Poker Madness

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!