Tim,
Ron explained to me one time that war pipes were smoked by the warriors before going into battle. I give Ron all my yew scraps for his pipe stems. I believe he makes the stem by splitting it, hollowing out the core, and then reassembling. You would never know it, however, by looking at his stems because the seams are invisible when he is done. I don't know exactly what kind of stone he uses for the bowls, but I do recall he got pretty worked up about a nice piece of soapstone that he found somewhere on the oregon coast. I'll ask Ron for more details about the stem construction.
Rick, I should have taken a pic of the bow at 28" when I had it here - it didn't occur to me that Ron wouldn't be able to come back to full draw because of his surgery. I'll see what I can do. I will tell you this though, I don't think any of the other woods I've worked with would handle such a design. You guys that have easy access to Osage are really fortunate - what a great bow wood!
Thank you all for the comments, I really appreciate it.
