h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

At the mo I am making my first pipe. I've got a bit of willow that loocks about right for it. It's a bit where a thin branch joins a thicker one, the thicker one will be the bowl and the stem will join it at an angle. I'm just cutting off bits of the thinker branch right now to get the right sizr for the head, but the thing is that I want quite a long stem to cool the smoke. the stem is als slightly curved, and I dont have a drill setup that could do it even if it was straight. Is there any other way to get a hollow stem? I've been minlessly carving at it thinking that once I've got the bowl done I might try to pull out the central pith or somehting, but in reality I dont really know. Can it be done???

I tried the apple pipe by the way. It was a good smoke, the apple cooled it a surprising amount considering the distance traveled.

While the Willow may look cool you may want to consider that the majority of your manufactured pipes to be found at the Tobacconists
shop are made from Briar a very dense and hard wood, when a wad of tobacco is burned the inside chars and carmelizes producing a hardend
surface (much the same process used to prepare whiskey barrels)the softer, and pithy woods tend to burn adding smoke to your tobacco, may not be a good thing, or it may be very exiting to have a small kindling fire in your hand!

oh my goodness, i am SO sorry for not noticing this conversation before...
i use a pineish wood and it has burned, i think that the best way might be a softwood stem and a hardwood bowl because i like the grip in my teeth if the soft stem.
i have no clue about the curved stem, you could try to hollow it out with a hard sharp long object since it is a softer wood.

hmm.. briar? from the bush?

Well, I tried it out, but I had to have a much shorter stem than I had orriginaly intended. Yes, it did burn a little, but not much, and after one or two goes it stopped being a problem as a sort of blackened layer had built up and it had very thick walls. Ulytimately I'm thinking of just buying a churchwarden out of a shop: much less hastle!

i bought my first pipe ever when i was in the bahamas. it is longstemmed, and since i cant make them longstemmed i figure it was worth it. it is a hardwood, and the draw is incredible. i have not yet used it enough get a buildup of resin enough to create a film, but it is so sweet and smooth, and you take in SO much cause of the great draw... definitely worth it