Everybody already knows how pipes are drilled using drill presses, wood lathes, and spoon bit/hand drilling, so I thought I would put together a visual demonstration of how I just drilled a Talbert freehand today. It's a different technique that doesn't rely on the drawn centerlines of spoon bit drilling, but which still allows one to shape the pipe first and drill after, letting the pipemaker get maximum use out of the briar block's grain.
The tooling shown all came from St. Claude, France, and to my knowledge the only way to get hold of anything like this would be to either go there and buy it from a factory directly or to have a machine shop custom-build something for you - A pair of not-inexpensive propositions.
Click the pics for an enlarged view!
Interesting alternative method. And lovely pictures as usual. Looks like it's going to be a very nice pipe. I love the shapes!
ReplyDeleteJust curious: do you think it would be possible to carve a pipe just using a just dremmel and a standard drill?
It would be possible but very difficult. You wouldn't have any way of making a sten & shank join flush so it would have to be a military mount style, and getting the airhole and bowl aligned would be a minor nightmare. Plus, you'd need at least a custom-ground bit shape for the bowl drilling.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to see that pipe finished. It's shaping up to be a beautiful thing. Time to cash in the change jar...
ReplyDeleteIt's finished, and was posted and sold in today's site update. You can see the final result here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.talbertpipes.pair.com/talbert.shtml
Look for the green one.