Whimsy in the Air, but No Suction

Today's pic is another little pile of pipes that are on the way to Pipe & Pint, or at least they will be, depending on what days the post office is open next week. For once I am tripped up in reverse - expecting a US holiday and not getting one, instead of the more common situation of expecting everyone to be working and finding out this is Saint Elasmasaurus' Day or something.

They are a whimsical bunch, mostly mortas, with one Talbert Briar sandblasted Alchemist shape lurking in the background. Two of these were actually meant to go in the last box, but got held out when we noticed (during packing) that they had not been stamped! That poker in particular is a very neat piece.

News from Pipe & Pint is that their website is nearer completion, so with any luck, a lot of these pipes that I've been previewing will pop up online for sale sometime later this month, over there in the US. This is probably the next-to-last box I'll be sending P&P for the moment - I still have a small pile of Talbert Briars in process to finish and send over, but after that I will be starting on the FdP pipe project and that will pretty much crowd everything else out for a while. We'll see how it goes...

In the, "Never rains but pours" department, we've just recently lost our sandblasting vacuum again. I wrote a fairly harsh article on the quality of our SkatBlast cabinet and gear recently, and now have another reason to curse those people, as our replacement vacuum (second replacement vacuum, third replacement motor.... in three years) just died. Or rather, it began the exact same behavior as the past motors - shrieking like a banshee for a couple of days - and then died. I wrote a fairly disgruntled-but-polite email to the supplier, Matthys, last week, and never even received a reply. Needless to say, I would not advise anyone else to do business with these people, neither for the quality of the products they rep, nor for the service they're providing. In any event, that makes 1000+ euros in vacuums poured down the drain in failed parts, and now I get to go spend another 500-1100 euros on a new vacuum - from a different supplier! The trick will be finding one to fit (I hope the hose sizes are standard) that we can lay hands on easily.... which of course means lots of phone-booking in French to local outfits to see who carries sandblaster cabinet supplies. Yech. Whichever way it shakes out, it's guaranteed to be at least one solid day wasted as well as a big chunk of cash.

Some days I think, "One day we'll be caught up on our bills, and able to take some time off"... and then something else breaks.....