Joshua's Horn

My second horn pipe, Joshua's horn is made of plateaux briar. The beautiful straight grain runs down from the natural curve of the briar to a peterson stem. It is stained with black with much of the stain sanded off. The peterson stem lets the smoke out of the top side of the bit which makes it feel cooler since it doesn't hit the tongue directly.

Joshua, I am sure, had one of these in his tent during the siege of Jericho just wishing that tobacco had already been brought over from the New World so he could smoke the inhabitants of Jericho out of their city instead of blowing their walls down. 

The Wizard's Folly

The Wizard's Folly is the result of making to many wizards pipes in a row without having a new name for the next one, thus the folly. I tried a different method of distressing the rim, which turned out beautifully. Anyway it is another good looking freehand pipe. 

The Walls of Jericho

The Walls of Jericho is a trumpet shaped pipe. The curve of both the pipe and the stem are amazingly simple and beautiful, and ends up looking much like an animals horn. The briar is left at its natural color which is very light on the right hand side and just a shade of red darker on the left side. Even if Joshua didn't have one of these when he marched on Jericho, I'm sure he would have appreciated it afterwards back in his tent.

The Wizard's Beard

Finally I've finished another pipe. Another Wizard freehand pipe, and this time it's the Wizards Beard. I played around with the ball and ring freehand stem a bit for some variation as well as giving it a strong bend. It came out well

The Wave

The Wave is a revisit to the design of the mistake pipe. It is a bit larger, and also I calculated the holes correctly so they would not come out the side of the pipe. this is also the darkest finish I have done on a pipe just using the black stain. The wood color gives it the reddish hints.

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. 

The Potato

Mea Culpa on the long wait since my last post. I was traveling, busy and thwarted at different points of time. So the long elusive pipe that I have been working on has finally taken shape after some input from deProfundis.  Thus the potato pipe is born. It's a bit different from previous pipes in that it has some limited distress, but is interesting in it's own fashion.

Though it is different from my original plan I have formed a certain liking for this pipe. I'll think back on this pipe as my carvers block, hopefully, that has been overcome. 

One more exciting note is that I now have a small metal lathe, which I am still in the process of setting up. I'm looking forward to experimenting with making stems on it.