The pipe in today's pics was made as an experiment back in 2001 when I was doing a lot of acrylic casting. It was one of those nutty-yet-intriguing ideas - since I could cast just about anything in with the acrylic mix, what would it be like to cast a stem with tobacco? The stem is simply pure clear acrylic poured into a chopped blend of fine tobacco and stirred. It hardened into solid rods which I then cut and drilled like any other stem material. As ideas go, though, it did not work very well - the tobacco created a very striated and veiny surface on the stem, and bits would keep trying to chip off. It would have worked much better if a clear "skin" of solid acrylic could have been poured over the tobacco section, but then there is the question of how to file and shape the bit and keep it evenly covered with solid clear acylic... In any event, it serves as yet another example of a goofy idea that "might have been something"...
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