Well, I suppose not necessarily all pipemakers!This is what my finishing table, normally, looks like. I tend to get so engrossed in the pipe I'm working on at the moment, that I don't really notice what mess I'm making as I go along! Every month or so, OK, maybe every 2 months or so!
One thing that a pipemaker can never have enough of, are files, and lots of them. A pipemaker can never have enough. All shapes and sizes and cuts. From rasps through to needle files. For some reason there always tend to be a certain shape or size that you don't have, just to get into that special area on a certain shape!
On the left, you'll see a candle. It's not in loving memory of a long ago passed away aunt or grandad. I use it for bending my stems. Some other guys love to use a heatgun or the laborious salt-box-in-oven method. But this is what works for me.
Next to it is a bottle of stain, of which I have various colours. That is to say, various "normal" pipe colours. I'm not one for these crazy blues, purple and greens you sometimes get.
To the right of the cloth is a short stubby and very sharp knife. It used to belong to my grandad, who, being somebody who never threw anything away, probably got it from granny after she didn't have use of it in the kitchen anymore. I have quite a few of these that I use for various stuff, but this particular one is used for scraping the stem. It often happens that there are some scratches on a stem that are hard as hell to get rid of, no matter the grit or amount of sanding. This works like a dream!
