Not the best at adding pics, but I'm fingering it out.

I've been playing with Fimo clay lately and making some nice little pocket pipes. Made a bunch of these tonight.



These are some of the initial experimental ones. I'm a fuckin patriot, you know.



Just a start. More to come.

That first one is nice. I used to carry a little blue swirled glass chillum for a pocket/throw away. After another round of lawyer money, I switched up to rolling a fat doobie and only taking half with me out of the house.

My 17 year old lesbian neighbour stole one of my official pipes. Help me Barry.

If you know who comes to visit you he can just steal it back.

How close to the source of parts providers are you when it comes to making a pipe?

I mean, the metal bowel and the metal stem/bit design seems to be unchanged since at least the ancient Egyptians.

Do you know who actually makes those metal parts and do they make any other style? Who decided that was the official metal bowel of all small pipes?

The shank designs do look cool though.

I think you could make good money if you found somebody who could redesign the metal parts.


Wait, should I have just given away that idea?

I thought this thread was going to be all about Wesley Pipes.

My uncle's family owned a lamp factory and two of his brothers were fired for using the parts to make pipes on the side.

I think a lot of the parts come from India. I've priced getting them directly from the source, but you have to order huge quantities and there's tons of paperwork. I'm not paying retail for the parts though. I have about 3 wholesalers that I use. Call them Monday, it's on my porch Thursday.

A lot of the parts are from making lamps. Not all, though. There's a lot of specialized pieces.

I went through a phase of trying to re- invent the wheel, I guess, but just making metal prototypes is cost prohibitive. I tried to come up with something to put on the little connection between the bowl and shank to make it cooler to the touch. The problem was any kind of glue would weaken from the heat. I'm just at a point of being happy to sit in front of the tv and make inexpensive but nice stuff.

I've always wondered who decides that "piece X and Y and Z go together". Probably the same people who decide when Daylight Savings Time starts.

I'd have to ask why you had her over? Hmmm? Nature of the beast for smokeware. I think everyone has had "the best pipe I ever had" stolen from them.

Does she a car? Tires are fragile things, no?

I never had a pipe stolen, but I have had 2 taken by police and one the cop made me throw int he woods on the side of the road.

Here are a couple of things from my ceramic line. I've always just sold to shops at wholesale prices, but last summer I set up at a couple of festivals and sold at what I thought should be retail prices. Very good days. I used my parent's kiln in their garage, but since my dad died and we put my mom in managed care, the kiln has sat in storage, waiting for me to throw together the cash to have my house wired to accept it. I've got a big inventory of finished ceramic stuff, but I'm hoarding it for the festivals this summer. If all goes right, they'll pay for the electrical work.

For the most part, I use commercially available molds and adapt them. This Alien is actually a bobble head bank. The neck is really long and the head is a separate piece with a spring between them. What I do is glaze the inside of the head and the top of the neck and they fuse together in the firing process.



I made the mold for this piece. Just a simple, classic 16" Bubbler.

HA! Put a cock head lid on that pink one, and you could market it as the Brandon Irons Bong, w/ its jizz covering and slerp speckles.

Quality stuff man. I'm loving this thread.

I've actually got a dick waterpipe. Made the mold off a cheap dildo I found in a greasy fuckbook store. Guys are funny bout it. Their girlfriends buy it, but they won't smoke off it. Makes it "homo". I'll try to find pics of it.

I've always liked Buddhas, but I was afraid I'd get some karmic retribution. Of course, money trumps that.



These are more labour than they're worth, but they smoke really smooth.

I like simplicity.




My dog and late cat. For no other reason than the pic was in the folder.

I wonder what Gia would have to say about that couch and bizarre spread of blankets, towels and tie-die pillow?

I've never been a big arts & crafts type guy, but I like the idea of making things, and of craftsmanship. So, I recently took a month long course on basic woodworking (with hand tools--no power tools). Anyway, it opened my eyes to a whole culture of people who not only make everday things by hand, from scratch, they actually enjoy doing it... and not for profit, but for fun.

It was a bit like being raised your whole life on microwave meals and McDonald's hamburgers and then taking cooking lessons at a Michelin star restaurant that slaughters its own animals and grows its own fruits, veggies, and herbs and cooks everything from scratch. Sort of a culture shock.

Maybe I'm just still overly impressed with some of the folks I've met recently. A couple of weeks ago, I met my first master blacksmith (he designs and makes fittings for the master cabinetmaker I took the course from) and that is what made me think of the question. Anyway, I just know somewhere up there in hippie land is a Norm Abram type that could reinvent the wheel for you with one arm tied behind his back, while taking a nap, and enjoy doing it. Of course I know that is easier to say than to do.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but don't Master Blacksmiths primarily deal with iron? I'm thinking that's a bad fit for the metal Barry needs.

I have a friend who got into woodworking as a hobby and now he has his own store on Etsy. He mostly makes spoons, but he also found out there's a market for hand-made wooden tops. Like the kind you spin on a table and then stare at like a retard until it stops spinning.

My money-making suggestion was to buy some steak knife blade blanks and then make some custom wooden handles for them. Foodies would buy that kind of shit up fast, but he thought it was a boring idea. Whenever he makes me something, he'll give me a list of 8-10 woods to choose from and invariably, I will pick the most expensive wood in the list. I know nothing about wood.

Yep. He makes his living running a company that mainly does iron work (decorative custom fences, large decorative entry gates, custom kitchen vents, occasional decorative artwork and fancy stuff like that), but he can and does work with any type of metal: aluminum, brass, silver, steel, copper, etc., and makes decorative knobs, hinges, drawer pulls, whatever. He also teaches at a local University.

Just like the guy I took the course from is employed as a mechanical engineer.

The point wasn't what they do for money, it's what they have the skills to do.

The master cabinet maker I took my course from doesn't make his income teaching classes--nor did the apprentice cabinet maker who volunteered to help out every class for no pay.

The guy I was learning from left the US after coming home from Viet Nam, moved to England and spent several years completing an old fashioned, old-school fulltime apprenticeship over many years. However, a wife, kids, and the winding road of life meant a change in career.

The point I was trying to make was that the knowledge and ability is out there. Probably right down the road.

Anybody who would want to build one-hitters for profit, doesn't have the skills to build one-hitters for profit. If they did, they would be doing something else.

I gotta tell you, this thread is FASCINATING. Just fascinating. Can't peel me away from it. Really.

Sooo... You're stuck to this thread like white on rice?

Don't worry about it too much Tritone. This thread is subtitled "Shit white guys talk about".

There is a company called Lie-Nielsen Toolworks that I bought most of my tools from when I started learning.

The cover of every sale flyer (not the main catalog) has examples of stuff made by craftsmen--usually as a hobby, not as a business for profit enterprise. The most recent one has a cool set of knives made from scratch (not using blanks). I'll try to scan it as an example of what a good metal worker can do for fun as a hobby--not for profit. Of course, I'm sure the guy could make money doing it if he wanted to.

Right. My point was simply that iron sounds like a poor choice of material. (Cue brandon lining up to defend his skanks in 3... 2...)

I don't see how you'd get into blacksmithing as a hobby. "Oh, I just happened to have this 2,000° metal-forging oven laying around out back..."

I'd like to buy a Bob Kramer forged damascus chef's knife someday, but they cost thousands of dollars. I randomly came across some photos of knives made by a bladesmith in Brazil. I'd like to contact him to see how much a knife like the one below would cost:

Sorry, wrong company. I always mix up Lie Nielsen and Lee Valley.




From left to right the knives are made from:

1. Old steel file reworked to look like a replica Viking knife
2. Old chainsaw blade
3. Old leaf spring
4. Old mine shaft steel cable
5. Old reforged tool steel (doesn't say what type of tool)

This link has a video with Kramer showing off a mass-produced replica of his knives that he's endorsed. I might settle for one of those. It also has a photo of the real deal at the bottom.

http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/20...shows-his-chops

I don't know how everybody does it, but around here you can rent time at a professional grade forge. Sort of like how people in the city rent small plots of land to grow plants which is usually run by parks and recreation or some other local agency. But don't under-estimate somebody having their own forge in the backyard.

Talk to anybody who is into woodworking and the conversation will eventually turn to their plans are to build a workshop that would easily be more costly in terms of time, money, and space than any forge could be. I wouldn't doubt that many guys have a their own "hobby forge."

The first week of the course was all about sharpening your tools. We spent hours sharpening our chisels, bench planes, and files (by hand using various methods, and by machine using grinders and specially made tool sharpeners), learned how to repair, recondition and sharpen saw blades for hand saws and table saws (both damaged and new blades--also by hand), and even learned how to sharpen drill bits.

I don't doubt the guy in the video knows what he's doing and they're probably great knives, and I know that he is selling to the general public and needed some "flash", but that infomercial did seem a little bit too gimmicky. I am a little skeptical that anybody can mass produce a sharp edge. They may be able to make a great blade, but a really sharp edge is only made and kept by elbow grease, not what the metal is made out of.

There is a reason why every good chef (and every good woodworker) sharpens his tools every time he uses them. You can't mass produce sharpness.

I imagine she would disapprove highly. But it's the landing area for the Boy and the pets. They like layers.

Kramer might be selling it a bit in that video, but he's an expert at what he does. He's using a mass-produced replica of one of his own knives there, but it's one that he expertly sharpened himself to a razor's edge. I'm only just starting to get into using whetstones to sharpen my kitchen knives, but they're already twice as sharp as when I bought them. The way Gordon Ramsay hacks away at his honing steel makes me question whether he knows anything about knives at all.

Here's a CBS news piece on Bob Kramer and his knives:

http://www.wimp.com/incredibleknives/

I don't see myself as an artist, but I'm getting to where I appreciate people who are. We go up to Nelson, BC pretty often. A few miles up the road and across the lake is this little village that's kind of an artist's community. We've only gone there the one time, pretty much at the end of the season. A wide spot in the road with potters, blacksmiths, stained glass artists, painters, glass blowers, wood workers. All the getting their hands dirty arts that 150+ years ago weren't arts, but necessities to the community. In the day, there was no WalMart to go pick up a set of plates. And a lot of these guys are using old school, hand built tools, forges, kilns, knives, lathes, whatever. And showing up at the end of the season, they had more time to really talk and show off the actual process. I got the idea that building their own tools was really half the fun for them. It was a really fascinating look at not only their setup, but their mindset. So much that we almost missed the ferry back.

Totally agree with Steez that the knives would make foodies jizz all day, but I also get how the artist would find it boring. I think in their mindset, when it turns into an "assembly line" sort of thing, they lose interest. My mindset allows me to do the same thing over and over with some variations, with the money being the real payoff. But at the same time, someone saying "that's cool" is enough to stroke the creative part of my ego.

My SO lost her SO a couple of years ago. He really liked the stuff I was doing, and it influenced him to do his own smokeware. Mostly given to friends and such, but I've been stumbling across his pieces in going through boxes in storage. All unused. We're not sure what we want to do with it. To have it sit in boxes doesn't seem right. But selling it seems a little wrong too. I'll start taking pics of some and posting them.

These are the first commercial molds I bought with the express purpose of making pipes. I mostly do them with a built in mouthpiece and bowl. The intigrated bowl is actually from a ceramic thimble mold.

We'll let you know when the 4 for $1 Grape Blunts thread is opened.

Wow, Tritone was here? I never even noticed. I feel violated, it seemed like such a white topic.

Reminds me of Ellison's "The Invisible Man"

^^^ You last two fuckers are funnier than fuck. I was even thinking about pm'ing trite and thanking him for his kind words. Then I see 4 for $1 Grape Blunts and the Invisible Man. Poetry.

Being part of the solution.

Longer versions of the short claw pipe. These are around a foot long.


This is a take off on the very first ceramic pipe I ever made. The mold was for a long tube, maybe an inch across, that got cut down into smaller "wheels" and were used as napkin holders. The bowl was from a drawer pull mold that I cut the top off and fashioned into a bowl. Sold it for $50.

This one is a homemade mold off 1.5" pvc pipe. I used to do an integrated bowl that was from a thimble mold. But I'm super lazy and a metal stem/ bowl is easier. But I still do the little footies on the bottom to keep it upright.




A combination of the tube from above glued onto a mold for an oil candle. I finally broke down and made a mold of them combined. Horrible picture.

Hey, I'm still in for one of those chicken-claw pipes. I'll PM you soon.

She and I used to get high and play video games. I loaned it to her when she wanted to use it with one of her friends. She ended up getting into a blowout with her mom and moving out and I never got a chance to repo it.

I have seen her a few times since she moved out but only on the subway and I didn't think to ask for it back.

Polymer clay (Fimo) isn't clay. It's a polymer that turns to plastic when cured in the oven. It cooks at 275 for 30 minutes. I usually cook it for 45 to 60 minutes because some of the pieces I do are a little thicker. Never had any problems.

Yesterday I opened the over, smoke poured out, and I ended up with this:



An hour at 375. Oops. I wanted to be really pissed, but just couldn't get there. Luckily I was able to salvage all the metal parts.

Hopefully the batch I have in now will do better.

A bit Dali on the far right there. For the more serious psychotropics. Interesting feet, nice dragon eggs. Emilia Clarke has to ride something.

Mine.

I love those percs!! Mine is like a sidecar that hangs off the drop stem and the bowl goes directly into that. Smooooooth. When I had the chest cold earlier this year, it's the only thing I could use. Mine's clear glass. I'd take a pic, but I'm sort of ashamed of how dirty it is.

The stuff I baked today came out much much better. Pics later.

Barry. It works well. My introduction to a pipe with percolators. The stem is covered with slits, too.

I haven't needed to clean it as of yet. But one thing, I had no idea glass screens existed (they look like a little glass jack).

My girl's sold on glass screens. I hate them. They fall out in your hand. The ash is cold, but the glass is still really hot. And they get lost easily. I'm afraid of new things.

Yep, once you get a bowl dirty enough to hold a brass or steel screen in it, it don't get no better. If it needs to be cleaned, pop it out, burn it clean, then heat up the resin and junk in the bowl, and press the screen back in. I used to clean my bong often, but only cleaned the bowl about once a year.

I'm a big lover of resin. I have several emergency stashes around the house for when the zombies take over.

You'll need it. I bet Zombies bogart !

One dude I knew used to save his resin and sell it to a dirt merchant for about $15 a gram. I would save mine and sprinkle it into a bowl of beat weed, if I was forced into it.

Resin will get you high as fuck if you can get it to burn properly. That was always the crapshoot of it for me. I was never sure if I'd even get a good hit or not.