The Rose

I would like to dedicate The Rose to my little sister, Christine. While I had the idea to do this pipe in my head she wrote a fairy tale for my birthday about a pipe maker who has to go on a quest to rescue a maiden. He would carve pipes for the people he met to look like the flowers he saw along his way (I will look into posting the story or a link).

 This was a wonderfully fun pipe to make. I spent a lot of time hand carving and hand sanding on top of the time I spent with the flex shaft engraver my wife gave me for my birthday. I am excited to finally complete it as I have been working on it in spurts for over a month. The Rose is my first completed Churchwarden. I spent a lot of time on the stain trying to get the green to be more green and less blue and I would consider myself to have been successful.

The Wizard's Bag

The Wizard's Bag is a variation on The Whale. The primary difference is on the rim around bowl. I like both in different ways. I enjoy the distressed look of The Whale but the smooth concave surface is also satisfying. The variation of stains on different surfaces seems to be becoming a fixture to many of my pipes but I am not entirely sure I like it as much as I use it. All in all this was a fantastically fun pipe to make. I enjoyed reworking The Whale's shape. Notice also the modified ball and ring freehand pipe stem and look for more variation in the stems as time goes on. 

Hopefully I will finish my first Churchwarden pipe sometime this week. I'm also playing around with techniques for inlaying silver wire. I'll post the results soon.

Variations on a Theme

So this pipe is a variation on both simplicity and my mistake pipe.  I didn't stain this but the wood is darker than the normal Briar. 

Postmodern Thoughts on a Square (The Gavel)

I received this block as a ebauchon briar but as I started working it I discovered it was actually a small Plateaux Briar. A while back a friend asked me if I could make a pipe with a square bowl. Taking that as a challenge and trying to get as much of the splendid straight grains as possible the square shape began to form. This was not a quick pipe as I had to use a file for a lot of forming around the stem. 

Speedy Pipe

This pipe was a challenge to make a pipe a little faster. By working furiously I got it done in just over three hours. One huge time saving feature is the distress at the bend. That allowed me to forgo a lot of hand sanding in that area. My wife, Kate, has told me a number of times, "I like it, except for the distress." This would probably make a good starter pipe.