While visiting Peter Heeschen in Odense Denmark with Sykes Wilford, we stayed over his house for a night, drank red wine, Havana Club Rum, ate fresh duck cooked on the grill, fresh potatoes that we dug up ourselves from Peter's garden and .... drum roll please .... we made our own pipes!
I picked out the piece of wood I wanted, then drew a shape with a pencil.
I've never done this before, and thought, "boy am I gonna screw this up bad. I hope I come away with all my fingers intact."
After drawing the shape on the Ebauchon, we then cut it out on the band saw.
Then we put it on a lathe.
At this point I have some pictures to help illustrate the process.
At this point above, I already turned the top part of the bowl to a round shape.
The Shank is still square and I am drilling the draft hole through the stem and shank together.
Where the bottom of the bowl and the shank connect, you can;t round that on the lathe, so you use a disc sander. I was worried about never playing guitar again while doing this.
The trick here is to get a nice rounded shape, but not hit the top of the bowl with the sander ... which I did three freakin times.
Still trying.
There's a better shot of the lathe.
The stem is partially shaped, and the bottom of the bowl still needs work, but it is starting to look like a pipe.
Above, we have the final shape of the pipe and stem and I am now sanding by hand with sandpaper.
After more and more sanding.
We didn't have time to stain the pipes as they need to dry overnight and then be buffed. In the morning we had to leave early to go see Mac Baren.
We moved straight to the buffing wheels.
In this next picture, the pipe is finished after being buffed on three different levels of coarse to fine.
