Twilight Zone Time..... This Pipe Will Pass a Cleaner

[skeeter456]

What a perfect pipe!

 

[georged]

Very impressive! Just getting that shape down would be extremely hard, not to mention the drilling.

I’m curious, how would you describe peck drilling? I googled it but from what I read, I don’t really understand how that can be done on a shank of a pipe and why does it make the sides shaggy and rough? I imagine that could cause issues on the smoke stream?

A peck drill is a cutter attached to the end of a steel cable (it bends sideways but resists twisting), that's repeatedly "poked" or "pecked" down a piece of curved metal tubing. while spinning. As the hole deepens, the metal tube is pushed forward to keep up with it.

The reason the resulting hole walls are rough is because the parallel-sided cutting bit on the end of the cable must have a small amount of lateral slack to be able to move through the curving tube. That bit of slop results in a scalloped-walled hole with considerable wood fiber roughness. It looks more chewed than drilled.

The main problem with that is pipe cleaner fuzz collects quickly and badly in such pipes. And it's surprisingly difficult to remove because the roughness exists end-to-end and never stops grabbing regardless of the tool used.

Then, those pipes which get smoked a lot anyway---most owners save their curved airway pipes for special occasions to postpone cleaning---develop a hard tar buildup that's even MORE difficult to remove than the gunky fuzz.

All in all, not a practical design.

But if the airway walls are smooth, none of that applies. All is well from Day One.