Bamboo Shank

The bamboo shank is the construction of the section between a pipe's bowl and its mouthpiece using a jointed segment cut from a bamboo stalk instead of wood. The bowl is usually made from briar, but the shank is left short; bamboo completes the remaining distance. Because the rings the nodes leave on the piece determine the pipe's appearance, the bamboo shank is a choice of both construction and form.

What the Material Provides

A bamboo stalk is a hollow tube between nodes; this natural cavity offers a ready-made axis to follow when drilling the smoke channel. The material's density is also low: when the briar shank is shortened and bamboo takes its place, the pipe's total weight drops noticeably. This is the main reason the bamboo shank is favored among smokers who carry the pipe in their teeth. Bamboo's moisture absorption is often cited in the community as a reason for a drier smoke; this should be taken as a widely held view rather than a measured figure.

The distance between nodes and the number of nodes determine the shank's character. For a long time two- or three-node pieces were accepted as the standard; as suppliers' cutting habits changed, four- and five-node pieces also reached workshops from the mid-2000s onward. The small root protrusions left at the nodes are either sanded flat or hollowed out and filled with resin; the second route also seals that point against moisture.

Its Roots in the East and Its Passage to the West

Bamboo's place in Asian smoking implements is old. In the "rau" type of the Japanese kiseru pipe, the intermediate tube between the mouthpiece (suikuchi) and the metal bowl-and-neck piece (gankubi) is made of bamboo; the type takes its name from this section. The known early example in Western pipe making is the bamboo-shanked models Dunhill catalogued under the name Whangee. It is noted that this name refers to a species of bamboo in Chinese and had been used earlier in the cane and umbrella-handle trade. Sources diverge on the line's beginning: some accounts point to the 1920s, others to the period after the Second World War when briar was scarce; what is certain is that the model appears in the 1951 catalogue. Stanwell is reported to have used bamboo starting in the early 1950s. The maker generally credited as the first to treat bamboo not as a fix for a shortage but as a deliberate design element is Sixten Ivarsson. Today the bamboo shank sits in the repertoire of a wide circle of makers, from Denmark to Japan to America.

Two Joints Built in the Workshop

Because the bamboo shank is a third piece inserted between the bowl and the mouthpiece, it presents the maker with two joints instead of one. The technical core of the work is resolving these two connections. At the start of preparation, the piece is thoroughly dried, then bored end to end following the natural cavity between nodes; the boring is mostly done on the lathe, and the two ends are flattened perpendicular to the channel so that the joining surfaces sit without gaps.

On the bowl side of the connection, a stainless-steel tube is passed into the bamboo; the tube both aligns the two holes on the same axis and widens the bonding surface, making the joint load-bearing. On the mouthpiece side, a wider socket is opened and a Delrin rod is set into it. This way, the surface the tenon rubs against is not bamboo but hard plastic; this is what absorbs wear at a joint that is frequently taken apart and reassembled. Fitting thin ebonite rings at both ends is a common practice: the ring softens the color and texture difference as it moves from briar to bamboo and from bamboo to the mouthpiece. A comparison of mouthpiece materials is in the mouthpiece materials entry.

In terms of sequence, the bowl's shape is largely finished before the bamboo is glued on; a flaw emerging late from within the wood would take the already-prepared bamboo down with it at that stage. In this construction, since no separate socket is opened for the mouthpiece, the mouthpiece's angle stays tied to that of the smoke channel, narrowing the range of angles left to the maker's discretion.