Hello from a newbie

OmegaX · Post by **OmegaX** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 9:46 am

Hello all. My name is Matt Harrison, and I've just started venturing into the world of pipe making (thanks to JimEllis and his second-hand Dremel =). I've been interested in pipemaking and woodcarving in general for a while now, and yesterday I finally took the first steps by buying a few blocks of wood and some woodcarving knives.

The blocks are just pine blocks, because I just want to learn basic woodworking techniques and get the "feel" for things before I start shelling out money for briar. I bought the knives for woodcarving/engraving and just to mess around with. However, I have absolutely NO clue how to do anything useful with the things. Does anyone know of any good woodcarving books for beginners? Barnes and Noble seemed to only have one book. It was by Chris Pye, and it seemed to be more about how HE made the carvings, rather than how I can make them.

I worked late into the night, and here's what I came up with:

It's still in the very, VERY early stages, so it's naturally rough. You can see the basic shape starting to show, and I intend on making it a "no frills" bent shape. Since it's pine, and not smokeable, I'm not going to bother with stems or proper drilling, or any of that jazz.

Now, I live in an apartment. This is NOT the ideal place to be using power tools, and all I have is my dremel so far. I can't even use it on high speed because it kicks up waaay too much dust. What I'm doing right now is sitting in a large cardboard box, and using the dremel over a trash can with some pieces of cardboard on the sides and top. I really need to find a better solution to dust-control (water spray was mentioned to me) because when I was done last night, the TOP of my head was covered in shavings! Any suggestions?

Hopefully later today I'm going to have a nice day of carving =) I'm going out to buy a coping saw because I had to file away a LOT of wood with the dremel. If I can find some way to control dust, I can actually use it on high speed and get it done much easier. I'm also going to be buying some face masks, and the proper collet so I can use the engraving bit that I bought for the dremel. Anything else I should pick up?

Great forum, and I'm going to have fun browsing all the information on it! Nice to find a community of pipemakers like this, as I'm already an addict =)

OmegaX · Post by **OmegaX** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 5:33 pm

The basement eh? I have a nice basement that would work for this. How did that work out? The landlords were ok with that?

Well, after much toiling, here's stage 2!

now I have to SOMEHOW round out the shank and do the final shaping of the bowl.

AAdomeit · Post by **AAdomeit** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 7:13 pm

Whenever I do work like that, I sand/shape things by hand. Using an Xacto knife (particularly on pine) with a curved blade is ideal. A decent needle file could help. I use a Mora hunting knife for a lot of my carving, and I received an absolutely ancient carving knife from one of my grandmother's friends. I'd suggest, for the meantime, carving things out by hand, as it's quieter, and far, far less dusty! Borrow someone's bandsaw to get the rough shape and work from there....

OmegaX · Post by **OmegaX** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 9:46 pm

Well, I figure for something I can't smoke, this is finished enough for me. I just wanted to get a feel for the Dremel and making a pipe shape. Mission: success! Note the stem jammed in there "for looks".

Post by **Tyler** » Mon Oct 11, 2004 10:52 am

Welcome Matt!

I think you will find the process of carving briar even more fun because you can look forward to smoking the end result.

It is not AT ALL like pine though, so you will find the process of carving briar to be MUCH different.

Order a kit or two as your next step, and do the same to the kits that you have done to the pine block. It won't be long before you are drilling away and are officially a part of the pipe making ranks!

Have fun!

Tyler