A Kemble Cup

I have already posted a cup in my It's been a while post. I made this walnut cup for my little sister for her birthday. I have been learning quite a bit about turning on a lathe. The lathe I have is a little metal working lathe from the 1940's that my dad got from a high school because Osha had condemned it to the school's use, the open belts being their primary concern. So I use an odd assortment of metal working tools (which work fantastic with the lucite) and wood chisels. 

The Wizard's Knife

Once again I have revisited my freehand series I call wizards. This briar pipe was made at the request of a friend of mine and so I slightly changed the design specifically to comfortably fit a thumb between the stem and the rim of the bowl as well as adding the knife edge bottom. 

I also turned the stem for this pipe on my lathe from a piece of Lucite rod. I am happy with the result although it took three attempts to get it right. The first stem I ended up making the tenon to small and it didn't fit the pipe correctly. The second stem looked great but broke when I was trying to get it off the rod I was turning it on. The third stem came out wonderfully. 

I'll be posting a couple more pipes this week so keep an eye out for them.

It's been a while

So it's been a couple of weeks since I posted my last pipe, but do not fear I am not totally inactive. So here is the run down.

I am currently working on three different pipes. One is a commissioned piece in the Wizard series that will be totting a stem I made. The other two are just new designs I wanted to try out. 

I accumulated a 1" wide upright belt sander. This will come in handy to finish forming some of my pipes but will be especially helpful in forming the stems I am starting to create. 

I sold the Sexton's Churchwarden through a tobacco shop. Tewksbury is where I usually go for my tobacco. It's a great little tobacco shop which also sells wine and fly fishing trips. They have several of my pipes on their shelves on commission and it is so exciting to see long time pipe smokers admiring them and now even buying them.

I have turned several cups and several stems on the lathe. It has been great to learn more about turning, as it gives me more options with stems. 

I have made a couple template pipes. These are pipes  I make out of American Hardwoods (cheap) and I smoke to try to work out particularly difficult designs. It allows me to have smoked and cleaned a pipe a customer might ask about. It also lets me sample different wood flavors. 

Here is my first cup and one of my template pipes. 

Juggling Work

    Sorry it's been so long between pipes again. I've been quite busy refinishing a condo. My last wood project was for a brother in law (not the one who got the pipe at Christmas), check out his stuff at userfriendlyhardware. So for his birthday I made him some juggling clubs. It was a great chance to play around with the new lathe. The clubs are 20" long and weigh 10 oz. I had bought a cheap plastic club as a pattern and it is 20" long and weighs 8 oz. I think I can drop the 2 oz. if use more cedar and less pine and redwood. I finished them with a semi-gloss polyurethane. 

      I know it's not a pipe but I wanted to show that I have been doing something. I'm working on a couple of pipes and I hope to try my hand at turning some cups soon.