We can rebuild him

Another trip down memory lane with another 1998 pipe donation needing some work.  This pipe, which I informally dubbed the Marlowe after a certain PI, was one of the most difficult things I'd tried at the time, though looking at it now it's a terribly clunky thing -

To my credit, or excuse, it was my first attempt at a "classical" shape and done without a lathe.  This is a crucial point in understanding the thing.  While it may look a bit wobbly and thick, it was not smoothly cut while spinning solidly on a benchtop lathe... It was shaped by hand files while spinning on friction mounts chucked in my hand drill which was strapped to my workbench with screw clamps.  And this while sitting in an unconditioned garage in the evenings after an 8 hour workday.  The bowl "ring" looks terrible because I was too afraid of my wobbly mount flying off to try to cut deep into the wood! In a lot of ways, even though it doesn't look good, I'm happy it came out as well as it did considering the tools I was working with.  I'm particularly proud of the band fit I achieved - A silver band applied jeweler-style with heat expansion, which has held on perfectly through the last 21 years of use:

When it came back here, however, I couldn't leave it as it was.  For one, the stem was so loose it was falling out so that HAD to be addressed, plus I just couldn't bring myself to sell it again looking as lumpy as it did.

Where the heck to begin, though?  The constraints of the shape meant there wasn't a lot to work with, so no wholesale redesign was possible.  Instead, I adopted a point-by-point approach, fixing each individual issue first before taking an overall appraisal of the result.  First up - The primitive bowl ring was redone as a double ring surrounding a hand-rusticated center ring:

That served the dual purpose of fixing the original ring and also giving the bowl more visual "weight" to help balance that overly large shank.  Next up was tightening the shank-to-bowl join for a more polished and professional appearance:

All this detailing, however, could not get around the pipe's underlying visual issue, that the bowl was too small for the shank.  And this was an f-stop problem, because I couldn't "add more bowl" and the shank could not be made smaller without removing and almost certainly destroying the original valuable silver band.  In the end, I opted for a two-pronged approach - Giving the shank a VERY subtle taper inwards as it moved from band to bowl, and giving the bowl a beveled front edge.  That seemed potentially risky as it was removing mass from an already-too-small bowl, BUT... that mass was rounded and clumsy and adding some edges and detail would, I hoped, give the bowl enough extra visual weight and detail that it would offset the lost mass.  And voila:

 

"You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" - It's a truth of life.  But, if you try hard and think about it a lot and put way more work into it than it deserves, you can sometimes turn a lost cause into a minor win with enough stubborn determination.

The problem now is... What the heck do I DO with it?  It has far more labor time in it than it's worth, given that in the end it's a 21 year old 1998 estate pipe restoration.  Also, annoyingly, I have gotten very fond of the thing.  It was a hard fought project both originally and in its "v2.0" recreation, and I can't help but think it would be an excellent pipe to add to my own collection.  I have little enough of my own work as it is, so maybe...

The Ligne Bretagne Morta Collector

Two blog posts in two weeks!  Will wonders never cease...  But I had two things worth saying, a rare event in itself.  I'm back this time to introduce (or re-introduce) the Ligne Bretagne Morta Collector:

I had a great time working on all those Ligne Bretagne Dukes and Dons recently.  It's a fun shape, very elegant and stylish, and offering a lot of creative freedom in the final renditions, and I got to thinking...  We don't have a lot of morta left from Brittany, and I recalled that we had a bag of small blocks that was actually labeled "Probably too small for pipes".  I went digging through our stock for this and voila, it was just as I remembered:

Too small for pipes with traditional shanks, yes, but...  a lot of these are perfect for Dukes, Dons, and other "no shank" variations.  Turning these last smaller blocks into pipes would be a productive way to finish them out, and preferable to the previous option of just cutting them up as decorative rings, tamper parts, etc.  And when I say "these last", I mean it - In the photo above, you're looking at the last of my smaller blocks of Breton morta stock.  I've got some bigger ones set aside for higher-end pipes, but what you see above is it for the small ones.  When it's gone, it's gone, and with no other pipemakers likely to ever set up shop in the Briére, this is almost certainly the last Breton morta in the world.

What's different about it?  I've worked with morta from a few other suppliers.  Thus far in my experience, the Breton morta is denser, harder, and heavier.  It's very rough on workshop equipment, and just sanding it is prone to wear out sanding discs and drums almost immediately.  It also possesses, in my opinion, a richer, darker, earthier flavor than other mortas that I've worked with.  It's positively made for latakia, and excels with any really strong and dark tobacco, offering a flavor that is quite literally like nothing else.

So, this will be the next site update!  We're working on the first several of these now.  I plan to work our way through that box you see above until they're all turned into pipes, or at least all the blocks that are usable as pipes.  This is pretty much the definition of "Limited Edition"!

Making the New Ligne Bretagnes

It's possible this may be too technical (AKA "boring") to write on, but what the hell... I thought I would make a quick post on the process behind the creation of the new Ligne Bretagne Duke & Don shapes.  I've been wanting to do something like this for some time now, as a wholly alternate shape style for the Ligne Bretagnes.  When you're working with partially pre-fraized stummels, your final design options are perforce limited, but I find it an entertaining challenge to see just how much variety and individual personality I can inject into the line, considering that they are in essence machine-made pipes.

If I were making this as a Talbert Briar, it would in many ways be simpler.  I'd cut a length of stem rod, hand-turn the tenon to the desired size, file the stem to shape, drill and hand-turn a custom band to the desired style, and drill and turn/shape the bowl to what I wanted.  All of this would add up to $400+ of shop labor hours.

Ligne Bretagnes, of course, sell for $140-$190 on average, so none of the above is possible.  I need methods to do everything above for roughly 1/4 the amount of shop labor time, given that Ligne Bretagnes also need to be priced where they can be sold direct OR wholesaled to retailers.

The first order of business are the bands.  To get high quality AND time efficiency, these are factory-machined parts that come exactly sized and pre-polished - Each one is identical so my shank size turning can be pre-set. (In reality, I use three different sizes of bands, and three different styles, to accommodate the different shank sizes of various bowl shapes, but this is the thing about individual small-shop craftsmanship - Nothing is ever *quite* identical).

Below you can see some of the ingredients of the Ligne Bretagne Duke/Don stew:

A few bands always come scratched or otherwise imperfect, so I set these aside and use them for "masking" - Pop them onto the turned shanks to protect them during sandblasting and overall bowl shaping, then swap them later with the final, finished bands.  The turning of the shank should be tight enough to hold the bands on by pressure alone, but I always add some commercial-grade epoxy just for extra insurance over time, since the wood swells and shrinks with temperature and humidity.

Another key part of the process is to greatly speed up the tenon sizing and fitting.  On most Ligne Bretagnes, I use Delrin tenons - I prefer them for their strength and smooth fit.  Here, however, this isn't possible.  The thin stems simply don't have enough body to insert a Delrin tenon into, even if it were easily possible to drill them out without splitting them.  Instead, they'll need to be turned.  This simply can't be done by hand for a $147 pipe, so instead I set aside the time to assemble and customize a commercial tenon turner.  Here's what one looks like:

The turner is mounted on the headstock of one of my metal lathes.  The various slots allow cutting blades to be ground and inserted for a variety of fraizing purposes, but here we're just focusing on making a reliably-sized tenon.  I mounted the cutting assembly onto the head, then cut a piece of guide pin that matched the airhole sizes of our stems.  I also drilled and cut a thicker bracing tube to mount it into the center of the cutting head, and both keep the guide pin from flexing for better turning accuracy, as well as providing a handy stop point for each tenon so they would be a consistent length.

Once this was assembled, a lot of "test and size" experimenting took place - The adjustment knob above is slowly dialed to slide the cutting blade in and out towards the guide pin, until it's at the exact point where it will cut a tenon that matches the size of your drilled mortises.  The sliding tool mount is then locked in place.  The small carbide cutting blade at the tip will automatically shave down a stem tenon as the stem is pressed onto it, while leaving a slight bevel at the base of the tenon to add rigidity and help protect a bit against snapping.  Here it is in use:

The cutting head is spun on the lathe and the stem is pushed onto the guide pin.  The blade cuts a perfectly-sized tenon every time.  It takes a lot of time in the set-up process to customize it to provide accurate results each usage, but once that work is done, turning a tenon is as simple as pushing the stem onto the guide pin.  In this way, I can reliably make dozens of pipes efficiently and with reliably quality fit and finish from pipe to pipe, and make them all on a budget that a lot more people can afford!  Et voila, the new Ligne Bretagne Dukes and Dons, a whole new look for the brand to help kick off 2015:

(Note - This does NOT mean that all Ligne Bretagnes will look like this from now on - I'll continue to make the classic standard shapes as well.  But it is something new and different and fun to add to the brand, and that's always a good thing)

The Livescribe Smartpen

Note - This is a product review of a new toy I'm using.  If this review gets you all wildly fired up to buy one of these things, you can buy one from this link and I'll get a few bucks of credit and you'll get 15% off, which is nice savings on a gadget that can run $100 to $200, depending on how fancy you want it.  I was not given a free pen or anything else to shill for these folks, I just happen to think it's a cool gadget and I needed a blog post subject this week - Ergo, a hardware review.

Over the years of writing this blog, I've commented on some various unusual workshop tools, and here is another one that's fast becoming an essential part of my working process.  I don't know how other pipemakers keep their records, but I am an inveterate scribbler - My work station is usually overflowing with small notepaper scraps that I've covered with pipe designs, ideas, and reference instructions for various processes.  In the past, this stuff would typically get lost or tossed out, leading me to the frustrating problem of often having to RE-figure out how to accomplish an effect that I'd already figured out a year or two previous, but hadn't done in a while.

The first step in handling this was to create my own little "grimoire" in the Mac app Notebook.  That's an extremely useful program that allows one to assemble piles of mixed media - Audio, video, drawing scans, text, etc - into a notebook format that can be easily annotated and added to.  I started scanning my sketches in and made a point to type up the step by step guides that I made for our workshop reference.  It worked well and I quickly assembled a fairly comprehensive "Book of Pipemaking", a cyber-tome that includes such errata as staining guides, toolmaking tips, HTML and website info, writing ideas, design ideas, and even a blacklist of known bad seed buyers to avoid selling to.  This worked pretty well but for one flaw - My scribbling typically runs far ahead of the info that I have taken the time to enter into the notebook, so there were plenty of times I would throw something out instead of bothering to scan it and enter it.  Also, just typing out notes is time-consuming and written text doesn't always convey the nuances and asides that I might have had at the time.

Enter the Livescribe "Echo" smartpen, a 4 gigabyte "pen" that can literally record my drawings and handwriting into itself as I scribble, and transfer that directly to the computer when plugged into a USB port.  This is freaky, especially to a guy like me who grew up when a techno-gadget was the ratcheting motorized antenna dial in the box on top of the TV that rotated your antenna between channels 2, 8, and 12.  The Echo literally "reads" my handwriting and drawing as I make it, and feeds it to the computer in the form of PDFs, PNGs, text-to-speech, or even animated videos that record the sequence of a drawing as it is done.

It's every bit as freaky as it sounds.  The real advantage, for me, is that it also records audio as well as writing.  Picture this typical workshop scene - You're sitting down planning out how to do something complicated, say a bamboo-shanked churchwarden with decorative rings at each end and a handcut stem, and you want it to be a contrast-stained bowl.  You want to get all the steps in order so you pull out this insane intelligent pen and start writing in what goes when.  As you're writing, you can just talk, commenting on additional thoughts or ideas at each step that are too complex to write out in detail...  Talking is always faster than writing.  What you're writing AND saying is all getting slurped into the pen for easy reference later, and the thing is even time-synched - That is to say, you can tap your pen on different steps you've written and it will play back what you were saying at that time.  For instance, imagine the sequence below, the steps involved in making one of the 2011 Yule pipes:

The rough pen writing is as simple and crude as most of my notes, but the file has the advantage that I can simply tap the pen tip on step #7, say, and it will play back my synched audio of comments about that particular step... which are likely to be much more involved than the actual written step.  Pages of text & diagrams can be saved as PNG files or combined visual/audio PDF files, and tucked into my Notebook app as individual subjects and chapters.  Ergo, "How to achieve a two-toned sandblast with black recesses and gold highlights" can quickly go from a scrap page of notes to become its own chapter title in my collected grimoire, complete with full audio playback of my comments about the process.

It's pretty awesome.

It's also been handy in drawing the cartoons for my gradually-developing Kentucky Fried Popcorn webcomic.  The pen does not read existing pencils, so I can do rough sketches and poses and wireframe figures with pencil, then carefully use the smartpen to ink over my pencils and produce a polished, finished ink drawing without any erasing needed.  It's the high tech version of drawing roughs with non-photo blue pencil.

It has limitations.  The biggest is that it requires custom paper to "read" from - You can either buy notebooks and sketchbooks from Livescribe or print your own paper from free templates if you have access to a 600dpi laser printer.  Also, its ability to read complex shading and crosshatching is limited - Too many overlapping fine lines will cause it to leave blank spaces in the computer scan version where it lost the ability to track the lines.  What it really prefers are strong, elegant, controlled lines in drawings.  I'd love to see its abilities as an art tool developed further, because right now the only other similar tool on the market is the Wacom Inkling and it lacks the Echo's audio recording and synching abilities.  Battery life has been excellent, but the occasional firmware updates are annoying - As a traditional media artist, I am not accustomed to having to apply software revisions to my pen.  Other than those caveats, though, it is a pretty impressive piece of kit, and I'd definitely recommend one to anyone whose job involves a lot of note taking.

Finishing up

What a long, strange.... and often horrifying... trip it has been.  I write this today having just completed the setup of the last workshop lathe that we need for pipemaking, making this our semi-official "Workshop Finished" day.  There are still things lacking (workstation lighting being the main one, as I can't see what I'm doing on several machines and have to carry a flashlight with me!), and I am certain that we will rearrange and modify the setup once we have used it for a while, but for now, we have access to a fully functioning workshop again.  I'd like to take the opportunity to once again thank all the great people who have helped us out with this project - We arrived here with nothing, thanks to our final screw-over by the Herbignac mairie, and our ability to start working again is entirely down to a lot of help, donations, and generosity on the part of pipe friends all across the USA and Canada.  To mark the occasion, here is a new "Workshop assembly" comic strip showing the last steps of getting the metal lathe working, and then a two page tour of the new workshop.  Hope you enjoy! 

(Oh, and for the curious - Don't look for new pipes on the site tomorrow.  With this done, I have five days of email to catch up, a lot of business archiving to do, a starting inventory to finish, a pair of special pipes to make, a house to decorate for the holidays, and a NC driver's license to obtain before I start making pipes for the site.... and THEN that will take a while in itself, since I want to have something nice in stock in every category before we put the new site online with all new stuff.  I don't know how long all this will take, but rest assured we'll be working as hard as we can right through December to get things going again.)

 

 

 

1840's Village

Yesterday we took our first day off in a very long time, and rode with my parents to see the 1840's Village in Hickory, NC.  It was a full-scale recreation of a settler town, complete with blacksmith, shoemaker, saddle-maker, woodwright, etc, with all crafts and tools on display and in use.  This hand-cranked drill press to the left is a great example of a classic tool still working nearly 170 years later - Say that about anything we use today!  I have posted a gallery of pics from this trip to both our Facebook and Flickr accounts, for those who might be interested in a look at the lifestyles of early Americans, as well as a glimpse of the NC highlands in autumn.  If there was anything we missed consistently and bitterly in Brittany, it was the NC autumn season - Brittany just does not look like this in fall!

Building a Buffing and Sanding Workbench

This time around I've got four motors to somehow turn into usable buffing and sanding tools, AND work out a way that two people can get to them at once, AND make sure each one has adjustable dust collection that can be shifted around to best match a variety of sizes of sanding discs and wheels.

Click each page for bigger pics!

Building a Buffing Station

We've just finished assembling a buffing workstation for the new workshop. Like everything else here, it's a bit cobbled together due to our total lack of funds, but need breeds ingenuity, as they say, and I believe this creation will do a fine job for us. There are still two additions I'd like to make - wire covers over the vac intakes (to prevent stems from being sucked down the pipes if dropped), and a folding clear plexi shield mounted on the front, to prevent compound from ever flying up into the eyes. But, even as it is now, it's already a good bit more user-friendly than it originally was in Herbignac, and I look forward to playing with it.

As with previous illustrated strips like this, click the images for greatly enlarged versions.

Talbert Workshop 3.0

We live! Or, at least our workshop chairs do. To the left is the first published pic of our new workshop-under-construction in North Carolina. It's an odd experience, building one all over again from the ground up. On the one hand, it's great to finally be able to lay out my own working space from the very start, instead of trying to retrofit a garage or someone else's shop into something I can function in. On the other hand, thanks to our last horrendous French disaster, we're still penniless and financially crippled - Most of the tools and hardware are borrowed or donated by friends and family to help us out.

Those of sharp eye may have also noticed that the former "American Pipemaker in Brittany" blog has revived and changed titles... and even is starting to have posts again! I thought hard about just deleting it and rolling its commentary into this blog, but in the end I felt it was better to keep the two separate. That way, this blog can remain pipe-focused and those who come here to read about pipes and pipecrafting won't have to suffer my rambles about pork rinds and Hammer horror films, which I can turn loose in "Life in America".

The new workshop is coming together. It's a slow process, which is about to get slower and pickier - The basics are now in place (work benches, machines, etc) and now it's time to get the motors and belts and hardware needed to get all this running and producing pipes and pens again. That will be the tricky part - Motors are expensive, and we need a bunch, so I guess I'll be combing Craigslist and yard sales for any bargains I can find. Still to-do are getting adapters made to allow the shafts to accept our wooden sanding spindles and buffers, and getting the compressor wired to 220 volts so we can sandblast again.

Overall, the new workshop is excellent. It's a drastic turnaround from the Herbignac shop, which was very much a gothic castle laboratory full of dust and cobwebs and foul things lurking in every corner. Our new place is open, airy, bright, and downright cheerful to be in, not least because it has a nice back window view of the back deck and enclosed green backyard.

Yes, green....... No more townhouse views of traffic! I look forward to this as much as anything else. After seven years of parking lot, pavement, roads, tourists, window watchers, teens on scooters, and all the annoyances of trying to do a day's work in the Herbignac workshop, being here is a positive revelation in relaxation. I was beginning to fear that I would never actually enjoy being in the workshop again, a subject I'll talk about in more detail in a future post.

For now, at least, we are here, work is happening, and this blog is alive once more - I'll be charting the evolution of the shop as the project progresses. Thanks very much for your patience in waiting through this long fallow period, and let's hope for happier days ahead!