Homemade Pipe

I started with a paper template. The size of the pipe is completely up to you, I decided on a small pocket pipe that is 12 cm long and 5 cm wide. The thickness of the wood should be 2 cm.

Step 1: The Wood

I chose some scrap oak flooring which was just laying around my workshop. I recommend you use oak or cherry wood if you have it. The best option for the pipe is of course briar, which is kind of hard to get where I live.

Step 2: Trace It

Put the piece of paper on the wood and carefully trace it with a black marker. Don't worry if the marker is alcohol based because it will all be sanded of soon.

Step 3: Cut It

Place the wood on something stable and clamp it down hard so it doesn't move around. I cut it out with a jigsaw with a rough blade for wood. The rougher the blade the more sanding you will have to do. If you have a bandsaw cut it out with that because it will be more accurate.

Step 4: Drilling the Holes

I marked the spot where I wanted the hole to be and punched in a smaller hole as a guide for the drill bit. The hole I drilled was 1.5 cm if you have a bigger drill bit I suggest you drill about 2-2.5 cm hole. For the mouth hole I decided on a 5 mm hole. If you make the pipe to long you might have truble drilling the mouth hole so watch out for that.

Step 5: Sanding

If you have a router you can use it on the edges. I do have a router but the pipe is just to small for me to take off the edges with a router so I used a belt sander. I used a 40 sanding paper and I just sanded the edges roughly. Then I placed the pipe in the vice and started to hand sand it with a piece of 120 paper. You should probably use a rougher hand sanding paper but I decided on 120.

Step 6: Polishing, Oiling and Waxing It

Before I started oiling it I polished the whole thing on my drill which made it very smooth and ready for oiling. For oiling I decided on using outside furniture oil. I put on 2 coats and again polished it. Then for the final finish I put on a coat of beeswax which also gave out a nice smell.

Step 7: Fin

And there you have the finished product. It took me about 2 hours from start to finish. Now go enjoy your homemade oak pipe.

Comments

[Switch and Lever]

Kind of the rule of treating pipes is if you're not prepared to eat/drink whatever you put on the pipe, don't put it on the pipe. I'm curious what the "outside furniture oil" has inside, it's quite possibly something you don't really want to suck down on. If you want to give the pipe a good protective coating use carnauba wax, it's hard as heck and polishes up to a nice shine, and it's completely food safe.

I'm also a bit curious, since you're using wood which was intended for flooring, if the wood itself has been treated in any way, such as pressure treated for instance. If you're not careful with your choice of wood (oak is "ok", but it will burn through and your smoke will taste like burnt oak) you could end up poisoning yourself. Briar isn't that hard to come by, plenty of sellers on eBay willing to sell to you.

Interesting shape though, haven't seen a pipe like that before.

[Lustthall Workshop]

Thank you! The outside furniture oil is a mix of wax and natural oils, for the oak I am not sure but I made a few pipes before and they worked just fine.