How is This Pipe Even Possible?

jmatt · Sep 21, 2015

http://www.ebay.com/itm/LUIGI-VIPRATI-COLLECTION-PIPE-OUTSTANDING-CARVER-DIFFERENT-FROM-ALL-REST-/371439454746?hash=item567b844a1a
Can you use steam and pressure and bend briar after drilling? Are there directional drilling bits small enough to drill the curved hole in this?

fishnbanjo · Sep 21, 2015

A series of slow passes with steady hands, patience and a flexible drill bit.

banjo

cortezattic · Sep 21, 2015

Ser Jacopo bores draft holes along continuous curves. Don't know how it's done though.

frozenchurchwarden · Sep 23, 2015

My Brebbia Calabash (that I got for almost half as much as you see around here by shipping from the U.K.) also has a curved draft hole.

It's generally a nice pipe (silver mounted and without flaws in the fittings), though the button still needed a tiny bit of cleanup to remove some airflow restriction, but it was pretty close to start.

lonestar · Sep 24, 2015

The mechanics of it are pretty simple. You have a tiny drill head on the end of a flexible shaft. You take a hollow tube just a bit smaller diameter than the cutting head and you run the flex shaft through the tube with the cutting head coming out one end. The tube is bent to follow whatever curve you'd like the hole to be.

Because the cutting head is just a touch bigger than the tube, the tube follows along inside the hole the cutter is drilling, and the curve of the tube directs the arc that the cutting bit makes through the pipe.

The downside is, the hole can wander quite a bit from where you intend it to go, and by necessity the hole is much wider than a typical airway.

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How is This Pipe Even Possible?

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jmatt

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