Now Playing: Sm "Pocket Pipe" // Unkown Tobacco
Topic: Pipe 4: OCT06 -SOLD-
Today,I pcked up some new buffing wheels for your pipe at True Value. So... I go down to the basement and check 'em out with some whit matchless buffing compound... prematurely no doubt, but It did bring out the grain a bit better and I noticed:
- The grain fits perfectly the pipes design, or vice-a-versa to be eact. Sunburst radial type grains on either side, with completely straight grain on the far side of the bow, opposite the the stem side.
- More cut marks than acceptable... as if any are acceptable. they gotta go!
- The shank is a bit oval/oblongish as previously suggested by the expert.
- The top of the shank, is efectively end-grain. Not a problem per se' but unfortuneate. "Nature of the Beast" I'm told.
I decided to fix these issues and ended up taking two steps back in the process; not the proverbial "square one." but defineately square two. By doing so I learned, a few good tricks of the trade. One an invention of my son who is in middle school. He showed some invetive thinking or what once they would have called Yankee Ingenuity. He saw me working furiously the steel wool so I told him its literally steel and is like wool in that its sort of a fabric. As I was telling him, I was bemoaning the mess it made: all the little pieces that break off. He noted that they could be picked up with a magnet. I noted that those little steel wool pieces could be re-used, impregnated back into the steel wool pad once magnitixed. It works a little like sandpaper in that as it wears, it becomes finer... hmmmm
The other thing he showed me in an unrelated project- his project- is how to start a nail hole by nipping the nailhead off a nail, putting it in a hand drill and "drilling a starter hole with it. All the while I quized him in plate tectonics for a quiz he's having tomorrow.
Also invented this week was what we dubbed "thumb armor!" Basically it's duct tape wrapped around my thumb that serves protects my tumb from getting cut as I draw the knife toward my thumb, and secondly it protects my thub from little teel wool slivers that stick into my thumb. Not comfortable.
Thanks for your patience.
Thanks for reading,
Tom
