Carving your own

[Sir Humpsalot]

Originally Posted by hollywood

I don't even know what a spindle sander is!? Seriously!!

ahhhhhh - cool. just googled it. interesting.

Yeah. I spent YEARS thinking to myself, "Damn, if I only could buy a sander to make these inside curves, I could do soooo much more work!!!" Then I stumbled upon spindle sanders while searching the web for a device like that...

Sure enough, it's lived up to its promise. I can't say I use it a lot, but for many of the things I use it for, it's nearly indispensable.... or at least it saves a lot of time....

[Sir Humpsalot]

Originally Posted by caskwith

I dont use one, LOL, i do however use sanding drums from time to time, but 99% of all shaping is done with a disc, the rest is with files and then sandpaper.

Yeah, I'm kind of regretting my concave shape... especially for a first pipe. But goodness, it feels really nice in my hand. The shape makes it so if you squeeze it, then it wants to slip out.. but if you take a deep breath and relax and hold it gently, it fits like a glove. It's a really neat thing...

I'm just still trying to figure out how I want to shape the rest, how to marry the shapes together.... I kind of regret canting the back of the bowl into the funnel-shape. It might have looked better if I left it vertical... still thinking here...

[Senator]

Originally Posted by Sir Humpsalot

Yeah, I'm kind of regretting my concave shape... especially for a first pipe. But goodness, it feels really nice in my hand. The shape makes it so if you squeeze it, then it wants to slip out.. but if you take a deep breath and relax and hold it gently, it fits like a glove. It's a really neat thing...

I'm just still trying to figure out how I want to shape the rest, how to marry the shapes together.... I kind of regret canting the back of the bowl into the funnel-shape. It might have looked better if I left it vertical... still thinking here...

I really like the shape, SH. The front of the bowl is quite interesting and I see lots of potential in the pipe.

Are you going to leave it as a "sitter" or were you going to round the bottom. Personally, I think it would look good as a "sitter".

Tapering the shank quite a bit would look nice.

What are the diminesions of the pipe (internal/external)?

[Sir Humpsalot]

Originally Posted by Senator

I really like the shape, SH. The front of the bowl is quite interesting and I see lots of potential in the pipe.

Are you going to leave it as a "sitter" or were you going to round the bottom. Personally, I think it would look good as a "sitter".

Tapering the shank quite a bit would look nice.

What are the diminesions of the pipe (internal/external)?

The bottom was going to be rounded because I didn't like the way the pipe looked when sitting straight up... but now that you mention it, I am thinking about another option... maybe making it into a forward-leaning sitter. I think that could be quite handsome and would probably alleviate some of the pipe's blocky-ness.


Dimensions are 2 1/4" Height x 4 3/4" Length (plus the plastic stem) x 1 4/5" at the top. The internal dimensions are 3/4" x 1 2/3" deep. Sorry for the odd fractions. The nearest measuring tool I had handy was graph paper and I was just kind of eye-balling it.

[caskwith]

Originally Posted by Senator

Need to pick up some good files, though.

Cheap files are the key! Good quality files are much to fine, clog easily and are too slow to remove material. I bought some cheap coarse files that are just slightly coarser than 120grit paper, they remove material quickly and dont clog.

[Sir Humpsalot]

Question...

Visually, I feel that my shank is too long for the pipe. Can I just cut it down? Or will that cause a problem with the press-fit? Or will it look weird because it's not bored out in the middle any longer?

I've made progress since this pic, but just so you know what I'm talking about...

[caskwith]

Havnt seen any homegrown offerings for a while.