pipemakersforum.com

Hi there - I am new here (been a member for a few months but never posted anything). Having enjoyed making a couple of pipes from kits I have decided to have a go at making some pipes from scratch. Long story short (just deleted a load of incessant rambling), if I make a shank extension out of an ornamental wood do I need to worry about the toxicity element, or would that just be an issue if the bowl was made of non-briar wood? I know that some pipes are made with olive wood so I may just stick with that but I have seen some beautiful woods that I would like to use if possible. Thanks.

Shouldn't be an issue for extensions.

Thanks guv'nor!

Bowl-wise it depends, Olivewood, Strawberry wood, Briar, and according to Meathod "African Blackwood" are all legit.

Shank extension-wise, just be sure to have a delrin tenon running through them, you wouldn't want to expose smoke to something such as Cocobolo, which has a toxicity to it. So yeah, with extensions I always just make sure there is no smoke coming in contact with them. Otherwise it's all fair game!

Also, if you use exotic woods that are not buryl you may find that the wood is weak and tends to fracture with the grain, so it is a bad idea to have your tenon press directly into the exotic wood (not that this has ever happend to me )

Todd

Thank you all this is great information. Expect a whole raft of stupid inane questions from me over the coming months!

Another option for shank extensions is to turn a tenon on the end of your briar shank or put the extension on the stem. As mentioned, as long as the extension wood doesn't come in contact with the airway it doesn't matter if it's toxic.

I'll add to what Wayne said- the more I do extension work, the more I actually prefer to put accent rings on the stem itself. Doing it this way has helped simplify the engineering headaches which can ensue if done vise-versa, the reason being you already are inserting a delrin tenon/ turning your own tenon onto the stem, so it isn't much extra work to slide the extension on and epoxy it in place.

If, you're finding the rings keep cracking, try stepping your drillbit size up 1/64. It'll leave a small gap, but if you're refining your stem/ shank junction further after you glue in the tenon(it's the only way to go yo!) then this small potential offset of accent rings makes absolutely no difference in your end result.

Also worth noting- one of my favorite extension rings is African Blackwood, it's a great option if you want to highlight a nice band of light wood. You can put a sliver of blackwood on either side(it acts similar to a matte in a picture frame this way) and it really helps to showcase the accent piece.

Just my quarter dollar,

Cheers!