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Jenks, Albert Ernest, 1869-1953

"The Bontoc Igorot"

This
design is made in the wax with a small knife. The wax for the short
stem piece is flattened and folded around a stick the size of the
bore of the stem. The stem piece is then set into the bowl and the
design which was started on the bowl is continued over the stem.
When the wax pipe is completed a projecting point of wax is attached
to the base of the pipe, and the whole is imbedded in a clay jacket,
the point of wax, however, projecting from the jacket. The clay used
by the pipe maker is obtained in a pit at Pingad in the vicinity of
Genugan. Around the wax point a clay funnel is built. The clay mold,
called "bang-bang'-a," is thoroughly baked by a fire. In less than
an hour the mold is hardened and brown, and the wax pipe within it
has melted and the wax been poured out of the mold through the gate
or opening left by the melting point of wax, leaving the mold empty.
A small Malayan bellows, called "op-op'," the exact duplicate in
miniature of the double tubular bellows described in the preceding
section on "metal weapons," furnishes the draught for a small charcoal
fire. The funnel of the clay mold is filled with pieces of metal, and
the entire thing is buried in the fired charcoal.


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