Looking for cracked blocks

[GastonI]

being a rank novice I might have a Silly but what should be cost effective for me to learn how to work with briar and Dremel until I can save the money for a proper lathe, I was using Maple burls because per block I was able to get pretty good prices to hammer out the details and main concepts, but then If I actually produce anything worth keeping it'll probably smoke horribly and wouldn't have been worth the time invested. Also hopefully this serves a double purpose of getting rid of blocks that those of you who purchase in bulk aide in taking a smaller loss for things that you wouldn't normally invest the time in.

please let me know any one can help me out with this
Thanks ahead of time

[Massis]

If you want to practice on cheap stuff, order extra ebauchons from Jaume Hom in Spain.

Shipping included you'll pay 177 USD for 25 ebauchons.
Ofcourse the grain isn't all that and they're quite small, but it's enough to get you started!

[JeremyV]

Yup! You'll definately get plenty of cracked ones from Juan. I drilled number 5 of 10 last night. Four have been cracked or heavily pitted.

[Massis]

Yup! You'll definately get plenty of cracked ones from Juan. I drilled number 5 of 10 last night. Four have been cracked or heavily pitted.

I have only drilled one so far, so I can only judge the outsides.

I can say out of 25 of his cheapest ebauchons there are:
4 really good ones. Nice grain, light color, smell nice and nicely squared
1 pure garbage, it's not squared at all, smells very musty, had some bugs on it, is very dark in colour, has no grain and is covered in ground.
The other 20 are quite dark in colour, smell a bit musty, some have nice grain here and there (mostly blanks though) but at least they are squared.

Overall the amount of pits and cracks I can see is quite low, but as I said, I've only drilled one (the pure garbage one) and the inside of the chamber looks fine so far.

Conclusion is: you get what you pay for. $7/block including shipping is pretty darn cheap. I wanted to order from Mimmo first, but he has a minimum order of €500 unless you pick his packs of 10-20-30 mixed blocks which are quite expensive as "training" wood.

Even if I end up with only 2-3 usable pipes out of these 25 blocks, I'll still have had the practise of drilling and shaping 25 pipes, which is what I'm going for right now...

[Joe Hinkle Pipes]

ive been buying very small blocks from Tim West at jhlowe.com they are 2.50 each, you can buy 10 blocks and 2 1/2" by 20" ebonite rods for about $50. thats cheap enough to mess around with and not be too scared about screwing a few up. might even get a few micro pipes out of it. The sizes i ordered were B0 i believe. more than enought rod for 10 blocks if you use delrin.

[Charl]

Just a side note: squared or not have nothing to do about the quality of the block. Square yourself!

[GastonI]

I figured Jaume would be the source I would be looking toward. I checked out mimmo's site and I don;t think that'll be within range any time soon.

Thanks for the Rec on JH lowes. I had kinda lumped it into the same category of Pimo but I'm not sure if they (Pimo) are still operating.

well time's coming to make a purchase.