordh), when drilling the draught hole on a bent pipe, would drill down level to the bottom of the tobacco chamber, but approximately 1/2 mm from the tobacco chamber. He would then then use a small rotary ball bit to make the opening from the tobacco chamber to the draught hole, working from the tobacco chamber side. He would have a perfectly round draught hole entering the tobacco chamber, flush with the bottom.

[kbadkar]

(possibly the late Bo Nordh),

Yup, that's Bo.

[TreverT]

I read somewhere that one of the Danish/Swedish pipemakers (possibly the late Bo Nordh), when drilling the draught hole on a bent pipe, would drill down level to the bottom of the tobacco chamber, but approximately 1/2 mm from the tobacco chamber. He would then then use a small rotary ball bit to make the opening from the tobacco chamber to the draught hole, working from the tobacco chamber side. He would have a perfectly round draught hole entering the tobacco chamber, flush with the bottom.

That's what I do too. Damn, I thought I invented that for myself! It works better than drilling directly into the bowl at a steep angle, because you avoid that fragile thin spot on the upper side where the airhole enters the bowl.

[TreverT]

At what point does a maker determine "be damned the finicky collectors!" and just do their thing in this respect?

Right from the start, IMO. Don't work in fear of someone looking over your shoulder criticizing. It's important to listen to good criticism and try and improve your work, but the truth is that the guys who go on and on about inspecting pipes with probe lights and under 100X magnifiers are MUCH more into how smart they're trying to look, than actually knowledgeable about pipes. A fellow once said to me that he even inspected how the pipemaker had finished the bottom of his mortises. I could tell that he thought this made him seem very knowledgeable indeed, but what I quietly thought was, "Hmm, not one professional pipemaker I know *finishes* the bottom of the mortise beyond it being whatever shape the drill bit point was." You'll hear people fuss about ramping being "bad"... OK, I just saw roughly thirty Eltangs and Barbis that were all ramped. So these fellows are poor pipemakers, eh? There is "Wanting every detail to be perfect" and then there is "Actually understanding how it is done, and why certain effects happen, or are unavoidable, and why everything is a trade-off in one direction or another." The first is "I'm trying to look really smart" and the second is "I really know a lot about how this is done".

Plus, you gotta work with passion. If you spend too much energy obsessing over whether someone is going to find a nick in your airhole one day, you're going to produce overthought work... derivative, bland, "safe". I'm not saying to work crude, or do bad work, or not try to be excellent in all regards of the process, but foremost you have to ENJOY YOURSELF. That is the first commandment and it overrides all others. If you're a pro, you've sacrificed regular paychecks, easy insurance, and daily stability for your craft, so you'd better enjoy it a lot. If you're not a pro, why on earth would you even want to do something that you felt you had to fret over?

[Nick]

Actually, I invented that. Yeah, i taught it to Bo when he came over to my house. Gave me two or three pipes because he knew what a big deal in the pipe community I am. And you see what came of it, didn't you? After his visit to my house, he was the Man! Yeah, that's just how it happened.

[sethile]

It was quite a surprise to see Rad show up at our store. What is no surprise is the drilling perfection that we get on all of Claudio Cavicchi`s pipes....

Skip, hope you don't mind, but I used the info off of your site and some pictures to add Claudio to Pipedia... Odd he's not on the italianpipemakers.com site. Also, in the process of looking around I found some great shots of him making pipes, and also Daniela doing some rustification: http://www.synjeco.ch/pipesandtobaccos/ ... cavlab.htm

Claudio is doing amazing work, and seems to keep his time and prices down where an average guy can buy one now and again. Kind of reminds me of a certain pipe maker from the Gulf who passed through there recently

[souljer]

Not that my opinion counts for anything, but as a working artist who sells paintings/artwork, etc. that I've made as well as commercial art (sorta like daily commissions) for about the last 20 years, I could not agree more with what Mr. T. has said here.

Furthermore, and to get back to the subject, I have a pal who collects Super High Grades and owns a bunch. On occasion I'll not just look and admire, but get a chance to take one apart and see how it's drilled/made. All of the bent Ivarssons that I've seen have a notched mortise edge. After seeing things like that on Chonowitschs, Nordhs, Eltangs and others, I stopped worrying about that. I can accept that perhaps they know more about pipe-craft than I do and I am perfectly happy to just follow their lead rather than reinvent the wheel.

I feel that ramping and notching are just tools to be used when needed (as Trevor points out; nice to have if you ever want to ream the draft way). They are not mistakes or compromises to be avoided. You simply use the techniques when you need them and don't when you don't. Brad Pohlmann said here somewhere that one needs to think in terms of problem solving, not just making a pipe. To me that also means thinking ahead so that future problems are avoided or "pre-solved" so to speak. Those notches are not there because they are unavoidable, or because these makers could not figure out how to cap the shank; they are there as tools. A channel for a drill bit or reamer -even at times in the shank cap- to be used some time in the future when the draft hole needs to be reamed. They are put there, not left there.

In my experience, when an artist starts second guessing the masters, he wastes a lot of time and ends up coming to the same conclusions as they did anyway.

At what point does a maker determine "be damned the finicky collectors!" and just do their thing in this respect?

Plus, you gotta work with passion. If you spend too much energy obsessing over whether someone is going to find a nick in your airhole one day, you're going to produce overthought work... derivative, bland, "safe". I'm not saying to work crude, or do bad work, or not try to be excellent in all regards of the process, but foremost you have to ENJOY YOURSELF. That is the first commandment and it overrides all others. If you're a pro, you've sacrificed regular paychecks, easy insurance, and daily stability for your craft, so you'd better enjoy it a lot. If you're not a pro, why on earth would you even want to do something that you felt you had to fret over?

[JHowell]

What sort of tenon size/diameter? You can get a few more degrees with a large/short tenon, but beyond that, geometry is geometry.

Jack

It was quite a surprise to see Rad show up at our store. What is no surprise is the drilling perfection that we get on all of Claudio Cavicchi`s pipes.
Here is the deal. None of the pipes have ramps......never! Full bent pipes have the hole flush to the bottom and are not elongated. I can not imagine how he avoids extra tall holes in a full bent pipe. All of the pipes will pass a cleaner and on a rare occasion a slight twist could be required to slip the cleaner all the way into the bowl. He does not use a curved drill bit.
Claudio has been making pipes as long as I have been selling them. I hope when I have been doing it that long I could do as well. What am I talking about, I hope I am still vertical in another 33 years.

Skip