Great deal on premold stems!

Mods if this is in the wrong place feel free to move.

This is really good pricing on some common premolds. Good to learn with until the leap to handcuts is made!


http://www.pipemakers.org/closeouts2.html

Not affiliated with them in any way.

Yep...I have a handful of these. The sale price is pretty good...............

Thanks for the heads up. Ordered a bunch. Still no confirmation, so I hope I get at least half of what I ordered.

Same here...it said 24-48 hours...I will call them tomorrow.

Just got off the phone with them. They have had some sick folks Monday and Tuesday, but they have our orders and its usually a one day turn around. So we should get them soon. Super, super nice people to deal with!

Yep, got a nice friendly email from them today which read "Glad to have you as a new customer. Welcome, we'll be shipping your 4,000 stems soon". Or something like that.

4,000 stems? You planning on messing up a couple?

Maybe joining them up to make churchwardens.

I may have exaggerated a wee bit. I bought 2 dozen of each of three different types of stem. The price was too good to pass up (if you've ever priced them before). I've seen stems go for $6-8 each, so < $4 dozen is a damn good price for someone with a desire to try making a few pipes. I have 25 pieces of briar arriving in a few weeks, so I'll need some.

Yep, same here, my organizer bin is chok full of em now...got enough stems to stay busy for a while. Super fast shipping and a nice little package of pipe cleaners as a gift. Will be buying from them again!

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I actually happened upon a deal from them and bought 12 dozen of three different types. The ones I bought are easily re-shaped into just about any stem I need for a given pipe.

What kind of tools are needed to fit these pre-made stems? I'd love to replace a slew of my vulcanites with lucite.

Can a dremel be utilized?

To fit them I use delrin for the tenon. But we are talking vulcanite stems here. Although they have been listing a few lucite stems on sale as well and you can fit them with delrin as well.

I chuck mine in the lathe chuck and then use a forstner bit to take off the tenon on them, then follow this by drilling out the length of the stem with a tapered 5/32. I follow this with a 5/16 bit, which is the size delrin I use. After that I mar the delrin and the inside of the mortise I drilled in the stem. I then epoxy in the tenon and once it's dried, I cut it to fit the depth of the mortise in the pipe and sand the end and then funnel it as well.

The pictures look as though the lucite stems already have tenons, or am I mistaken?

They all come with tenons, unless you buy rod and make them yourself. What kidn of tools do you have? That would be the first question regarding stem modification. If you dont have the ability to use dawgs method, then you need a tenon turning tool from PIMO at semi best, and at the worse you need some sandpaper, two blocks of wood with a tenon sized hole drilled between them. Sand until you get it to where it just sits between the two blocks in the hole, line said hole with sandpaper, insert tenon into sandpaper lined hole, twist until down to the final dimension.

Thats a down and dirty way...

One note here....Nowsharing mentioned replacing some of his Vulcanite with Lucite. The Delrin application only works if the mortise in your existing pipe matches the diameter of your Delrin rod....this is seldom the case. For this application, you will need to turn the tenon on the Lucite stem to match the diameter of your existing mortise....and this can be tricky at best, unless you are well experienced with using your lathe , drill press or turning tool. I advise caution to the inexperienced..............