Making my first

and I don't mean hookers, booze or gambling, is helpful with a dowel to shove in the bowl and hold it. A coping saw can save you a lot of filing and sanding. A sanding disk in that drill would be a blessing, especially if you duck tape it to the vise. Oh yea, elbow grease - I don't think they sell it anywhere but have plenty on hand.

After you have finished you can take up a real vice where I do mean hookers, booze and gambling, perhaps all threee.

so much for the *advise* ! I believe i do have a coping saw laying around somewhere. I guess I should make some sort of a workbench, eh? Just to clear this up, when you talk about a dowel in the vise, do just mean so that it is held in place while I attempt to shape the wood?

Again thanks, this is very good advise... how do you feel about those prebored briars from PIMO ?

when it just takes more than two hands and some improvisation takes place. I have several dowels that have been shaped and sanded to hold the stummel. Usually I like them to slide in and use a couple of wraps duck tape to hold them firm. The hardware store has 3/4 inch dowels and if you get pimo kits that is the chamber sized IIRC.

Don't be mesmerized by my so-fish-a-cated interchangable stummel holder. It need not be so elaborate. Note the one the pipe is on. Easily held in the vise at all angles so you can sand into those tight spots as well as the rest of the pipe.

L'see now, oh yea. Same thing with stems. Kind of hard to shape and sand them with only two hands too. This is an old pic as that block of wood has about 15 more holes of various size.

Last. We have a forum specific to pipe crafting and if you edit your first post and change the forum to "pipe Crafting" all this should go with it and I can just point to it next time someone asks.

BTW: Good comeback with advise.
When ordering kits, check the chamber that has been drilled. If you were to see some sizable pits in it - send it back. Actually the pimo plateau is some very fine briar, the ebauchons are not anything to rave about but less expensive for screwing up (you will). I also don't have much experience with kits.

You see ckr, the other day I asked about special tools for pipemaking these were the actual gadgets I spoke about. I bet there's some more simple yet special equipment that would make a pipemaker's life a bit easier.

A lot about pipe making is problem solving and I probably have several more gadgets to invent as I go along. I have been using these dowels so long I take them for granted.

Nice avatar.

That is some incredible help ckr! that should really get me going I hope...
(LOL in a weird way it looks like that top photo is giving me the bird!)

I'm sorry I thought this was in 'Pipe Crafting' ? If it still isn't, let me know.

And yes I'm planning on getting a couple of ebauchons just for my shaky fine-motor skills sake.

Thank you so much!

(Olivier, that is a great looking pipe, i can't believe it's your first... well done!)

haha.