Pipe Making For The Rank Amateur

Pipe Making For The Rank Amateur is an essay Robert Everett wrote on amateur pipe making. The text builds the case that a hobbyist with no industrial machinery on their bench can still turn a briar block into a finished pipe, grounding the argument in the author's own workshop practice.

The Newsletter It Appeared In

The essay appeared in a club newsletter. According to the text's own credit line, the newsletter's name at the time was the Ohio Pipe Club Journal, and the publication continues today as The Pipe Collector; the club's own history also notes that the newsletter's name changed a few times over the years. The club was founded in 1993 by Phil Bradford and Regis McCafferty as the Ohio Pipe Collectors; when membership spread to 28 states and Canada by March 1997, it renamed itself the North American Society of Pipe Collectors (NASPC), headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. The newsletter, which started out twice a year, is published bimonthly today, and Bill Unger served as its editor for many years beginning at the end of 1994. Records indicate the essay was written after Unger invited the author to prepare a piece for members. Everett states that he learned most of his methods from a manual called Pimo's Guide to Pipe Crafting at Home.

Block and Stem Choices

What sets the essay apart is that it departs from the conventional advice on choosing raw material. Beginners are usually recommended rectangular blank blocks (ebauchon) cut from the interior of the burl. Everett, on the other hand, takes the side of plateaux blocks, cut from the burl's outer layer with the natural bark-covered top left in place; his criterion is the look the grain pattern and bark-covered crown will give the finished pipe. The difference between the two block types is covered in the briar entry.

On the stem side, the text summarizes the distinction between hardened rubber (vulcanite, also called ebonite) and acrylic. Trade names for acrylic include DuPont's Lucite, Imperial Chemical Industries' Perspex, and Röhm & Haas's Plexiglas. Because cutting a stem from rod-form raw material requires a lathe or a boring mold, beginners are advised to work with ready-pressed vulcanite blanks instead. A comparison of the materials appears in the stem materials entry.

Tools and Finishing

The minimum kit the text lays out consists of a vise, a try square, a small saw, an assortment of files, graded sandpaper, and an electric hand drill with interchangeable bits; anything beyond that is described as convenient but not essential. It explains removing excess wood with the saw first, then continuing fine shaping with a file or a flexible-shaft grinding tool.

Finishing takes up more space in the text than shaping does. Sanding proceeds in stages from grit 100 up to grit 600; wiping the body with alcohol after each pass is recommended both to remove dust and to reveal flaws and scratches the dust would otherwise hide. Alcohol-based stains are used for coloring, and pure carnauba wax is described as the final coat. Because carnauba is among the hardest of natural waxes, it isn't applied by hand; it's loaded onto a spinning felt wheel and transferred to the pipe from there.

Bending a vulcanite stem at home is treated as a separate topic. In the method described, the piece — with a pipe cleaner run through it — is buried in salt in an oven-safe container, heated until it softens, bent while held with a cloth, and kept fixed by hand until it cools. Sources disagree on the oven temperature; the values cited range roughly from 90 to 135 °C.

Limits of the Text

The pipes Everett produced are mostly freehand shapes with plateaux crowns; the essay cites the work of Danish school makers as examples. The piece sets out no production standard: it conveys the path one amateur followed, gives no measurements or tolerances, and does not cover the steps of mass production. For those, see the how a pipe is made entry.