Met Kostas in Chicago and saw the Victrola Pipe and his roses- it was amazing work and what a nice guy!
I'm not sure I buy the explanation of the steerable drill bit- the pipemakers doing the curved drilling in Europe use a rig with a rigid curved tube with a flexible shaft and cutting burr at the end. That won't let you do an S-curve- only smooth curves.
A couple of clues you can see in his shop that might explain it- a CNC router in his video...and one of his you tube videos from 2008 had a CNC mini mill he built- which tells me that the probably did the stem work on one of those two machines.
If I had to do a S-curve draft like the one on that pipe, I would use the CNC to mill a wide s-channel on the flat bottom surface of the shank, use a rounded bit to cut the draft, and use the CNC to mill the piece that would drop into the wide channel and be epoxied in place. A little rustication (the snakeskin on the flat bottom) and you wouldn't be able to detect the glue joint without a magnifier...
Just guessing...
I'm not sure I buy the explanation of the steerable drill bit- the pipemakers doing the curved drilling in Europe use a rig with a rigid curved tube with a flexible shaft and cutting burr at the end. That won't let you do an S-curve- only smooth curves.
A couple of clues you can see in his shop that might explain it- a CNC router in his video...and one of his you tube videos from 2008 had a CNC mini mill he built- which tells me that the probably did the stem work on one of those two machines.
If I had to do a S-curve draft like the one on that pipe, I would use the CNC to mill a wide s-channel on the flat bottom surface of the shank, use a rounded bit to cut the draft, and use the CNC to mill the piece that would drop into the wide channel and be epoxied in place. A little rustication (the snakeskin on the flat bottom) and you wouldn't be able to detect the glue joint without a magnifier...
Just guessing...
