We use a bench grinder with the guards and grinding stones removed, replaced with muslin and flannel buffing wheels. Now ideally you would have a benchtop buffing setup for this. Let the pipe dry to the touch (about 10 minutes if it’s not very humid) before continuing. Oh, and our friend Wayne Teipen would be disappointed with us if we didn’t stress the fact that you should never stain your chamber! Just stick a cork in the chamber (no joke) before you begin and then stain away. One coat usually does the trick, but if you want a darker finish go for a second. Using a pipe cleaner, stain the whole pipe with your desired color, working quickly so you don’t get a blotchy finish. Whether you pre-stain or not, final staining comes next. It involves staining the whole pipe in black, or a darker dye color, and then sanding it away, with the highest grit you finished sanding at, until only the stain deeply absorbed into the grain remains.

Pre-staining is optional, but does lead to a finished pipe with greater grain contrast. All it takes to apply the dye is a pipe cleaner. It is readily available at Fiebings own website. It comes in a variety of colors and if none of those suit your fancy, you can mix them to your heart’s content. The pipe makers stain of choice is Fiebings leather dye. You’ll have to do all that work yourself. If you purchase pre-formed stems elsewhere expect rough edges, a wide, un-turned tenon, and no trumpeting of the draught hole. Our acrylic pipe-kit stems come polished, with the draught hole trumpeted at the bit end, and their tenons already turned, faced and fitting perfectly into the pre-drilled mortise (no frustration required). Either way, these stems usually need some TLC before they are truly finished, but that’s easier than cutting, shaping, and drilling your own stem from raw ebonite or acrylic rods, which is your other option. Acrylic stems are harder, but don’t scratch as easily and won’t fade or change color. Ebonite is softer and a bit more comfortable if you grip it in your teeth, but it shows teeth marks more easily and will yellow over time. They can also be made from black or colorful acrylics. They are usually made of ebonite (also called vulcanite), which is a specially treated rubber with a high sulfur content. The most commonly used stems by fledgling pipe makers are injection-molded stems that can fit just about any pipe style. We carry both an ebauchon and a plateau pipe-kit. The more affordable “Ebauchons” are briar blocks that have been cut across the grain, while the pricier “plateaus” are cut with the grain and maintains the craggy outer surface of the briar burl. Briar can be cut two different ways, and each way yields a unique looking block. Once harvested, the briar must be boiled and dried to remove sap and moisture, but the process is long and must be carefully controlled to prevent the briar blocks from drying too quickly, which can result in splits or fissures in the wood. It is as expensive as wood goes, mainly because until a heath tree is approximately 40 years old its briar is not considered to be ready for harvesting. Briar is a type of wood harvested from erica arborea, or “heath tree”, and it’s prized in pipe making for its very high heat tolerance, respiration, hardness, and beautiful grain.

Pipes can be made from corncob, meerschaum, olive wood, cherry wood, strawberry wood, ancient morta, clay, and perhaps other materials as well, but briar is considered to be the ultimate material for making pipes. Until then, don’t be discouraged by lackluster results… the David wasn’t Michelangelo’s first sculpture. Once you’ve mastered the basics, understand the general concepts of pipe making, and gotten a few pipes under your belt, then it’ll be time to start thinking about investing in tools that will significantly speed up the process and help you create a higher grade smoking instrument. You can shape a pipe from start to near finish with good files and rasps, (although it will test those burly arms of yours) and polish it off with some sandpaper.

You can make a perfectly capable smoking pipe using tools that most of us already own, or could obtain for a relatively small investment a hand drill, dremel/rotary tool, and a good set of files and rasps will get you rollin’. There’s no reason to start worrying, however. Though power tools are fun to use and make jobs like drilling the draught hole and chamber, shaping the stummel, and crafting the stem much easier tasks, its obvious that most fledgling pipe makers won’t have one or more of these tools at their disposal at the onset. Having some larger machinery including a lathe, a bandsaw, a drill press, and a benchtop disc sander makes the process shorter and infinitely easier. We speak from experience as we’ve tried both methods with much greater success in the latter. There are manly men who can make smoking pipes using only sandpaper and hand tools, and then there are the rest of us.

How to make a smoking pipe print out