Now that the earrings are finished, what to do with the next piece? My decision to make a cigarette holder has been mildly alarming to some, greeted with reactions ranging from outright indignation at making "smoking paraphernalia" to total blank on what a cigarette holder even is. Other people aside, it was going to be rather a challenge as it needed to be a complex enough instrument with enough detail to be striking without being busy.

Thus I decided to use blonde maple as the core, and silver for the outer shell. The original design was only going to be 15 cm long but by the end of it, the thing was closer to 20cm and my feeling at that stage was "Sod it, the longer, the better..." So work began first on the carving of a maple "straw", a conical needle 15cm long, 8 mm wide at the base and 4mm wide at the point. This was cut square and then sanded (by hand) down to an even round. It would have been faster to use a lathe, but this happened > with attempt # 1 so power tools were left to the experts at that point. Once I had a cone of maple that was sufficiently round, smooth and pretty,  cut it in half and hollowed out a channel in order for the smoke to pass from the end where the cigarette is to the smoker, 20 cm away. Cutting it in half was a miserable affair. Using a jeweller's saw to cut through this finicky piece of wood led to much irritation and high blood pressure, being a delicate material and rather pale, there was much faffing with keeping it clean and making sure the hitherto virginal blonde maple didn't snap.

Once that was completed, I set about making the outer silver shell. This was going to consist of 3 parts and a 4th accent. Part 1 was the mouth piece which was to be a tapered tube to match  the profile of the wood for a seamless silhouette. The surface treatment that was destined to bedeck this piece was going to have to be applied first, not usually the case but the nature of the application was such that it wouldn't work otherwise. After scoring the lines and whacking away with the beading tool, the pattern was done on a flat piece of silver that was then cut to size and bent into a tapered tube. This was also an exercise in anger management as it required a very slender and gradual taper, for which most tools were far from suitable. Improvised mandrels out of the back of my scribe and even my soldering pick to keep it straight, combined with fun and games with the draw plate to get the damn thing to taper, eventually allowed for a suitable mouth piece.

Step 2 was the detail of the organic papyrus effect that seem to become the signature of this body of work (to my dismay, but what's to do?) on a second tapered tube and treat it in a way that I had not yet done and made boring. Carving and manipulating of these forms proved fairly exhilarating, to use the term generously, and the desired effect was achieved through the use of some delightfully sharp tools, namely cutting discs, 1/0 saw blades and some evil looking burrs. Once that was complete, a lip had to be carved into the edge to allow the mouth piece to fit onto the second sleeve and then be soldered into place.

The top of the thing where the cigarette would go was a conical shape with a "sunburst" motif cut out of it. this had to be done in the pitch bowl as the taper on this was not straight but quite severely curved and sinuous. After using the ball punch to achieve the right curves, the frets were cut out and cleaned up leaving a the desired motif behind. This was then fitted with a ring on the inside which was in turn, carved into segments to create a circle of teeth that would hold the cigarette in place. After all of these aspects had been completed, it was time to assemble everything.

 I had planned to keep the grain and colour of the would as a soft contrast to the darkness of the bangle and sharp edges of the earring, but after fluting the maple to allow for the wire detail, the grain was pretty invisible and the colour was (horror of horrors) beige. That not being allowed any where near my work, at all, ever, was quickly rectified with some utterly useless "gel stain" of nondescript brand and less descript point to its existence. Nasty stuff, that had to be removed and good old, gloss black enamel was used instead. Finished result being this.