How Would You Repair This Stem? (an ISPD Tragedy)

[georged]

I just checked this out:
http://pipesmagazine.com/members/tmb152/album
As I said before, you can't repair pipes with a milling machine. Pipe repair is entirely a hands-and-eyes activity. Your repeated implicit insistence that there is overlap does not make it so. The techniques for both could hardly be more different.
Which means that using "milling machine logic" like this when addressing a pipe repair problem results in a wrong solution every time, before work even begins:

If you work with pipes all of the time, you should have a set of wooden vee-blocks. You insert a transfer punch onto the draw hole; in most cases that will be synonymous with the axis of the stem. You insert the punch up into the collet of your machine and tighten. You then clamp the vee blocks around the pipe in a vise, preferably a 2-stage one that can be tilted as well as rotated. Now you have your reference alignment automatically set.
You check the axis of the punch with the centerline of the stem--- if they are not already coincidental or you want to make adjustments, then you can make fine adjustments to the vise. Now, any drilling or facing you do will be perfectly square along that plane and if the end of the shank is not already orthogonal, it can be squared up using a light touch with a 4 or 6-fluted end mill. Simple as that. Perfect results, no gray hairs, and no freakin’ mystery.

I absolutely 100% guarantee that were you to step into my shop and be handed a pipe to repair, you wouldn't have the slightest idea where to start, that procedures such as the one above would not work, and the end result---provided you stuck around and hacked away long enough (without walking out or destroying the pipe completely)---would be spectacularly horrible.
Given that, why are you here? Are you simply a troll having a bit of fun? Do you have mental health issues? Are you former site user BillKay returned from the digital dead with a new boardname? (shudder) Because nothing about your little adventures here on Kevin's board ring true at all.

 

[aldecaker]

Well, I guess if saying directly that you are an insufferable blowhard with an annoyingly corrosive personality is a Saul Alinsky tactic, then I must be a big, fat Commie community organizer.
Regarding your earlier posts, you are not being bullied; you are being disliked. Which is natural, since you are an eminently dislikeable bastard. Furthermore, you have zero credibility to even use the word "bullying". Since you are the asshole who pretty much single-handedly bullied another member off the forum, I have no sympathy for your pathetic ass. You're not a martyr, you're a self-aggrandizing dick.
In my opinion, you can auto-align your pipe and shove it up your bullying ass.

 

[tmb152]

You absolutely do NOT reply with anything remotely resembling "techniques and procedures" that are useful or practical to pipe repair in any way.

From post #42:
If you work with pipes all of the time, you should have a set of wooden vee-blocks. You insert a transfer punch onto the draw hole; in most cases that will be synonymous with the axis of the stem. You insert the punch up into the collet of your machine and tighten. You then clamp the vee blocks around the pipe in a vise, preferably a 2-stage one that can be tilted as well as rotated. Now you have your reference alignment automatically set.
You check the axis of the punch with the centerline of the stem--- if they are not already coincidental or you want to make adjustments, then you can make fine adjustments to the vise. Now, any drilling or facing you do will be perfectly square along that plane and if the end of the shank is not already orthogonal, it can be squared up using a light touch with a 4 or 6-fluted end mill. Simple as that. Perfect results, no gray hairs, and no freakin’ mystery.
More than you've ever written that I have ever seen of fixing a pipe.

 

[tmb152]

As I said before, you can't repair pipes with a milling machine.

Well George, you need to HAVE a milling machine before you can use it, and I have two. But you most certainly CAN do some repairs with a mill, or a lathe, it depends, I would rather have the tool and not need it than to need it (or benefit from it) and not have it. In the instance I quoted, the mill would have made your job easier for that ONE operation.
But if you think I've implied that you can just throw a pipe in some "machine" and zap it back to health, you don't read very well. Mostly all pipe repair is hands on labor intensive (one of my pipes was made entirely by hand with no power-anything at all!), and I am well-vetted in skilled hand labor. There was an ENORMOUS amount of hand labor in making some of those machined parts I showed.

 

[georged]

It seems our replies overlapped, or something.
What you described will not work with pipe repair. The number of wrong assumptions you make along the way also make it clear that you've never tried to do it, either.

 

[tmb152]

Since you are the asshole who pretty much single-handedly bullied another member off the forum,

Wow. You need a psychiatrist. I guess a group is only as good as its moderators, and if I moderated here, I'd throw you out of here for your vile, hateful attack.

 

[tmb152]

What you described will not work with pipe repair. The number of wrong assumptions you make along the way also make it clear that you've never tried to do it, either.

Right, it will work for truing or boring the leg of a chair, but pipe wood behaves different. I guess the real question is to ask if you have ever tried to do it with a mill or lathe? Of course not. But at least you are talking points now George, and not merely name calling anymore.

 

[georged]

Well George, you need to HAVE a milling machine before you can use it, and I have two. But you most certainly CAN do some repairs with a mill, or a lathe, it depends, I would rather have the tool and not need it than to need it (or benefit from it) and not have it. In the instance I quoted, the mill would have made your job easier for that ONE operation.
But if you think I've implied that you can just throw a pipe in some "machine" and zap it back to health, you don't read very well. Mostly all pipe repair is hands on labor intensive (one of my pipes was made entirely by hand with no power-anything at all!), and I am well-vetted in skilled hand labor. There was an ENORMOUS amount of hand labor in making some of those machined parts I showed.

We continue to post at the same time, staying one reply behind. (creaky old forum software)
TMB --
I said it before, and I'll say it again: Your machine shop experience does NOT translate into the pipe repair world. The very fact that you think it does---that you assume it does---is proof positive that you've never even tried the procedures you recommend on a pipe, and that you would thoroughly screw up all manner of repairs were you to attempt them.
End of story.
Where does that leave us? Hopefully, done with all this. Because your endless, combative commentary is tedious in the extreme.

 

[georged]

Right, it will work for truing or boring the leg of a chair, but pipe wood behaves different.

That statement alone means that you understand NOTHING about pipe repair. You just ASSUME you do because you've worked with wood and milling machines.
So, we're back where we started.
You want to prove me wrong, it's going to take photos, and lots of them. Step-by-step stuff. We send you pipes and post photos of what we sent, and a few days later you post the fix and the steps you took to get there.
What could be simpler or more straightforward?
Please please PLEASE get all pissed off and decide you're going to prove me wrong and that you're not full of shit, OK? (Oh please please please)

 

[zack24]

This has been fascinating- sort of like watching the slow motion multi car wrecks in the snowstorms in Michigan....just when you think the banging and crashing is done...HERE comes another 18 wheeler sliding in to create further chaos. We can probably agree on a couple of things- TMB has some definite skills in his areas of expertise....and George is the only guy I know of who is trusted by a couple of the top collectors in this country to fix their pipes when things go wonky....I think we've covered the subject....