Whither the American Market?

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

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

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

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

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

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!

The Unseen Goblin

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.

A Hundred Colors of Green

Biz News - New Goblins are up! The site remains quiet otherwise, as I'm working on reducing my pile of special orders and requests to a somewhat more manageable level.

When I chose to make all the Goblins green, it spurred a great flurry of stain experimentation, because, let's face it, green isn't exactly a common pipe color and previously I could get by with just a couple of green shades and be happy. But, "needs must", as the saying goes, and so I've started creating multiple color swatches of stain combinations in the hopes of producing some really striking variations of green.

The color above is an early attempt at what I've begun to think of as "Froud Green", after noted fantasy artist Brian Froud, and his marvelous earth-toned fantasy artwork.

The trick, or rather the risk, is that a lot of the colors I'm working on are NOT what one thinks of as popular, 'commercially viable' colors for pipes, like the reds and oranges and browns that are so universally popular. Time will tell if the pipes will sell, and if the colors will be liked, though so far the reception seems to be quite positive. I'm certainly going against the current a bit, though, in searching out ways to create unusual colors and low-gloss finishes. While I'm pleased with the results so far, there still remains a lot of experimentation to do. One of my favorite "Froud Greens" (I can only hope that I or someone else will think up a proper name for the finish!) is this one:



(And yes, I realize that most people will think this photo looks the same as the first, but in fact they're quite different, and it's a trick of the lighting) This new combination of colors offers a marvelously rich, yet subtle, mixture of earth tones all blended into one overall appearance. Hints of earth brown and autumnal gold run throughout, and it looks quite nice on pipes even though it is a finish that is best appreciated through close examination and relaxed contemplation... It isn't at all the sort of eye-catching coloring that will grab people's attention on show tables, for instance. But that's OK, that isn't the goal. Amusingly, the base coloring in this version of "Froud Green" is a very deep purple!

And then, of course, we have the greens that are eye-grabbing - Here's a test of a green contrast stain designed to produce a green version of the popular Danish red and orange contrast stains. In this case I still want to get the blacks blacker, and in this case remove the browns for a consistent overall green shade, but it's coming along quite nicely, I think!

Following the Strings

So there I was, just finishing up posting a single new sandblasted morta, and suddenly, the strangest creature scurried past! I caught a quick snapshot of it in motion, but before I knew it, it was gone...

I've just finished reading Stephen King's "Lisey's Story". I was looking for a good October scary story, but that was a pretty disappointing choice, being much more of a very sad romance than a horror tale. But it did have one really neat throwaway line regarding the process of creativity, or rather the various processes. The writer in the book describes his writing process as being like wandering through the grass looking for pieces of colorful string. When one catches your eye, you pick it up. If you're lucky, the string will continue and take you somewhere. Some strings are short, others are quite long, and still others terminate abruptly and unexpectedly - A metaphor that describes my pipemaking process perfectly.

I'm always fascinated by the different methods people apply to the creation process of their crafts. Emily, by comparison, is completely different from me in her approach to the briar. She will sketch elaborate engineering designs on blocks, cut out profile patterns, and generally have a design completely mapped out in detail before she starts to work. I don't work that way - In fact, I can't work that way... Part of why I have always had a tumultuous relationship with special orders is that I'm positively lousy at trying to hammer the wood into preset forms. Instead, I look for strings... An idea here, a hint of a shape there, an interesting arrangement of the grain over here. I hope they'll take me somewhere, and I start shaping. Sometimes along the way, the string just snaps and goes nowhere, and sometimes it goes to dull or uninteresting places, but sometimes it carries me somewhere positively magical. Those are the times that make it all worthwhile.

Even pieces that may, in the end, seem to be very complex and certainly elaborately designed, are created this way - As often as not, I have no idea just where I'm going and am only working on a quick sketch or doodle that just "feels" like what I want. It's true that I do a lot of drawings of pipes, but often people will find them strange, incomprehensible smudges or scribbles, and the best I can come up with is, "It's that curve, you see? I wanted to catch the *feel* of that curve."

Always an adventure, this craft...

Building a Grimoire

Biz News - New pipes posted! There are two new Talbert Briar sandblasts and three new Ligne Bretagnes, one of which is cool and green.

Today's pic is of an old favorite of mine that just got a new facelift - This was the first "expensive" pipe I bought when I started getting interested in pipes, and I still recall the trepidation I had over spending that whopping $75 for a Peterson system pipe, instead of the usual basket pipes I'd been smoking. I'm going to make a post on Smokers' Forums about it sometime tomorrow, probably, but I wanted to go ahead and toss the pics up so I could link to them.

I've begun assembling a grimoire.

My memory has never been the greatest, and in recent years I've been all too conscious of that old silly saying, that I can't remember all I know. Stuff goes in and either falls out the other ear, or gets lost in the inner-brain info-murk and I can't recall it when I need it. After the xillionth time of staring at an annoying pipe problem and being certain that I had something like this happen around two years ago, but now I can't remember how I fixed it then, I've finally decided to try and create a central assemblage of what I've learned about pipemaking.

So far, this process looks something like a delivery truck full of notepads has exploded in a stain factory - My workshop desk is totally covered in notes written on scraps of paper over the years, and I'm gradually going through and deciding what goes into the grimoire and what gets ejected. My idea is to document various sets of processes that I've found to be solid and reliable, in all areas of pipemaking from drilling to staining to sandblasting, and even touching on related subjects such as tips for better photography and website editing.

My hope is that it will give me a handy reference - if I want to make a stain that shifts from one color to another down the length of a pipe, I'll be able to quickly refer to what I found to be the best way a few years ago, and follow my own instructions. Once it's mostly assembled, I'll hand copy it out of my spiral notebook and into something leather-bound and black and sinister-looking, and hoard it. Muahahahaha! (Actually, the idea of adding some enjoyable text and illustrations and self-publishing it had crossed my mind, but I suspect the effort would be far more work than the proceeds would pay for, from the five people on earth who would buy it...)

New stain, Better pics

I wasn't very pleased by the photographic results of those last shots from the workshop, so today I took advantage of the natural light out in the retail smoking lounge and snapped some considerably better photos of the new stain for sandblasts. I'd like feedback on this, as I'm likely to start finishing a fair number of pipes this way and I'd like to know beforehand if everyone hates it. It's a very subtle two-tone, with a color shift from a medium mahogany red in the recesses to yellow-gold on the highlights, with a semi-matte finish. I like it, but it does require some work, whereas just leaving a pipe unstained is of course zero labor, so I suppose the question is whether anyone else thinks it looks decent or not.

The Great Disconnect

Et voilà! In the pics above, one can see the first finished result of my sandblast staining experiments from a previous post. This pipe was done in the same method as the sample at the very bottom. It will be in the next Talbert Briar catalog update (some ways off yet) unless it sells in the meantime from these preview shots (It's a grade 4, 515 €). I'm mostly pleased with it - The coloration is JUST present enough so that the rings are further highlighted and the flow of the grain is apparent, without looking garish. Granted, it's MUCH easier to just leave a high-grade sandblast unstained, but I think this adds just a tiny bit more visual interest without compromising the "natural, virgin, see-there-are-no-hidden-flaws-here" look.

I got today's topic title from a throwaway comment on the pipemaking forum, in regards to the sometimes bizarre disconnection between the popular ideas of how pipes should be made versus how they're actually made. I don't want to make this post ten miles long by listing lots of examples, but let's consider one cherished chestnut:

Proper pipes should only be finished with carnuba wax.

In wandering through Rheinbach and looking at hundreds of the best high grade pipes available, I saw hardly any that were finished with just carnuba. In fact, finishing a pipe with just carnuba invites all sorts of problems - The stain can easily rub off or smear, the pipe will go sticky through the first smoke, and will be dull and smudgy thereafter. Carnuba wax has no resistance to heat and dissolves immediately in use. Aniline stain contains no inherent adhesiveness of its own - You can paint it on and wipe it right back off if it isn't somehow "stuck" in place. All of the best German, Danish, and even many American pipemakers utilize some sort of sanding sealer or washcoat to help keep their stain in place and looking good through years of use. This doesn't "seal" the wood at all, nor prevent it from "breathing" - Most of the finishes involved are natural themselves, so it's really odd that somehow carnuba got to be the "natural finish" with group approval while the other natural finishes are viewed as suspect.

Oil, shellac, lacquer - These are all natural products, with shellac and many lacquers being derived from the edible (If you really wanted to!) secretions of the lac bug, and oil being taken from wood resins. None of these finishes causes a pipe to "smoke hot", as is so often claimed - I really feel for the many guys who have stripped off their pipe's finish in hope of improving its smoke, only to find themselves with dirty, constantly smudging and staining pipes. Also, the concept that pipes should only be waxed flies in the face of reality in the case of sandblasted and rusticated pipes, which no sane person would want to try to wax on a commercial basis (It IS possible, if liquid wax is applied and evenly, more or less, distributed over the bowl, but the gooey liquidity that results from heating this accumulation isn't the definition of desirable).

The weird thing is that, with the rise of the internet and greater community between pipesters, we now have a struggling new group of semi-pro pipemakers (See "Open source pipemaking" for more on this) who have derived their know-how entirely from the pipe club ideas of "The way it should be done" rather than the way it's best done. Having been one of them, I feel for their puzzlement out there as they wonder why their pipes go dull, and never seem to have the long lasting shine of a "name high grade".

The question is, how did we get to the point where we have an entire buying group that believes something totally wacky and incorrect? The situation could be compared to a driver holding the ferocious belief that to be a good car, a car must be powered by teams of racing hamsters under the hood. None of the cars on the road are, most people would not really want a car powered by racing hamsters, and yet the misconception persists.

I'll hazard a guess, though - While shellac and oil are lousy covers for fills, various thicker surface glosses are excellent at disguising such faults. Factories doing volume business need some way to help hide their less-ideal production, and applying a strong even gloss over the surface can do it pretty decently. I suspect that over time, the mindset developed that everything even remotely able to disguise a fill's "glare difference" became suspect, and that probably got us to where we are today - that, plus the fact that thick surface finishes of this sort are subject to chipping, bubbling, and generally going ugly as time wears on them, as opposed to finishes that are part of the wood itself. The question, of course, is what the heck to do about it now, as the general buying public has this myth so firmly embedded in their minds that they reject any attempts to correct it - Hell, I'll probably lose a few potential buyers due to this post, because somebody out here will start spreading, "Teh Talb3rt usez shelak an thaz why all hiz pipe smok3 hott!!!"... while they happily puff on their equally "non PC-finished" Dunhills and Bangs and Barbis and what have you. At Rheinbach, a pipemaker I chatted with talked a bit about the lacquer he finished with, and added, "Of course, if anyone asks, I just use carnuba and nozeoil!"

And if anyone asks ME, my pipes are only finished with all-natural, distilled wax made from the pure milk of family-farm free-range cows that only drink from pure springwater and get milked by young blond girls named Heidi. :D

Superstitions!

Biz Stuff - I posted a pile of new Talbert Briars and a pile of new Talbert Mortas to the site. Some of them have already sold to folks on our email list, but there are still some excellent pieces available. As I write this, Morta Classic #89 seems to be sold also. The two to really have, however, are the Talbert Briar "Fantasy Calabash" and the TB Gold Dublin, which is ideal for fans of larger-bowled featherweight pipes. Also, the Gold Dublin is a perfect example of the staining techniques I discussed in the last blog entry.

Today's pic is a preview of soon-to-be-posted pipes - A Ligne Bretagne Collector churchwarden and an ODA-sized Talbert Briar.

I've meant to write a blog article on pipe superstitions, and specifically pipeMAKING superstitions, for some time. I get reminded of this every time I go hunting through the workshop for our green magic marker, so I can mark a drill bit's stop-depth. Yes, 'tis true... I am in many ways horrendously superstitious about my craft. Let me count the ways...

The Green Pen: Green has been my favorite color since I was a child. Later, when I got into painting, I read a good bit on color theory and color psychology as it pertained to human moods. Green feels natural - It's the color of grass and freedom and creativity, and every artist could do worse than to surround themselves with green "stuff". In my case, I have the Green Pen always on hand. It's a Sharpie permanent marker that I use to do, well, nearly everything... I draw rough pipe outlines on blocks with it and I do ALL of my drill bit marking with it. I do mean all. I will hunt the workshop for hours looking for the green marker, eschewing a can full of black, blue, and red markers, all because I have developed this pathological idea that if I mark my bit depths in green, the drilling will be good, but other colors are likely to go astray. This is only reinforced by the fact that the green markings nearly always DO come out ideally. Obviously, this works. The green pen has a companion, also -

The Green Pencil: I have a green technical drawing pencil that I use sometimes to sketch out pipe designs in advance. I don't want to use anything but this pencil. With this pencil, I have done the vague, barely identifiable scribbles that went on to become all of my most popular pipes. I've got a box full of a good hundred pencils of all shapes and sizes. I use one.

Beware of Doctor Mood Swing: I'm very sensitive to my own moods when I work on pipes. I have the vague, unpleasant fear that if I work on a pipe in a bad mood, that feeling will somehow transfer into the pipe itself, and it will become a bad pipe. This makes daily work oodles of fun, given the usual sorts of bother and irritation that we face in normal life. But, I've adapted and overcome via the wonders of work shuffling - If I start getting really annoyed by a particular pipe, I go and do a billiard (or other classical shape). This has become a mantra of our workshop: "Go make a billiard." The reason is that I don't invest emotion into classical shapes. I eye them carefully and pay close attention to keeping them balanced and as visually elegant as I can, but they don't bear the weight of, "Will this end up looking stupid?" that original freehands carry. They're guaranteed. I KNOW the end result will be attractive and practical, so I can work without stressing, which gets me back into a better frame of mind, so I can then return to working on the difficult freehand that isn't quite sure where it's going yet. In my mind, there is a firm chain of connection: Good Attitude > Good Work > Good Pipes.

The Lathe Cutter wants to Kill Me: Most of the other tools in the shop view me with either benign indifference or annoyance that I haven't oiled them lately, but my drawer full of metal cutting tools all want to kill me. Or at least maim as badly as possible. I'm positively paranoid about always removing the cutting tools from the metal lathe's tool post when I'm not using them, because in my experience, if I leave a sharp tool in the post, I will be tugging on something or twisting something or otherwise engaged, and as if by magic, my hand will slip off and wham into the cutting tool for a new slice. This will happen even if I'm on the opposite side of the workshop - I'm convinced that I could be draining the compressor and if my hand slipped, I'd be dragged a solid fifteen feet until I slammed it on the tool post.

I think that's enough for now...

The Good, the Bad, and the Really Ugly

Today's pic is a quick group shot of some of the new pipes that will be appearing on the website shortly, probably tomorrow, once they're joined by a couple of late arrivals. I'll finally have new pipes available in all three catalogs again!

Good heavens, this has been a busy late summer! If only more of that activity had actually involved making money... I've been spending a lot of time recently experimenting and trying new techniques to improve my work. The new smooths and sandblasts in this next website update will be some of the first results of all this fiddling, and they'll all sport what I hope will be improved color and finish quality.

But one doesn't get this stuff easy! There comes a point where it starts to require more and more labor just to gain a tiny extra bit of knowledge. Learning is easy absorption in the beginning, but eventually turns to huge amounts of work for tiny improvements over the years. Still, I think this sort of "shake up" is crucial to the survival and thriving health of any craftsman's work - I wouldn't want to ever hit a plateau where there was nothing left to learn and play with.

I thought I'd at least post some of these experiments, for amusement's sake as much as anything, as an example of just how many poor results one must contend with to find those rare excellent solutions. All of the pics below are variations of ways to stain sandblasted finishes - They are combinations of stains on test surfaces. Some work, some obviously do not...

First up is this, a yellow/gold highlight over black recess staining. I've never liked having to buff down all the edges of my blasts to show ring contrast, so I've developed different methods of contrast staining that enhance the depth contrast while leaving the edges bare. This one came out pretty well. The yellow doesn't go green (a common problem) and the contrast is strong and clear.



Here's a variant of same, using an orange top stain rather than yellow (and a less-fine blasting media). Another nice result, with clear difference between colors and no annoying blending. And then there was this:



Yowza! It's a stronger orange over black, and got dubbed the "Bumblebee Finish" because the contrast of the colors is so strong and the orange is so..... ORANGE. I think it looks great fun, though I don't know if it would actually sell, not to mention the fact that this is only a test slice, and such a combo could well be quite overpowering on a whole pipe. We'll see...

This one was a disappointment. I'd hoped for a nice golden red contrast, but the yellow so totally overpowered the red contrast stain that it ended up a murky mess that looks worse in real life than in this pic. We called it "egg-drop soup" and moved on.



The above test was considerably uglier. The yellow overpowered the black and dried very opaque, yet there's still enough color combining to make it look murkily pea green when seen from the right angles and in the right light. Moving on...



This one's done the same, yet with a yellow/orange color blend to help counteract the greening effect, and a diluted mix to let the understaining show through better. It makes a strong contrast, but the color is unpleasantly suggestive of baby excretions.

Much better! I wanted a coloration that could be used on the best specimens, the pipes that didn't need dark staining. They can always be left unstained, but I wanted to play around with ways of giving them just a little color while enhancing the contrast between ring edges and depths. The yellow is still a bit strong, but another trip round the block produced this:



Very subtle depth-to-edge contrast enhancement, beautiful color, and the added benefit of nicely showing the actual flame grain of the wood under the sandblasted surface. We'll see how it looks on a pipe one of these days...

And it's as simple as that! (Not counting the other ten slices I didn't have room to show, nor considering the next question of what effects different finishes would have on the colors of the different stains....)

New Stuff

Biz news - (Third repeat today, sorry, but I'm trying to keep this from getting buried as I add more articles) New pipes are up! There are new Talbert Briars and new Ligne Bretagnes. There were also a couple of new mortas, but they both sold almost immediately. I'll be very curious to hear what people think of the new smooth Talberts, and somebody should pounce on LB #07-32 very quickly as that is one extremely neat finish for the money.

I mentioned earlier that I'd spent most of August experimenting instead of making pipes. This connects back to my last post about Open Source Pipemaking.. I came home with a lot of new ideas to try. Conversations with Danish and German pipemakers offered some interesting new techniques in finishing, and I couldn't resist spending some time slicing up briar discard blocks to test these ideas in combination with each other, and also in concert with new sandblast finishes. I think this may influence my future work, or at least I hope so - I've just posted some new, high grade smooths to the catalog that I'm quite proud of, but unfortunately I've sometimes had to fight a bit with "typecasting" when selling smooths before. I like making them, but a lot of buyers seem to want to only come to me for dramatic sandblasts, and smooths can end up sitting unsold (I continue to boggle over why the Suscinio didn't sell immediately, and is still here three weeks later, when it is simply a magnificent piece of briar). I do hope I can sell more smooths - I'd hate to be stuck making nothing but sandblasts, because I know I'd come to resent the work in short order.

The photo above is of one set of tests - different methods of achieving those wonderful stark black grain contrasts. There are actually four different methods in play there. From left to right, the first is a deep orange over black, the second is a bright yellow over black, the third is just black contrast stain with no top color, and the fourth utilizes a wood coloring method I've sometimes used that simulates aging, with contrast stain applied on top. Expect to see any and all of these finishes appearing on pipes in the future!

I haven't forgotten sandblasting, though:



My intention is to marry my own techniques for sandblast staining with some of the tricks picked up from round-table chat at Rheinbach to produce some new and unique sandblasted finishes. Here are three examples in the photo, midway along their trek, with dark brown, black, and mahogany contrast stains applied. They'll each be getting a final coloring to check compatibility and appearance, and eventually the results of this work will be appearing in the catalog as brand new finishes. (FWIW, the left block is contrast dark brown intended to mate with a yellow top coat, the center is contrast black to mate with an orange top coat, and the right piece is mahogany contrast to mate with a pale yellow tint to create a really nice golden orange blast finish

But there's no need to wait, as there are already pipes posted using some of these methods... This Ligne Bretagne, for instance!
What I love about this look is that it creates extra contrast and drama in the surface of the blast texture, even on pipes that have shallower blasts (A frequent problem on some of the thinner-walled Ligne Bretagne stummels). In this way, I can give a 100 € pipe a finish comparable to a 500 € pipe in a way that's economically feasible, which makes everyone happy. It may not have the actual physical depth of a Talbert Briar blast, but it has a richness of color and contrast that make it stand out, IMO.

My pipes are changing in other ways - Recent buyers can probably attest that I've been gradually changing my bits, with the latest ones being considerably thinner and with much deeper V slots in the mouthpieces. I think this is an improvement. Also, this latest catalog update brings another odd change - the look of the pics themselves. Previously, I would simply brighten the shots and white-airbrush over any background details, but for the latest pics I've used Photoshop's "extract" feature to remove them completely from their backgrounds. Goods and bads... The colors are MUCH truer in the new pics, but it takes longer and the edges sometimes end up wonky. Time will tell.

Rheinbach Afterthoughts, pt. 2, Open Source Pipemaking

Biz news - New pipes are up! There are new Talbert Briars and new Ligne Bretagnes. There were also a couple of new mortas, but they both sold almost immediately. I'll be very curious to hear what people think of the new smooth Talberts, and somebody should pounce on LB #07-32 very quickly as that is one extremely neat finish for the money.

Some time back, I jotted down a note to myself to write a blog entry inspired by the book Wikinomics. The book is an interesting look at the new world of mass collaboration, and our newfound ability to vastly improve our performance through information sharing. It's a bit idealistic in places but the core truths are there - The success of open source projects like Wikipedia and Ubuntu are becoming major challenges to the established commercial alternatives, and they're doing it via free cooperative info-sharing rather than the cloistered, secretive world of old-style corporate think.

What the hell does this have to do with pipes?

Not that long ago, pipemaking was a fairly secretive process. Individuals had their own techniques and that was that - If you wanted to learn, you begged at the door or became an apprentice or got a job sweeping floors in a factory. In the late 90's, I opened a section on my website devoted to explaining and teaching pipemaking techniques, with pictures and step-by-step information. I never in my wildest dreams imagined the sort of impact this would eventually have. I caught some flack for it at the outset, from pros who didn't want to face part-timer competition, but the concept of information sharing for the betterment of all is too strong to go away. Answering questions quickly got too much for me to handle while trying to run a business, so I shut it down around 2002, but Tyler Beard picked up the idea and expanded it with dramatic improvements until it became the Pipemakers' Forum. History repeated itself and it ate him alive also, eventually spurring him to pass the torch of forum op to Kurt Huhn, on whom bets are currently being taken.

Mark Tinsky remarked to me in 2001 that, "Man, these new guys are getting good really fast these days! It used to be you had to make pipes for twenty years to get this skilled." I think a lot of this is due to the internet information sharing that we've all participated in. It's had a profound impact on the pipe scene, in both good and bad ways. The Good - Everyone has gotten better, and we get better faster, and this makes all our pipes better which benefits collectors who get better value for their money, wherever they turn. The Bad - We've gained roughly ten thousand part time pipemakers now who compete for food money with the full-timers, who already have a hard enough time making ends meet to pay their bills without having to be compared to some guy who can put 500 hours into a single pipe and sell it for $100 because it's just pizza money to him.

And then there's the Ugly - Namely, that you can teach some people everything there is to know about an art, and they'll still turn out bad work because they just don't have the eye for it...

There are still tiers. I share a lot of info and am happy to help, but there are things I keep private and only share with other professionals who share equally with me (A worthy point. I've encountered, all too often, guys who want to ask every question in the book but clam up the first time you ask a question in return. Info-sharing goes both ways, and these are the people who'll never get another explanation out of me). This is the most potent and effective information sharing, because no matter how much you learn, there's still a lot more to be learned, and odds are that someone else out there has been wasting his shop time researching just the thing you're ignorant about.

The latest and most fascinating entry into the internet pipe scene is our very own wiki, the Pipedia. It's an incredible idea, and is fast shaping up to be the ultimate resource for anyone entering the pipe world. I think in a few years, we'll wonder what we ever did without it, and I believe it will equally benefit both newbie and pro. I've even got my own wiki page, how strange! Pipedia could very well become the joint venture that keeps pipes on the world map. Because, after all, there's always more to learn...

Rheinbach Afterthoughts, pt 1

Biz news - New pipes are up! There are new Talbert Briars and new Ligne Bretagnes. There were also a couple of new mortas, but they both sold almost immediately. I'll be very curious to hear what people think of the new smooth Talberts (like the one pictured here), and somebody should pounce on LB #07-32 very quickly as that is one extremely neat finish for the money.

August... Where did August go? It seems like only yesterday that we got back from Rheinbach. Between getting the flu and spending a good chunk of my time this month experimenting with new finishes and staining techniques, I haven't done as much pipemaking as usual, but I'll get back to normal production in September. Now that I've had a chance for my impressions of the show to gel, and a bit of time to talk with other pipe folks about it, I have some afterthoughts. I have several subjects to cover, so I'll be breaking them into different postings, with this first being on the topic of European pipe shows.

In my opinion, it was an excellent show. I hope it continues. That said, it did suffer from one serious drawback - exemplified by the conflict with another vendor who tried opening a table there - and that is that it was the sole creation of one retailer. I mean no disrespect or discredit to Achim Frank at all, because if it were me doing all the work, I wouldn't want my competition setting up a dozen tables next to me either, but ultimately this is why the best and biggest pipe shows are the products of pipe clubs rather than commercial ventures. For any business person to tackle that level of work, it has to make money or at least break even, and that's always going to mean trying to maximize the playing field for best personal sales. Shows by pipe clubs, however, get every vendor involved, and those turn into the biggest and best shows... and not coincidentally, the best sales venues as well, because while there's plenty of competition, the sellers don't have to do much more than turn up and cover a table with goods.

So why don't we have a major pipe club-sponsored pipe exposition in Europe? We've got the population, the closeness of geography, and plenty of artisans and factories. It's a serious question, and one I can't answer, not being European myself. Go to the states and there's a pipe club in nearly every state, and many of them host their own small shows... some of which grow into CORPS-sized extravaganzas, not to even mention Chicago. But I don't see this happening much over here, and I'm not sure why. The French pipe club made an abortive attempt with the Mondial de Pipe show near Paris, but that was sunk before it ever started by its own restrictions and prohibitive costs.

There may be hope in Germany, though, with a new show starting in Fürth. I was alerted to this show by Rolf Ostendorff, who is promoting it for some good reasons - It's a club-sponsored show and it's being shaped to (with luck) become an international event. They have a really impressive lineup of attending pipemakers for the first show, and even such factory giants as Vauen and Denicotea will be there. Alas, it is in November and there's no way I can afford to attend, but I'll be curious to hear the reports and perspectives, and see where this goes.

Where is our European Chicago show?

Why I make pipes

Today's photo is a sneak preview of one of the Talbert Briars from the next website update. After Rheinbach, I thought it would be fun to make some lighter, more unusual pipes for a change of pace, as we work to finally get some new stock into all three of our website catalogs.

Why do I make pipes? There are lots of reasons. It's fun, I get to be my own boss, I love working with the wood, and I get to do something creative for a living. However, there's another motivation that I don't speak of often, because it borders perhaps on the squeaky New Agey realm, and that is that I believe that making other people happy is a good thing to do in this life. Good karma, if you will. All over the world now, there are people who come home from a long, maybe difficult, perhaps even traumatic day, and cap off their evening by spending a few restful minutes with a drink and one of my pipes... Something that I made gives them a few minutes of relaxation and peace. I believe this is a good purpose, possibly even one of the best purposes we can hope for in a lifetime. But I don't talk about it much, because so often the world of pipe collecting gets bogged down in the bickering, forum wars, and minutia obsession that it's easy to lose sight of the noblest purposes of the hobby, at least until you get an email like this one:

From Louise Gariépy,
Hi!
I am Hans Peter Strobl's wife. We talked a little bit when Peter ordered his last pipe from you

I am sad to tell you that Peter did not receive your last message.

When he ordered the pipe, I don't know if you knew it, he was in the Hospital, going through a necessary but dangerous procedure: a stem cell transplant. He had a been fighting a very resistant lymphoma since more than 2 years, and this stem cell transplant was the only hope, not that he could be cured, but might life a year or 2 longer..

He came out of the hospital Friday the 13th of July, seemed pretty well, but only 8 days later, he died of a heart attack probably provoked by a deterioration of his red cells, because he felt much better in the first days out of the hospital, but started feeling abnormally weak 6 days later.

He admired your work so much, and at least I can tell you that your pipe had come timely, he was extremely happy with it, and had a chance to smoke it at least once. As a matter of fact, it is the last pipe that he smoked before he died, and he did it with great joy!
Had the pipe arrived a few days later, it would have come too late, and my heart would have been still more broken, if possible.

I do not know you, and do not know much about pipes, except that it was his life-long passion.

Had he lived, he probably could not have resisted the pleasure of buying another of your beautiful pipes ( he showed me your web site so often), I wanted you to know that if you never hear again from him, it was not because he did not like the pipe!

Maybe when you build your next pipe, please think about him for a few seconds.

Be happy and healthy as long as possible,

Louise Gariépy

There isn't much more I can say to this very moving letter, except to the line, "Maybe when you build your next pipe, please think about him for a few seconds."
I definitely will.

Rheinbach conclusion - Peter Heinrich's

Peter Heinrich's pipe shop, the "House of 10,000 Pipes", is the most amazing pipe shop I have ever set foot in. It is in Cologne, about a half hour's drive from Rheinbach, and we spent all the day Monday just wandering through Cologne seeing sights until we ended up at Peter's place and nearly vanished forever. I'm not going to do as much writing on this post because the descriptions in the Peter Heinrich's web gallery tell most of the story. Peter bought portions of surrounding buildings and now his shop extends through multiple floors and landings, and includes one room for factory pipes, one room for artisan pipes, one room for cigars, one room for exclusively Cuban cigars, and finally a Cuban-style cabana smoking room where visitors can relax with pipe and drink. It is truly an amazing place. For anyone thinking of vacationing in or near Cologne, Germany, Peter's shop is sufficient reason to plan an entire vacation around. Unfortunately, we ended up having dinner waiting for us and had to be dragged out, or I'd probably have been there till closing!

Rheinbach, after the show, plus ranting

Note - If you've missed the first post on Rheinbach, you may want to scroll down a bit in order to read them in chronological order of writing.

As with most pipe shows, the other half of the fun is the after-show activities. Here again, I have assembled a web gallery of after-show pics. We arrived too late for the Friday gathering, but Saturday evening provided an excellent chance to get together for eats, drinks, and smokes. It kicked off at an outdoor restaurant (pictured above) where we had dinner, and then moved down a couple of blocks to Achim Frank's bar, where we generated some amazing low-lying clouds of pipe smoke as we sampled our way through the German beers.

Pipe shows, man, they stress me out... ;)

Everyone got on well and I think I can safely say that a good time was had by all. This seems odd in a way, considering how vehement some folks can get on the online pipe forums, but then again, one thing I've often noticed is that the worst "mouths" of the online forums never seem to actually turn up at shows. I did wonder if Erwin and Nicholas would kill each other at the show, but all seemed OK.... Alas, now after only a few days back, already the FumeursdePipe forum has erupted into new flame wars over the same old, same old. I truly do not understand why there seems to be such an inevitable schism between smokers of high grade handmades and smokers of factory pipes. In fact............

[Cue rant mode]

I DON'T CARE!

I don't look down on somebody who's happy with his Chacom, and I don't feel intimidated by somebody with 37 Bo Nordhs. I don't care, I just don't care. We're all pipe enthusiasts. My INTERESTS lie with the high grade handmades, so I don't spend much time reading various threads comparing drugstore tobaccos and Parkers versus Chacoms. This doesn't mean that I don't respect them or in any way consider them lesser human beings. They're pipes, not social classes. Pipes are for enjoyment, whether you're smoking 1Q in a cob or 20 year old Balkan Sobranie in a Bang. Personally, I prefer the latter, but I can happily enjoy the heck out of both. Unfortunately, there are a lot of small-minded people out there who find any expression from "the other class" so personally intimidating that they're simply unable to resist opening fire any time they feel a discussion or topic may be moving outside of their comfort zone. I still recall one particular idiot who simply could not let any mention of high grade pipes pass without flinging out accusations of snobbery, bragging, elitism, etc. Frankly, I've seen much more "elitism" in the people who claim to be "anti-elitist" than in those they're supposedly protesting.

They're just pipes.

Little pieces of wood with holes drilled in them for smoking.

They're for relaxation and enjoyment, for accompanying good books and good company. They're not for dividing people into armed camps, really. I have cobs, basket pipes, Stanwells, Petersons, Dunhills, Ser Jacs, Castellos, and even a pair of Bangs, and I smoke and enjoy them all. If someone sees me smoking, or talking about, a cob or a Bang, and they have a problem with that, then the problem is theirs, in my humble opinion. And on that note...

[/end rant]

After the dinner (I had weiner schnitzel as my introduction to German food), when we moved to Achim's bar, we had a short time to wander around inside his pipe shop. While his place is dwarfed by the labyrinthine Peter Heinrich's (which I'll post about next), Achim's shop is still packed to the gills with pipely goodness and has a marvelous little hidden rear den full of amazing pieces. The visit was like manna from heaven for me, since it has been a full FIVE YEARS since I visited a "real" pipe shop. The typical French tabac might have a few Butz-Choquins clipped on a display behind the counter, and some pouches of Clan or Amsterdammer (Maybe a few tins of Dunhill Standard Mild if you're lucky..), but I have yet to encounter what I'd consider to be a genuine, full-service pipe shop in France... Something that caters to the full spectrum of the market with a wide range of tobaccos and pipes to frolic through. The gallery photos only give a slight impression of the sheer sense of cozy fun to be found in such a shop.



Sunday ended the show with a smaller and quieter gathering at Jörg's, where I got to meet a fellow Gray Fox member (Bonjour Heinz!) as well as a very entertaining pipemaker. I think we were all overshadowed by Jörg's hospitality, however - Take a close look at the labels on those wine bottles in the photos. We had 1988 Clos de Chateau (amazing) and a 91 Grand Cru red (I'm not normally partial to red wines, but this was excellent). Toppers, however, was the 40 year old bottle of Anguilla rum that Jörg opened - Given that my exposure to rum has largely been of the Bacardi variety, this was a potent and delicious experience.

And before we knew it, the show weekend was over. That wasn't the end of our visit, though, since we stayed on vacation an extra couple of days, spending one day in Cologne (including the visit to Peter Heinrich's that will comprise the next blog post) and a day in Lille. Folks interested in those locations and our touristy observations on Germans, Germany, and vacationing in Europe are invited to peek over at my Life in France blog over the next day or so, as I will be posting our (non-pipe) travel experiences there.

Rheinbach!

Biz News - New pipes are up! I've posted the pipes we brought back from Rheinbach. Several of them have already sold to customers on our email list, but there are still a few available - new Talbert Briars and a sole Ligne Bretagne churchwarden.

We're back from the Rheinbach pipe show. We had a really good time and the show was a lot of fun. In the interest of trying to sort out a lot of random and not always connected impressions, I'm going to split up my writing on our travels between this Pipe Blog and our Life in France blog, because we also visited downtown Cologne and Lille (and have things to say about both), but they have little to do with pipes.

For starters, though, let's talk about Rheinbach, the show. I know everyone wants pics, and I have just posted a gallery of Rheinbach show photos, with more galleries to come on the different topics of our trip. There you can see some photos of our table, of the show environs, and of many other pipemakers' tables including David Enrique, Love Geiger, Bruto Sordini, Heiner Nonnenbruich, Bertram Safferling, and more. It was quite a nice show, all the more so because it was a one man effort on the part of Achim Frank, rather than a club show. This is both a good and a bad thing - On the one hand, a one man show can be very concise and tightly planned, but on the other hand, putting on a show is a huge undertaking and leads to quick burnout. I hope there will be future Rheinbach shows, but I could not fault Achim if he chose not to, just to avoid the work. Also, this show had a bit of drama when Per Bilhail and Tom Eltang departed the show early due to some misunderstanding over the rules of tables and vendor selling. I don't know the details, but I was sad I missed Tom (We literally said hello at the door as he was leaving with a crate of pipes and materials under his arm).


The display of Eltangs at Achim Frank's table

How did it differ from US shows? It was smaller than most - around the size of TAPS, maybe, or perhaps half the size of CORPS. However, it had a HUGE ratio of "horsepower to weight" - It was virtually an assembly of all the best European pipemaking gods. And then there was me rattling around in their midst. Very intimidating company...! One certainly must stress a little when going to a show where you'll be surrounded by tables covered in Beckers, Eltangs, Barbis, and so on. Unlike a US show which would be largely full of dealers, estate vendors, tobacco blenders, etc, there were only a couple of tables of tobaccos and estates, with the largest portion of real estate given to individual artisan pipemakers and their works.

Also unlike a US show, they had alcohol!



Someone got very wise when they realized there would be a great market for interesting whiskeys and other "microbrewery" drinks at a pipe & tobacco show.

So what were my personal impressions? Please keep in mind that these are my opinions only, not meant as any sort of empirical judgments or anything to take very seriously. Overall, one thing that struck me was that the pipes were mostly quite small by my standards - certainly sizes that I would feel very awkward about charging high prices for. I suppose it may be partly my American mindset, but I'm still not quite sure what to think of 850 € pipes that are the size of thimbles. Apparently there is much more of a market for such pipes than I would have guessed, though, as even the medium-sized high grades at the show tended to seem quite small to me. Also, more and more I think the standardization of the Danish high grade "look" is getting quite boring... the endless tables of smooth contrast-stained horns and blowfish all tended to blend together a bit. One notable standout was Axel Reichert, who had some amazingly neat and original shapes that showed genuine originality. Heiner and Love Geiger also had some fun shapes, while Bruto Sordini's table stood apart for his distinctly Italian style. As usual, Cornelius Mänz had a cool display, aside from just generally being a fun fellow to talk to.

Aside from lots of small pipes, another big trend I noticed were pipes with pencil-thin shanks, or just pencil-thin construction in general. Personally, I find this both freaky and terrifying - the breakage risks inherent in such reed-like pipes is not something I would want to be responsible for, as I'd feel bound to issue refunds or replacements every time someone snapped the bowl off of their shank just by gesturing at someone with their pipe. I can see the appeal from an artistic perspective as well as from a "WOW - The ENGINEERING!" perspective, but I guess I'm too innately biased towards the opposite (thick, rugged) end of the spectrum. I did feel a bit mis-matched to the forum, though, at our table behind our selection of large ODA-ish thick-walled sandblasts.


I look rather insane in half the show pics...

Other observations! The Europeans apparently haven't followed the current hot trend in the online pipe forums against silicate-based bowl coatings, as nearly every pipe there used that sort of mix, despite much lofty prognostication online about why it's "bad". I was probably the only one there using an edible carbonizing (Note - I prefer silicate coatings myself, but I bow to the demands of the market when it's feasible, such as in coating recipes). I had no ideas of what to expect to sell, but in the end, the pipes we sold were the most exotic Talberts and the price-friendly Ligne Bretagnes, of which we very nearly sold out. The only middle-range Talbert I sold was a smooth, which suggests to me that European buyers simply aren't looking for (or perhaps not accustomed to) the concept of high-end sandblasts as desirable pipes. Then again, they don't seem to have had much exposure to same, either - There's really no way to say this without sounding superior or snotty, so I'll just simply say that I found the European high grade blasts there a pretty mediocre lot. There were a few standouts that reached "OK" to "Good" levels, but by and large I often found myself picking up a 700 € sandblast that looked as though it had barely been touched, and then either buffed to non-grain-discernible finish or simply stained uniformly brown and stamped done. The focus certainly seems to be All-Smooth-All-the-Time, with little thought or development given to creating blasts as an art form and end unto themselves. Unsurprisingly, the really extraordinary blasts that I took all sold out within two days after the show to American collectors. I guess this means I am inescapably a product of my home culture! I'm not complaining, however, since I was proud and pleased to at least have something a bit different on display, because after all, isn't variety one of the great reasons for attending a pipe show?

Coming away from the show, I'm ready to jump back into the workshop. As usual, the back-and-forth with the other makers has given me lots of new ideas to try out, new goodies to order, and new inspirations in design. I've picked up some new staining techniques to try, and I think I will work on making a few more smaller, high-end smooth pipes, just as an experiment to gauge the reactions of the market. Obviously such pipes sell over here, and it's certainly easier to get a flawless small pipe from a block than a flawless large pipe just due to the law of exposed wood-vs-flaw odds. Sales were good (We paid for our trip and came home with money, the essential bottom line) so I'd do it again if the show continues. Keep checking back here over the next day or so, and also in the Life in France blog, for more photo galleries and travel commentary on the after-show dinner, Achim Frank's pipe shop, Peter Heinrich's pipe shop, and the cities of Cologne and Lille. In closing, here are a couple of pics of a very unusual Talbert that was actually sold even before it went to the show...