When I first got into pipemaking and was looking around trying to find how on earth someone in the UK gets hold of briar blocks, I came across some of the other usable woods. Nothing is going to live up to briar, but when I read about Oak that had been submerged in the bogs of areas of Ireland and Ukraine, then excavated possibly thousands of years later for people to use, I had to buy a block!

I got a lovely block of Bog Oak/Morta from Ireland and set to work planning out what it would end up like. The project started off with an unfinished ebonite stem blank that the intent was to clean up and use for the pipe, but I ended up getting a sample of some Cumberland ebonite in green and black and decided to give making my own stem a go for this pipe.

Here is an early picture of the stummel and initial stem. Doesn’t look like I got any pictures before this annoyingly.

After receiving some samples of Cumberland Ebonite, i couldnt resist but put some to use. I chucked up the ebonite got a tenon fitted, then got shaping on a coarse french wheel.

Once it was down to a good starting shape, i went at it with my files to get the shape dialed in, before further filing, scraping with a sharp edge, and sanding (all the way up to 2000 grit, that was long!) to get the shape finalised and the stem finished up.

By this point the stummel was sanded and really for a shine up too, so along with the stem everything was polished up with Carnauba wax.

All in all I’m really happy with how this came out, and am really happy with my first attempt at a stem from scratch too. I have another block of briar marked up and ready to go, so hopefully i’ll be posting more – with more pics and info – about that soon.