Pipe Pic of the Day

Darth Pipemaker

2008-02-28T16:09:00.002+01:00

Is this thing not hilarious? I've been suffering from an annoying chronic cough for a while, and after various checks and x-rays pronounced that my throat and lungs were perfectly healthy, my doc has narrowed it down to an allergic reaction, possibly to either a new stain or a new type of ebonite we've been working with. The treatment is dual - I'm now on anti-allergy meds and will be making much more use of a respirator in the workshop. I had to find one that was rated for gases, just in case, and the search turned up this thing at Maison du Tournage. It was so ridiculous looking that I had to buy it immediately. Weird though it may appear, it's actually quite light and decently comfortable to wear, enough so that I'm tempted to wear it around the house just for shock effect. It's going to be fun greeting visitors at the door in this thing. Hannibal Lector meets Darth Vader, that's me!

Other than that, nothing much newsworthy today. We've finished a beautiful, bird's-eye-covered pencil-shanked Ligne Bretagne billiard here, but I just haven't had the free time to photo and post it yet. The blowfishies have been keeping me too busy! Here's a "Monster" blowfish being done for one request - It's as big as my three jaw chuck!

Fantasy Blowfish

2008-02-22T18:03:00.002+01:00

Biz News - Three more new Ligne Bretagnes are up, these three all being unstained panel designs in squat, wide shapes. I finally have a decent stock of Ligne Bretagnes on the site! That will probably be all of them for now, as I need to work full-time on these blowfish requests in-house. If anyone out there has a specific desire for a Talbert blowfish, please email me now while I'm working on a bunch of them together, and I should be able to do one for you fairly quickly.

To finish off the "Making of" photos from the last blog post, here are some pics of the finished pipe, my "Fantasy Blowfish". I'm pleased with the shape, and the blasted portion looks pretty terrific. It is, yet again, a new effect in sandblast finishes for me - or rather a modification of some previous techniques to produce a better result. I was really pleased to be able to achieve such color contrast on the sandblasted side without having to resort to buffing or otherwise compounding smooth the outer edges of the surface. I have no idea if this pipe will turn up in the catalog or not - It's being made as one of a few blowfish variants for a request, so it will depend on whether the collector picks this one or not.

The unusual stem styling is a visual cue I've used on several pipes before. Now I'm off to make a couple rather more conventional blowfish, but here are some more pics of the unusual one to sign off with:

Blowfish Madness

2008-02-20T14:45:00.003+01:00

Biz News - I've been continuing to post new Ligne Bretagnes to the catalog for the past week. I can't remember if I even announced the last update or not, but have a look, as there are probably new pipes there. I've got two more of these pear shapes finished and sitting here waiting to be posted, but that will have to wait till I get this blowfish done.

I've been working on a pile of blowfish shapes lately, and as one of the buyers asked for pics of the process, I thought I might as well post them here, just for general entertainment value to see the steps a pipe goes through from start to finish.

So, like all pipes, it starts off as a block of wood and some drilling measurements:

Once the piece is successfully drilled, the shaping starts. I'm working on several variations of blowfish shapes, from the mild to the wild, as one of the orders asked for a "distinctly Talbert blowfish". That's what we're looking at here. It's actually going to share some visual characteristics with a Fantasy Bulldog shape I made a couple years ago.

Granted, it looks pretty ordinary so far, but that will change. I wanted a block where the grain flowed across at an angle, to work well with the combination of smooth and sandblasted elements I'm envisioning. Here it is with a stand-in stem to serve as a visual balance guide:

Now it's time to start the real stem for the pipe, made from black ebonite:

One can already see that it isn't going to be a very traditional blowfish. I particularly want my Fantasy Blowfish to be organic, as blowfish shapes have the unique ability to look spectacularly ugly if done too symmetrical and constrained (Flashbacks of Princess Leia headbuns!). Here's the first of what will be multiple stages of black staining for the contrast on the smooth part of the pipe:

And most of it already sanded back off:

And finally, the pipe in its last photo, showing a lot more of the shape detail. Everything will get refined but most of the remaining work is "slog work" - ie, many hours of sanding and bit filing and sandblasting. I'll post more pics as it (and the others) progress.

A Truly Excellent Tobacco

2008-02-15T20:57:00.003+01:00

Biz News - I've posted five new Ligne Bretagnes in the past two days - Check them out in their catalog page. One has already sold before I ever posted any notice, but there are still some very nice pipes available.

In today's pic, Robot is helping me show off a recent tobacco that caught my attention. As one might imagine, I sample a lot of pipe tobaccos each year - I experiment crazily enough on my own, plus pipe friends from all over the world send me the occasional package of tins to try. This sounds like great fun, and it is, but it does have one side-effect - One gets jaded.

After the tenth year and millionth new blend, they do start to meld together, with each new English pretty much tasting just like all the others, with only slight variance in smokiness. This isn't to say I'm bored with them, it's simply that it becomes that much harder for any single blend to really stand out and catch my attention. However, this tin of Gawith's Balkan Flake did just that.... Damn, what a great tobacco!

"Deliciously Cool" is, for once, a completely accurate statement - I don't think I've met a tobacco that was this bite-free and smooth on the tongue since 1792. But this is sooo smooth... The best I can do is describe this as the Guinness Stout of pipe tobaccos - Rich, thick, almost chocolatey, and so flowing and lacking in harsh edges that you barely even realize you're smoking it. All you experience is this pleasantly full beer-like flavor. Really excellent - After finishing my first tin, I know I'll be seeking out more of this in future. Definitely a ten.

11pm on Sunday Night and Still Working

2008-02-10T22:45:00.001+01:00

Biz News - One new, semi-churchwarden Ligne Bretagne was just posted to the catalog.

Today's pic shows the work of this week - at least, what little work managed to happen around the continuing adventures with the new laptop. Today's fun? Enabling the laptop (Windows XP) to print on the upstairs Officejet printer, shared via the desktop system (Ubuntu) over the wireless network. Whee. Working like a charm now, though. It's amazing how old this all makes me feel - Emily is now able to send documents through the air to a wireless network talking to a completely different operating system, and print her documents on a printer not connected in any physical way to her laptop... and also via a Linux OS!

(This reminds me, I need to write an entry for the long-quiet "Life in France" blog comparing expat life with switching operating systems... a fairly apt comparison in many ways. For the record, I still find both France and Ubuntu to be pretty darned groovy, despite the occasional confusing differences in style. Most of the confusion derives from the strange way that the file systems of les français are arranged - I keep telling my French friends to 'del' and they keep replying 'rm'? Thankfully, Ubuntu is usually a lot tastier than Windows was...)

Above are pictured some pipes that will soon be shipping to a new dealer, who will be promoting my pipes to the Russian markets and, of all things, to the high grade collector market in Israel. I've really been enjoying internationalizing my business these past months, and continue to hope that someday I'll get lucky and have the chance to visit some Czech or Shanghai pipe club someday! The pictured pipes are not available for purchase - in fact, they'll be going into a box shortly, but I will soon be posting links and info on my website for the new dealers I'm working with.

Whew. I think I'd intended to actually write about something tonight, but that's enough writing for 11pm on a Sunday - time to go collapse and check out the new Supernatural, methinks!

Back in Action

2008-02-06T16:23:00.000+01:00

Well, after several days of total manic computer set-up, we are finally finished and the laptop is fully loaded with all the needed software and off and running. Em is downstairs now working on it as I type this. It's going to be a wonder having two computers in the house (Time to check into multi-player games? Assuming there ARE any that can be played between Windows and Ubuntu, anyway.... probably some online games...).

I've got a hellish stack of piled-up "To Do's" that includes several days' worth of emails, PMs, and forum messages to answer, plus a lot of un-done book keeping here, but if all goes well I should be back in the workshop shortly, and back to actually making these little wood pipe things that we sell...

A Three Pipe Problem

2008-02-01T16:20:00.000+01:00

No pipe news today, but there IS news of import - After a hard drive screw-up cost us our Windows disc, we finally bit the bullet and bought a separate laptop for Emily, to put all her accounting records on, so we're not dependent on one computer. It just arrived, and this means that the website is going to be quiet for probably a few days as we work to install everything we need onto the laptop. This is a bit more complex than it may sound, as we'll have to re-activate our accounting software (in French), replace our old ADSL ethernet modem with a new wireless model that can handle multiple connected computers, figure out how to make that work in French, and install something like 500 patches, firewalls, and other safeguards needed to keep a freaking Windows computer operating in relative safety. Not to mention transferring a bajillion files off the current computer and getting an XP system and an Ubuntu system to happily talk to each other. In French.

Think kind thoughts for me....

Poker Madness

2008-01-27T20:06:00.001+01:00

Nothing new on the website today, though I hope to be posting the new Fat Dwarfs soon, along with another pair of bamboo-shanked mortas. Here in the workshop, it's been "Poker Madness" (Well, actually "Poker and Blowfish Madness" as I'm working on a pair of neat blowfish ideas too). The pokers here in the pic were the result of an order for a giant-sized Cherrywood (the pipe in the back). During the conversation about the piece, mention was made of whether or not a briar MacArthur would be possible. Unfortunately, that large a pipe is pretty much beyond the available size range of all the briar I have in stock, even though I do have some nice reserves of extra-large plateau and ebauchon blocks snagged from various sources.

I did, however, find the idea really intriguing and fun, and decided to turn out the largest facsimile I could, just to see what was possible. What I got was this monster:

That's my 10.5cm tall BriarMac next to my group 5 Dunhill billiard. Yowza! Pretty nice blast, too. The need to lay the bowl lengthwise in the plateau block precluded it from having any sort of long shank, so bamboo was the order of the day. Besides, it's been way too long since I've made a bamboo-shank briar - There for a while, it seemed like everyone was making them and I kind of laid off on them. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with the thing yet - I'm currently waiting to hear back from the buyer on what he thinks of the Cherrywood. I doubt it will appear on the website catalog, though - right now I'm assembling a box of pipes for a new dealer for Israel and Russia, and it might go to him or to Pipe & Pint, over in the land of giant pipe fans. It would certainly be a great attention-getter in P&P's retail shop!

Squeak!

2008-01-25T20:40:00.000+01:00

So, I'm working on a couple of pokers for a special request... The buyer wants a "CherrywoodMonster" - A Cherrywood-style poker to complement the PokerMonster and DublinMonster I made last summer (This fellow has now also purchased a BulldogMonster, and seems well on his way to having a dedicated collection of monster-sized Talberts in classical shapes). In chatting about this, some mentio was made of whether it would be possible to do a briar MacArthur, and this intrigues me enough to see just how big of a briar I can manage. Some digging through the briar stock turns up a handful of really long plateau blocks, and I'll be working on the "BriarMac" tonight.... but I had to post this photo first!

What you're looking at is the block in the chuck jaws with the bowl section pointing downward - I was about to drill the airhole. I'd never even considered the swing distance of the lathe, as it had never been a problem before, but this bowl's sheer immensity made me double-check. Some clearance, eh? Yes, it DID rotate without touching the lathe bed. I'd guess it had perhaps 1.5mm of clearance! So, that's the ridiculous pipe photo of the day.

Oh, and as for the CherrywoodMonster, it came out rather nicely indeed...!

A Surprise!

2008-01-23T15:41:00.001+01:00

Biz News - The first Talbert Morta Bettafish of 2008 is now posted to the catalog. Also, the Ligne Bretagne catalog has gained the first two new LBs for this year, both sandblasted billiards with horn stems.

One of my goals for 2008 is to try and keep more Ligne Bretagnes in stock on the site, ideally in a decent variety of shapes even though they are normally finished in sets of similar pipes for efficiency's sake. In pursuit of this goal, I started rummaging through some of our piles of boxes and crates over in the PipeCave, and dragged some boxes back to the workshop for sorting. I got a pleasant surprise when I opened up the box pictured left - There was a plastic bag inside containing three LB "Fat Dwarf" stummels!

I thought I'd used all of that shape in late 2006/early 2007. At the time, I'd searched around for more but could find none, and sadly concluded that I must have used all I had, despite Emily's conviction that she has seen even more of them somewhere in the PipeCave (I realize my descriptions of the PipeCave must sound exaggerated and silly, but those who have seen it will back me up).

SOOO... I guess there will soon be three more of these things! Unfortunately, I only have two of the matching stubby stems left, and I think both may be 9mm filter stems, so I'm not quite sure what to do about the stem issue - Odds are that there may only be one recognizable "Fat Dwarf" and the other two may be finished with entirely different stem designs, we'll see.

So that's my fun news of the day. ;)

The Crawler Pics

2008-01-20T16:26:00.000+01:00

Biz News - Two new Morta Classics have been added to the catalog, one smooth and one sandblasted. Both are variations of poker shapes, with subtle tweaks here and there to set them apart.

Well, I finally finished this Halloween pipe that's been the project for so many days. I'm quite proud of it - I think it's one of the more disturbing looking Halloween pieces I've done, and it was a lot of fun to do one of these again after so long away from them. Still, breaks are a good thing, I think. Moving between Talbert Briars and Goblins and mortas and Ligne Bretagnes does wonders for keeping me enthused about all the different pipes, and really helps avoid burnout. Rather than post a pile of pics here, I just made a simple web gallery for this piece, so if you want to see all the photos of the new monster, go HERE.

From the Crypt

2008-01-19T22:31:00.000+01:00

Finished at last! I'll make better pics tomorrow, along with posting a couple of new mortas to the site, but for now, here are a few quick late-night shots of the Crawler. It came out very nicely, IMO - in fact, I think it may be the creepiest Halloween pipe I've done since the Black Annis. A pleasant way to start off the new year...

Crawling towards completion

2008-01-19T14:56:00.001+01:00

The Halloween pipe continues to crawl towards completion. This is proving to be a handy example of the labor involved in these things - I know people have boggled in the past at some of the prices for the Halloween pipes, yet consider, in the time I've so far invested in this one pipe, I could easily have fully finished probably two or three Talbert Briars. It's a daunting challenge! But at the same time, I've been having a really good time with it. The Goblins are fun to do, but they must always be kept under careful "budget control", ie, can't do this or that effect that I might like, because it would be too much labor for the price. It's nice to be able to go all-out again, and really try and "hit one out of the park" to kick off the new year with. The preview pics are finally beginning to look like what the pipe will be when it's done, and there isn't actually as much labor left as there might seem. I need to do the sandblasting work on it, then smooth and detail various surfaces, and polish the stem. This is definitely what's referred to as the "high tension" stage of the process... LOTS of work invested, massive pressure and stress to keep anything from going wrong, breaking, etc. Stay tuned...

The Unforseen

2008-01-17T22:12:00.000+01:00

Biz News - There's a new Talbert Briar in the catalog, an unstained,beautiful blond freehand blast in a sort of hybrid Bettafish/Ibex shape. It's quite striking, and the wood is so pale in color that it's very nearly white.

The last couple of days have brought some unpleasant distractions into my work on this Halloween piece. First up was something not pipe-related - our Windows XP hard drive crashed, right when Emily needs it the most to do her yearly taxes on. After some debate over various alternatives, we opted to bite the bullet and finally get her a laptop of her own, just a simple ultra-cheapo Dell for our accounting (XP only) software alone, so we can stop fighting over the one computer finally. But this incurred the usual time wastage that attaches itself to anything computer-related, and no doubt will end up sucking up an inordinate amount of otherwise-useful working time when the thing arrives and I have to get the software switched over and install what will probably be two hundred security patches.

The next problem, from last night, was a stem that had to be discarded. Too thin! I tried my best to get a decent shot of the effect, but alas, one really can't see very well in the photo where the problem area is. This can be a common problem in the eternal quest for the ultra-thin bit, though - opening the inside slot just a hair too large, or not leaving enough material. In this case, widening the slot produced that sinking feeling - too much heat at my fingertips around the outside. Sure enough, the slot had created a visual "ripple" on the outside. It can just barely be seen in the photo - It's the V-shaped distortion in the light reflection up the bit center. A bit of prodding showed the material there was thin enough to flex, not acceptable, as it would surely fail in use. Bleagh.

Fortunately I was able to drill and shape another rod section quickly, and it can be seen here:

Tonight's work got me back to where I should have been two days ago, sans l'ordinateur problems and the reject bit, and the pipe itself is coming along nicely. I suspect it's going to feel great in the hand, like a small squirming creature. Tomorrow looks to be the fourteen hour workshop day that will take this a big chunk of the haul from its current crude cut to a much more detailed version closer to finished:

Progress

2008-01-13T23:23:00.000+01:00

I thought I'd follow up the previous post about the design process with a quick shot of the pipe in progress. I'll try to post pics of the progress as I can, though I'm working pretty ferociously on this (major overtime days) in hopes of getting it finished in a matter of a week rather than multiples. The process has been sped up a bit by some excellent new tools I received as Christmas gifts - The grinders in the pic below are fantastic at fast, controlled removal of stock in places wheels and drums can't handle. They don't load up like sanding drums, and I expect them to outlast a bucket of drums. Every carver should have them!

Halloween in January

2008-01-12T20:09:00.000+01:00

Biz News! I've just posted some new pipes to the website - a new Talbert Briar sandblasted bulldog and a new smooth Ligne Bretagne Collector. Also, I've reshaped and revised the Talbert Briar Suscinio, the pipe with the much-disliked stem - go check it out and see what you think of version 2.0!

It's Halloween in January here. I'm working on an order for a Halloween pipe which met all the magic criteria that I need before even thinking about doing pipes like this on request:

A) It's from an established buyer, so the odds are significantly higher that I'll actually get paid for my work at the end.

B) It has vague design parameters. "Scary", and "a churchwarden" were the only given guidelines.

So, I thought I'd take a minute and toss some of the "imagination process" up on the blog in the form of doodles. In the first set of sketches, above, they're extremely rough and vague, because I start out just trying to capture the overall "look" (general shape, sense of motion, dynamism) and the main visual "hooks" (attention-grabbing bits like claws, teeth, etc). One thing I resolved on going in was that I did want the pipe to be genuinely scary, not just clichéd. I'm not knocking on the various black skulls and such that I've carved in the past, but that sort of thing is really very easy - just make a big grinning, malicious fanged skull and you're there. The ones I prefer, however, and my favorites of the Halloween pipes over the years, were the ones that were more surreal and disturbing, rather than just "BOOOO!"-scary. The problem is that it's just really freaking difficult to make something as pre-set as a pipe, disturbing.

Looking up, I started with some rough ideas of a churchwarden with big teeth.This went OK but didn't really grab me so much, so I doodled around for a bit, in the process producing the cute three-legged standing churchwarden design that isn't scary in the slightest, but will probably become an incredibly fun Goblin pipe sometime later. The bottom left sketch in the above image was the most elaborate, a huge tusked thing that would have looked quite brutal. Still not scary to me, though. Plus, more problematic, it would have been virtually impossible to make due to its dimensions - I simple don't have any briar blocks thick enough to allow the two big rounded tusks at the sides to be outset from the bowl and STILL have bowl walls thick enough for more carving and a chamber diameter wider than a pencil.

I've created a nice "scary music" playlist for myself in my Amarok music player, and it's ideal background music for getting into the right mood. Further goofing about produced the roughs to the left - starting with the strange, fat, chicken-winged duck-thing. Looked incredibly silly. But I liked the "wings" - tipped with curled claws, they evoke the disturbing mental image of plucked wingbones & fetal curls. I elaborated them, doodling ways to do the bottom and producing the frog-footed shapes. Again, more silly than scary, but they'd make ideal Goblin pipes and I bet they'll turn up in Green froggy form in the Goblin catalog before too long.

But I still wasn't getting the sort of genuinely unsettling look I wanted...

It took me another page to get something I liked. I trifled with combining the big tusks with the fetal wings, but they didn't work together. Em and I talked about motifs and she suggested Eraserhead, and that was all it took. The bottom needed limbs that were as twisted and fetal and creepy as the uppers, so I added thick haunches with a long, curved "leg" ending in a sort of bone-nodule "foot", and a second, stunted leg to carry the fetal curl and lack of development.

The great thing about the design is that it's a practical smoker as well as unnervingly hideous. If I can get the balance right, it should sit. Unlike too many "art pipes" and just plain "weird pipes" that I see, I try hard to keep the underpinnings of my more exotic pieces as practical and functional as possible - I want them to be smoked, not just collected. One can see in the cutaway view that the pipe is essentially just a big bent billiard, laid out to allow a centered airhole, pipecleaner passage, and good wall thicknesses... all while (I hope) being a genuinely creepy little creation. These sketches are still quite rough and undeveloped, but a good bit more detail will be added as the pipe progresses and is worked and reworked on the fly.

Why Dealers Matter

2008-01-07T23:13:00.001+01:00

Biz News: As part of my push to get more stock on the website this year, I've just added another Ligne Bretagne Collector - a very pretty, huge, unstained handmade freehand. A nice piece for a nice price!

Today's pic is of yet another bulldog I've just finished. It's intended for a special request, but may end up on the site catalog, we'll see.

Some time semi-recently, I saw a post online that inspired me to write this little article. The poster in question had noticed that an artisan pipemaker had recently started selling via a few dealers and distributors as well as directly, and he voiced the complaint, "If he can afford to wholesale his pipes, why not just discount the pipes to his direct buyers and sell more pipes that way?" I was kind of agog, because this may sound logical, but it's a really uninformed idea. It presupposes a myth that lots of pipe folks seem to accept as rote - that pipe dealers and retailers essentially provide no service and only exist to jack up pipe prices. After all, if everyone can set up a website and sell direct, why pay these guys?

Many reasons, in fact. A dealer sale is guaranteed, for one (I'll get to that in a minute). When you wholesale a pipe to a dealer, you're offloading a surprisingly huge and annoying chunk of work to him, that of actually photographing, promoting, advertising, and selling the pipe. That's work that doesn't "go away" if a maker sells direct - It's part of the price of a pipe. The time I spend taking pictures and answering emails and writing catalog descriptions is every bit as much a part of the price as the time it took in the workshop. I can't "cut prices and sell more" - selling direct just drops all that promotional work on me. Not to mention the actual sale, collection of payment, and shipping of each individual pipe to a different buyer. That's an incredible amount of working time right there - just wrapping, packing, boxing, and hauling sacks of pipe boxes off to the post office. Selling to a dealer? Stick 'em all in one box, collect one check, and do it in one trip.

And it's a sure sale. Website direct sales are cherry-picked - Maybe you'll sell that pipe immediately, maybe you won't, maybe it won't even sell at all! When you wholesale, you smooth that out - the dealer assumes the risk of dead stock. Sure, you get less at wholesale pricing per pipe, but you get something every time, and you can let a much smarter salesman take the responsibility for finding buyers for everything you send him.

In closing, I hope this will help a little in understanding all the factors that go into establishing a price for a pipe, and explain just why workshop hours are not the total entirety of the price.

Happy New Year!

2008-01-05T17:38:00.000+01:00

Biz News - To kick off the new year, one thing I'm going to try hard to do this month is actually put some pipes in stock on the website. First up are two new bamboo-shanked mortas and a sandblasted ring grain morta poker (Alas, as I type this, it looks like both bamboo-shanked pipes have sold already) and there's also a new green Ligne Bretagne Collector available.

It's hard (and easy) to believe I haven't updated this blog since late November! December was the usual explosion of chaos and psychosis that it is here every year, and I just didn't have the time for the blog. Plus, I was highly distracted by a new online forum that I've set up, into which I channeled what little spare time I had. It's a private forum, invite-only, where I can relax and talk to various friends in an exceedingly pub-like atmosphere without having to be "on my toes" as I must whenever I post to pipe forums (My forum does have some discussion of pipes, beer, whiskey, etc, but the main focus is on other subjects, mostly fantasy/SF/horror genre stuff and some adventures in an online MMORPG that many of us play in).

After posting in online forums for around 18 years now, it was an odd change to be the one setting the rules. I decided to take the simple route:

#1 - Don't be an asshole.

#2 - No posting of porn or porn links. This is against Proboards' terms of service.

#3 - No personal attacks. In fact, just try to be frickin' polite in general. If you disagree with someone, you'll get a lot further in life by arguing your viewpoint in a civil manner than by going batshit.

#4 - No sermonizing. We're all adults here and we all have our own views on topics like religion, politics, porn, abortion, and what have you. Thanks, but we really don't need long rants about how national health care leads to communism or at what point life really begins. Climbing onto soapboxes to preach is heavily frowned upon, with the sole exception being that Olde Fuckers are fully permitted to complain about how annoying young people are today. ;)

Violation of any of these rules is subject to immediate and capricious punishment by the mods, who rule like demented god-kings. (Jeff F ought to recognize this reference!) :D

If only more forums applied Rule #1, the intarwebs would be so much more enjoyable! Anyway, setting up this rather-complex project did manage to eat up way more time than ever intended, but at least it's up and running now and rapidly filling with such deep and incisive chatter as what the new Indiana Jones movie will be like, whether Heath Ledger will be a good Joker, where one can get good Ginger beer, and Darwin video award links. People in the pipe biz actually do talk about pipes in our spare time too, but after a day in the workshop and answering email, pipes usually aren't my main focus when I hop online to relax (Funnily enough, the only pipe people so far participating are other professional pipemakers, who are mostly talking about LOTR and why "Space Ape Lazer Rampage" is perhaps the greatest movie title ever imagined).

Today's pipe photo is one of the many Talbert Briar bulldogs that I've been working on all through December - I got buried under a pile of requests for bulldogs, and figured I'd see if I couldn't work on them all together for best efficiency. That's why virtually nothing has been appearing on the site - I've just been focused on special orders. I intend to try my best to at least get a few pipes into the website catalogs this month, though. I don't like it when everything is empty! And I'll also try hard to post more here in the blog, as it just isn't good to leave it sitting for so long, and I've got several topics I want to talk about (Next up will probably be an article on the value of dealers and distributors, and exactly what work and service they provide)

To close for now, here's another shot of that rather nice "Bulldog-Monster" - a huge, ODA-sized bulldog blast that's currently making its way across the ocean to a US collector.

Whither the American Market?

2007-11-29T15:49:00.001+01:00

Biz News - I've just posted two new Talbert Briars to the site catalog, a sandblasted tankard (already sold, I think) and a beautiful high-grade smooth.

My recent replacement (forced, due to our old printer vomiting its ink cartidges all over its internal workings like Jim Belushi at a frat party) of our office printer has got us a new scanner/printer/fax unit. It's a delight to have a scanner in the house again, after five years without. I'd forgotten how handy they are. This, coupled with the ensuing "Digging through old photo albums for things that need scanning" turned up some pics I'd thought long lost - Photos of my very first pipes. In fact, today's photo is of the first two pipes I ever made - Pipe #1 is the one in the foreground and #2, the ever-popular Bilbo, is the background one. Both were made from blocks entirely using a Dremel, start to finish, including doing all the polishing with it (A slow and arduous affair, without doubt!)

We're about to go into our tenth year of business with Talbert Pipes, and it's a time for some reflection. When I went into the pipe business, my intent was simple - to produce the highest quality handmade pipes I could, pipes to compete with the best of the European masters for slightly more accessible prices. It isn't for me to judge how successful I was at that (or not), but one interesting thing I've noted is the shift in my sales over the years. For the first few years, I sold everything I made exclusively to American buyers, and there seemed no reason to even try to look elsewhere - foreign shipping was a hassle by comparison, and I didn't understand the issues of foreign currencies. The US was riding the economic boom and optimism of the Clinton years and all seemed well. But over the last five years, I've watched the US market go sour with the US economy - Compare, for example, the fact that when I moved to France, a dollar was worth 1.15 €, while today it is worth about .53 cents of a euro. In only five years...

This isn't going to fix itself any time soon. During this period, various folks have confidently predicted that that dollar would turn around in short order, but when you consider the monstrous deficit, the unpopularity of the current administration and lack of global confidence thereof, and the fallout of the sub-prime market, it will be years yet before the dollar can hope to start climbing back up. (Having said that, I cross my fingers and hope the Prediction Law will come into play, and immediately begin to prove me wrong!) It's made it more and more difficult for US buyers to purchase my pipes, to my great sadness. While I haven't changed my prices at all, the pipes have effectively become considerably more costly to American buyers, like all other brands from the EU market. Just recently I talked with a Canadian pipemaker who was himself being forced to reprice his pipes in his native currency to stop bleeding income to the devaluing dollar - something I was forced to do several years ago.

(If this all sounds Greek, I'll lay it out simple - all my bills and food are priced in euros, and the pricing doesn't change. 75 € worth of groceries five years ago is still 75 € worth of groceries today, minus inflation. But if I priced in dollars five years ago, a $500 pipe would have provided me with 575 € for my work. Today, a $500 pipe would only pay me 390 €. Ack. This is the bottom line problem faced by all European vendors to the states today)

These days, more and more of my sales are going to European, Russian, and Asian buyers - people whose currency isn't devalued. I still do regular special order sales and commissions with American collectors and friends who are willing to accept the trade deficit, but I don't try to market my work there nearly so much... It's just depressing to me, really, because I'll be sitting back proudly looking at a new pipe that I think is a real steal for 525 €, and I've got to turn around and tell an inquiring American that, oh yeah, sorry, that's going to cost them something like $800+. I hate that they have to pay so much for my work - It's as much a social problem for me as an economic one, because I miss the general banter and friendly relations with all the US collectors.

What to do? Well, the need to make a living wage necessitates that I have to focus on selling to the people who are best able and eager to buy, and that isn't the US today. This disparity is eventually going to affect even the American pipemakers, who are currently in the enviable position of being able to sell very highly priced pipes at what amount to huge discounts on the world market. The problem is that all their supplies come from over here, and as the price of briar and rod doubles, it's eventually going to have impact even on the American makers. For my own part, it's likely that in future, I will post less pipes to the catalog and move more through various worldwide dealers - probably half of the website catalog sales were still mainly to English-speaking Americans, and with that half dropping more and more from the picture, there is less impetus to try and maintain website inventory. I'm still able to stay fully booked-up with orders for American collectors, at least, and I'm very thankful to these good folks for their business. But when you consider that I probably sell two or three times as many mortas in France and Germany than I do today in the states, it REALLY becomes a question of such basic issues as, should I make a French language version of the catalogs?

I don't know... Lots of meandering with few answers. At the end of the day, all one can hope for is that there will be a sea-change in US politics and economy in the near future, that will let our American friends start getting their real dollar's worth again!

Pretty, pretty, pretty

2007-11-27T23:31:00.000+01:00

My luck has been really bizarre lately. I'm trying to work on an order for a middle-grade sandblast (for another pipemaker, no less!), and after two discards, I got this - One of the more flawless pipes I've handled this year. I kept sanding and thinking, "OK, I'll surely hit something sooner or later that will make this the sandblast it needs to be for this order"... but, alas, no dice. I'm not sure if this counts as being lucky or unlucky! Tomorrow I'll have to decide what to do with it, whether to post it to the website catalog, send it to Larry, or send it to China. It's a very big pipe, though, with a pretty huge bowl, and I'm not sure how well this would work in China - though it would at least provide a smooth pipe for them to see. Must think about this tonight. I do have a small website update coming tomorrow anyway, with two new "paneled beer mug" Ligne Bretagne sandblasts waiting to be posted. Production has been lousy this month, though - too much seasonal shopping to be done!

A Pipe Review

2007-11-18T17:01:00.001+01:00

No biz news today, but since I have a few idle minutes, I thought I would post a pipe review of my new greenie. One of the great ironies of the pipe hobby is that pipemakers are usually among the best qualified to review pipes (having a good understanding of the processes involved in making the things, and why this or that quirk exists), yet it's completely impossible for us to review the pipes of others without seeming to be in bad taste. But I hope no one will mind if I pick apart one of my own creations!

So, I've smoked this pipe for two days now. Initial impressions are pretty good. I absolutely love the draw in this thing - It just puffs effortlessly and I haven't had to use a cleaner during smoking yet. I used the curved tenon inlet trick with this one also, so the airflow is angled within the tenon to allow a cleaner to pass smoothly and keep the smoke stream from encountering any sharp turns. A pleasant surprise that I noticed is that not only does it smoke dry, but it smokes extremely clean... Afterwards, cleaners come out with hardly any gunk at all, meaning it isn't generating a lot of whirling condensation in the smoke path. Cool.

It is smaller than I like, but it does OK. The chamber is actually larger than one might guess from the overall dimensions - compare to the Safferling in the photo. The only weird thing is the feature it shares with all bowl chambers that are really wide at the top and taper to points - You light it and smoke and smoke, and the tobacco doesn't seem to tamp down at all, and then when you finally get to what seems like the middle of the bowl, suddenly *PAFT* it goes out and that's all the tobacco gone.

The stem fits without any light gap, and retains this after several smokes and room temperature changes. I used to have annoying problems with this, but these days I think I do OK. And I love this new German ebonite - VERY shiny and glossy, yet with nice soft give. I cut this bit to be one of my "super thin" mouthpieces and cautioned on the catalog page that it should not be clenched hard, yet I missed an advantage that I've found in smoking it, namely that it is so incredibly light that I don't have to clench hard anyway. It takes no effort at all to hold it in my teeth, which is cool. The downside, however, is that making these extremely thin bits requires me to use a smaller bit slot than I personally prefer, though apparently plenty of other smokers don't mind. I like a slot that's 2mm high or so, for easy passage of extra-fluffy cleaners. This slot is around 1.4mm high to allow the OD to be thinner. I made it very wide and deep to compensate, but that only goes so far, and I'll have to stick with normal cleaners for this stem. The nice part is that it's virtually unnoticeable in the mouth because it's so thin, which is really pleasant. For me, though, I'm willing to give up a little ultra-thinness for easier passage of fluffy cleaners.

The bowl carbon coating did its job nicely, making the break-in smokes as pleasant as they ever can really be, and more importantly, helping me avoid those nasty bottom-bowl splits that can occur when a new bowl is smoked too hot. I used to use a waterglass mixture which provides better protection from heat, but I've since changed to an edible mix. Despite not being as tough, it seemed to function well.

The pipe is also retaining a pleasant low sheen. I've largely stopped buffing with carnuba wax and instead just compound very fine and sand to a gloss, since all wax does is liquefy with the first smoke and leave the whole pipe looking dull. This is actually retaining more shine than a waxed pipe would. Makes me happy.

Unfortunately, I'm still getting a very little bit of stain bleed-off during these first smokes. Greens are as bad as the popular reds and oranges about bleeding excess stain on start-up, and mastering and eliminating the bleed has been an ongoing project for me. This is far better than some earlier green pipes, but still after a full bowl I can detect a very faint trace of green tint on my fingertips. Unfortunately, I'm not sure there's any way around this other than to heavily lacquer the whole bowl to seal it, and obviously this is something I don't want to do.

The verdict? I like. If I'd paid 500 bucks for it, I'd have been very pleased (and I did, really, in terms of working time). It's going to be a favorite for any hands-free situations because of its light weight and easy clenching - probably a perfect pipe to take to a pipe show.

Last Call

2007-11-16T17:15:00.000+01:00

Biz News - I've just posted two new Ligne Bretagne Collectors to the LB catalog. Otherwise, no changes, though I seem to have about a dozen special ordered pipes going out in different directions. I guess it's officially seasonal pipe request time!

It's last call on the Fantasy Calabash! Yes, this is the pipe that was in the catalog last month in a much more conventional red-orange stain. It also, inexplicably to me, did not sell quickly - another example of how I can never tell. I personally think it's a gorgeous shape and just about the perfect pipe for me, but maybe people were put off by the fact that it was smaller than my typical group 6 sizes, who knows?

In any case, I only own one high grade example of my own work and that is from nine years ago and not really comparable to what I do now. So, I think this one is going to be mine. I re-stained it to my new favorite, Froud Green - an odd choice perhaps, since it doesn't make the grain "pop" like more typical black/orange contrast stains, but I think it goes well with the mushroom-ey shape. So, it's soon to be smoked. If anyone wants to buy it in its current green incarnation (grade 3, 519 €), contact me SOON, because this evening I'll be smoking it and then it will be mine forever (and it's 5:26pm here now). I actually hope no one buys it, but being that it's Christmas shopping season and 500 € is too much to pass up, I figured I should at least make the offer before yanking it off to my collection forever.

In other news, check out the pics of this very cool volcano blast that's on its way to China. The black contrast against the faint orange tint really makes the grain snap, especially in the close-up enlargements. And how's this for bird's-eye on the bottom?

I'm really going to be curious to hear what the pipe buyers in China and Hong Kong think of this sort of style.

Finally, this latest site update is a strange one, because the whole thing has been done via Ubuntu Linux. While Ubuntu's Firefox and Kompozer are the same as XP's, I have lived in terror of the Gimp graphics program for some time. The Gimp is an open source Photoshop alternative, surprisingly powerful and often touted as a great example of the capability of open source, yet it's also a glaring example of the flaws of open source too - to put it mildly, the interface is .... strange. The XP version of Gimpshop, a Gimp mod that rearranges the menus to match Photoshop, even includes a component aptly named the "de-weirdifier" which bundles all of Gimp's various different dialog windows into one central window app, like other programs. I'd tried using the Gimp in Windows and it was like being repeatedly whacked in the head with a ball peen hammer, in comparison to Photoshop which I could sit down with and immediately figure out. So, I was freaked, to put it mildly. To my total surprise, though, I had a very good Gimp experience. Where it seemed slow, buggy, and strange in XP, in Ubuntu the Gimp runs fast and efficient, and the Linux windowing system options (tagging windows to stay on top, for instance) completely transformed the annoying experience from XP.

To my considerable surprise, I was able to easily zip through assembling the two pic sets of the new LBs, and in some ways it was even simpler than in Photoshop. It DID require regular reference to the help files and "Grokking the Gimp", however, so it wasn't as intuitive. I think I'll be getting the hang of it in short order, though. Like the rest of my Ubuntu experience, it turned out to be not nearly as horrible as I was braced for, and in fact was quite pleasant once I accepted that there would be some re-learning involved.

Interview with Uptown's

2007-11-06T19:38:00.001+01:00

Biz News - One more Goblin has crawled into the catalog, the largest one yet...

Today's pic is an oldie, an uncropped group shot of the 2002 Ligne Bretagne Yule pipes. 2002 was the last year I made a Yule pipe. There has been some discussion for this year, though.... but that can wait till a future blog post. Today, I have an excellent little interview with Kevin Getten of Uptown's Smoke Shop, where we talk a bit about his views of the shop and its place in today's pipe biz. Enjoy!
_______________________________________

Me: What do you do at Uptown's? What's your part of the business?

Kevin: I am the Pipe Office Manager, my job responsibilities range from online orders, updating the website, taking pictures for the site, calling customers when new pipes come in. Most of our customers know what I am getting in before it arrives and I call them and send images of pipes. Other customers I call and describe the pipe and they take it on my recommendation. I am always on the phone talking to customers. Either I call them or they call me. I feel like it goes beyond a customer/retailer relationship. I consider them friends. Sometimes we just talk about our favorite tobaccos. I also help out a lot on the sales floor selling cigars and humidors. I spend a lot of time behind the tobacco counter helping customers with pipe tobacco. Customers will bring in samples of tobacco they can not purchase anymore and I try to match the blends. That is one of the best parts of my job. One customer was so happy he came back a few hours later with a bottle of wine for me. Once we find the right blend, we keep a log of it and our customers keep coming back when they run out.

Me: Tell me where you see Uptowns in the pipe world today.

Kevin: I see Uptowns expanding in a few different directions. The high grade pipes still sell as soon as we get them in. Our customers are pretty loyal. As soon as they arrive they are sold. The pipes sell so quick I do not have a chance to put them on the web. My high grade customers are in two categories; people that have been collecting for years and are looking for specific shapes and the other half are the people just discovering high grades. They have always been interested in buying a high grade but were hesitant because of the price. But almost every time they make the decision to buy the pipe, they smoke it and realize what a great smoking experience it is and they eventually call me to order another one.

We are also growing our local, walk in business. We have a lot of college students coming in buying their first pipe, and we take the time to walk them through packing, cleaning and smoking a pipe. They start to smoke the pipe and enjoy it and a few days later they bring in five of their friends to try it. As they learn how to smoke they advance to another pipe and before you know it they are buying Castellos and Rinaldos and other hand made pipes.

Uptowns is also here to support Amercan carvers. We have a few surprises coming up in our quarterly catalog that will hopefully expose some great new American pipemakers to our customers.

Me: A few years ago, you guys were practically THE shop for super high grades in the US, but in intervening years a number of other high-end shops have appeared. Do you intend to keep fighting for the "rare air" of the top spot, broaden your appeal across the market, or both?

Kevin: We plan on doing both. Those other high grade shops are doing a great job. The way I look at it is we are all in the same business and each shops success only expands the hobby. I have bought pipes in the past from those shops before I worked here. And everyone that I dealt with was great. Our main competitors are being run by friendly, knowledgeable people that are only making the hobby better and making other high grades accessible to the general consumer. It's great to get together at pipe shows and talk about the business. Its nice to see how other retailers see the business and to have their perspective on market trends, hot new pipemakers etc.

Me: Related to the previous question, I know you guys caught a lot of flack in the 90's for essentially ushering in the era of the super-expensive pipe... at least in the popular pipe culture. People today don't bat an eye over the profusion of $900 pipes on the market, but that wasn't always the case. What can you tell me about the pluses and minuses of essentially having been trail blazers in the world of high grade collecting?

Kevin: The pluses far outweigh the negatives. When I was in college I read all about Uptowns and new about their reputation in the market place. When I was hired there was still that mentality. I remember my first pipe show I was told not to talk to certain people and just concentrate on our table. That was remedied shortly after that and I was put in charge of the Pipe Office. Now at pipe shows, anybody (even other carvers) are more then welcome to come up to our table and examine the pipes we have. Where before most pipemakers and pipesmokers I have talked to said they felt uncomfortable doing that.I remember my first day here, I stayed in my office all day and held my first Chonowitsch, Ivarsson and S Bang and it was an amazing experience just to hold these pipes I had only read about for years.

I feel I am slowly changing the perception of Uptowns in the market place. Our customers love us, yet I know there are people out there that refuse to do business with us because of the way the we did business in the past, which I understand. But what I tell people when this topic comes up is that we cater to the whole pipe market.We have customers that only call us during our catalog and purchase $15.00 estate pipes and we have customers that buy only high grade pipes. We have also experienced a big increase in brands like Ardor,Rinaldo,Radice,Stanwell and Savinelli. I think we cover the whole spectrum.

Me: Do you folks do any repair work in-house?

Kevin: We do mostly restoration. I have buffing wheels in the back and I restore pipes. We have a few processes that are unique to our shop and our pipes look brand new after we are done. I also clean and restore every estate pipe we sell in our catalog. We average 200 estate pipes each catalog, so I get a lot of practice whether it is an old, abused Medico all the way up to an S Bang.

Me: What about pipemaking in-house? There's a grand tradition of quality
"house brands" on this side of the ocean, and I'm curious if there is/might be an Uptown-brand pipe.

Kevin: We do carry a Savinelli pipe that is branded Uptowns Smoke Shop that retails for $79.00. I have also talked to a few new pipemakers about doing a house pipe for us. But I want it to be something unique. I would love it to retail for less than $100.00 and be a well made pipe and a great smoker.

Me: The same question for tobacco - Do you have your own blends, and if so, tell me a bit about them. Particularly the "tough" question, of, do you actually get involved in the recipes and leaf sourcing and all, or are we talking about the usual house blends made by mixing a few Lane bulk tobacs together?

Kevin: We carry a large selection of Lane and Stokkebye tobaccos. We sell a lot of bulk tobacco. Just as an example, we go through 40 pounds of our Green Hills blend a week.

We also have quite a few house blends that are actually blended by hand in the shop. Our most popular is Black Lung. It is a 70% percent Latakia blend with Cyprian and Syrian Latakia. We also have Lord Alfred which a Virginia Oriental blend and Caney Fork which is a popular Burley blend. These were all house blends before I arrived, but I plan on blending some new tobaccos. I really want to make a great cigar leaf blend. I have a lot of people go from cigars to blends like Robert Lewis 123 and Fox's Bankers. It is a great transition.
_____________________________________________________________

I hope you've enjoyed this little peek behind the scenes with Uptown's Smoke Shop!

Interview with Uptown's

2007-11-06T19:38:00.000+01:00

The Unseen Goblin

2007-10-31T14:35:00.000+01:00

Today's pic is a goblin that won't get posted to the Goblin catalog - a 9mm filter variation done for a request from a German friend. It's another fat, gnarly little beastie, and I thought it should at least get its picture posted somewhere to be enjoyed, even if not to the catalog. Working a 9mm filter tenon into that short horn stem turned out to be a real challenge, since the stem tapered too much to allow a very deep tenon insertion. I ended up solving the problem by adding a horn band/extension section to properly grip the 9mm tenon. Filter pipes are odd ducks - I can count on my fingers the number that I have ever made, and they often seem to present new challenges to make them work. Stylistically, though, the goblins are perfect for filters, with their really "fat by design" shanks, at least in most cases.

I think I will continue making goblins. They've been a blast, and I see no reason to confine them strictly to the Halloween season when I could be enjoying myself year-round with them. I guess it will mostly be a matter of how well they continue to sell, since the market for fat green pipes with claws can't be that large... or so I would think?

Next up are some special orders - horns, bulldogs, monster pokers... Except for the Goblins, the site will probably stay fairly quiet except for the occasional LB posting. We have a couple of cool mortas in stock, so I'm happy on that count. I'm currently in talks with a Chinese distributor to represent my pipes on the Asian market, so odds are good that the web catalogs may be going quieter than usual.

In other news, I type this today from Ubuntu, not XP. In past experiences, I've found Linux to be more of a curious oddity than an actual useful desktop tool, so I approached the latest Ubuntu distrib with some skepticism, but I've been pleasantly startled by... god forbid I say this, because I'll get mobbed by Linux enthusiasts... just how much it has become a real OS instead of a tinkerer's toybox. It identified all my hardware on install, with no problems. MP3 player plug-ins pop up on the desktop, as do camera cards. The printer prints. It's weird. This isn't the Red Hat Linux that I tried switching over to in 2000.

More and more, I've been moving my business work to open source software wherever possible, not from cheapness but for the sake of longevity and practicality - I think I've reached my limit of tolerance for the MS path of continual bloat, forced upgrade$$, abandoned older file formats, etc. We'll see how it goes. I already used open source for the bulk of my daily work (Open Office, AbiWord, Kompozer, Picasa) so the only crucial move-breaker looks to be Photoshop. Ugh, I'm going to have to deal with Gimpshop... Time will tell.

Pipe Pic of the Day

Darth Pipemaker

Fantasy Blowfish

Blowfish Madness

A Truly Excellent Tobacco

11pm on Sunday Night and Still Working

Back in Action

A Three Pipe Problem

Poker Madness

*Squeak!*

A Surprise!

The Crawler Pics

From the Crypt

Crawling towards completion

The Unforseen

Progress

Halloween in January

Why Dealers Matter

Happy New Year!

Whither the American Market?

Pretty, pretty, pretty

A Pipe Review

Last Call

Interview with Uptown's

Interview with Uptown's

The Unseen Goblin

Squeak!