Boredom begets creativity

I have an Amphora bent pipe that I repaired the stem on. I was bored and curious as to how to make a Churchwarden out of it. At first I was thinking to cut the original stem above the logo and splice in the CW stem with a brass sleeve. I decided to make a faux bone looking extension out of an acrylic stem.

First I used the forstner bit to square up the CW stem and the acrylic stem. I inserted a delrin tenon into the acrylic stem and sized it to fit the shank of the pipe with the tenon turner tool. Then I cut a section off and drilled it to accept the tenon on the CW stem which was vulcanite as I wanted it to hold the glue better than a slippery delrin tenon. The frozen adult beverage helped!

Next was to grind the excess off the acrylic spacer. I put some freezer tape on each side and used the belt sander.

Then hand sanding and using the heat gun to bend the stem before buffing. I’m pleased with the end result and now the new owner will have 2 stems to choose from.

Thanks for reading!