Again, thanks folks for your kind comments.
Bigpond, Good on you Chris. Just curious about your materials. Where are you sourcing your blocks and are you working with preformed stems? How are you treating the slot work?
So far I'm getting my briar from VFH and Mark Tinsky. Both are site sponsors and/or members. The stems I use are all preformed purchased from VFH. I do have some acrylic rods also but since I don't have a lathe, I'm reluctant to start work on them. I use delrin to make the tenons. I have read, bookmarked and scoured various pages from the pipe makers forum and although I don't feel confident in my skills to cut a slot yet, I know I will have to cross that bridge eventually. I have the Canadian version of the Harbor Freight cross-slide vise that I use in conjunction with the drill press. I got it at KMS tools here in RD. To try and make it a bit more effective and accurate, I broke it all down to it's component parts and polished all the ways and the gibs up to 800grit. It certainly works much smoother than it did out of the box now. To eventually do the slot work I will follow the tutorials and information I gleaned from the PM forum. I'll probably waste several lengths but that's part of the process.
Bigpond, Good on you Chris. Just curious about your materials. Where are you sourcing your blocks and are you working with preformed stems? How are you treating the slot work?
So far I'm getting my briar from VFH and Mark Tinsky. Both are site sponsors and/or members. The stems I use are all preformed purchased from VFH. I do have some acrylic rods also but since I don't have a lathe, I'm reluctant to start work on them. I use delrin to make the tenons. I have read, bookmarked and scoured various pages from the pipe makers forum and although I don't feel confident in my skills to cut a slot yet, I know I will have to cross that bridge eventually. I have the Canadian version of the Harbor Freight cross-slide vise that I use in conjunction with the drill press. I got it at KMS tools here in RD. To try and make it a bit more effective and accurate, I broke it all down to it's component parts and polished all the ways and the gibs up to 800grit. It certainly works much smoother than it did out of the box now. To eventually do the slot work I will follow the tutorials and information I gleaned from the PM forum. I'll probably waste several lengths but that's part of the process.
