A View of the Workshop

I didn't have any grand ideas for a blog post today, so I thought I would simply post a few photos from our workshop for a tiny window into how we work. First, however, I should mention that I've just posted two new Talbert Briars to the website - one is a smooth-finish unstained freehand, and the other is a chubby, unstained sandblast. These are the last pipes to post at the old 2005 prices - I'll be applying inflationary price increases across the catalogs shortly. This will be the first price change in over two years, so it's a bit overdue. Fortunately for US buyers, the euro has declined a bit against the dollar and I doubt they will see any difference - If anything, the pipes are probably getting cheaper! Oh, and there is still one Morta Bettafish remaining after the last two mass Betta-postings, so have a look!

Speaking of morta, that is what Emily is rough-shaping in the photo above. Look closely and one can see two morta Prince shapes in progress. We usually have several projects underway at once - at the moment, I am also trying to finish another Talbert Briar and complete our last-ever run of Ligne Bretagne "fat dwarf" pipes. Here is another picture from the shop:


Shown above are some examples of the wooden, antique sanding and buffing spindles I use. On the left is a typical modern metal one, but the two to the right are my favorites - handmade wooden spindles that probably date to the early 20th century, all of which seem to be hand-turned in decorative styles and some even carry maker's marks. Compared to the utilitarian steel spindles, they are virtual 'objets d'art', and I have to admit that (Silly though it may sound) there is a certain romance about working daily with such tools. Many more of them can be seen in this photo:


For our first year, these things were everywhere because we had no good place to store them when not in use... and of course, they were always in use. No sooner would we tuck them away somewhere than they were back out, scattered around the work tables being swapped on and off of our buffing motors. Finally, when we revamped our shop to better accomodate two people, we rigged up this simple-but-handy rack to store them in. Now, either of us can simply turn, select the wheel we want, and easily swap and replace the one we're using. Note that most of them are the old wooden ones, fitted with threaded wooden spindles to hold their buffing wheels or sanding discs in place, and there are only a few of the new metal ones among them. I debate about this some times, thinking I ought to buy more steel ones and retire the antique models for storage or posterity, but at the same time, they were made to be used and it would seem a shame to polish them up and stick them on a shelf somewhere just so someone could look curiously at them fifty years from now. Assuming, of course, that anyone even remembers pipemaking fifty years from now...

The Curse of Being Unoriginal

First in the news today is that I just posted some new pipes to the site - three new Morta Bettafish and one very nice Talbert Briar sandblast. I hope to have many more updates over the next week, including (finally!) some more Ligne Bretagnes. The first LBs will be a run of the "fat dwarf" shapes - the final run, in fact, since we have exhausted our supply of these stummels and once these last ones are posted, there will be no more in this shape.

In other news of things pipe-ish, someone posted an excellent article link to Alt.Smokers.Pipes the other day, and I wanted to repost it here in case anyone missed it. It isn't often that we see articles in modern media about pipes, and it's worth spreading the word.

Today's photo is a picture of my own pipe collection, which I'm not sure I have ever shown in this blog. It isn't very impressive, though it has grown a bit since this photo was taken thanks to several rejects. Prior to our move to France, I sold most of my high-grade pipes that were worth anything to raise cash for the trip, and donated a lot of the middle grades to a charity for starving pipe smokers (Yes, really). Thus, I was left with about 1/3 of my original collection. For the curious, all those little yellow tags are Christmas mailing labels for a bunch of Emily's handmade snowflake ornaments - This was taken at Christmas time, just prior to mailing out gifts.

The title of today's post refers to my recent horror at discovering how similarly pipe people apparently think. When I set up this blog and my American Pipemaker in Brittany blog, I picked these page presentations for their simplicity and style, having never seen another pipe blog in my life. In fact, when I set up this page, it was the only existing pipe blog, as far as I knew. One can imagine my embarrassment when I was looking through the blog links at FumeursdePipe and found that Stygian Smoke was already using this same format, and it predated me by a solid year (Though I have them beat for regularity of posts). On top of that, the Pipe and Tobacco Collectors Blog (of which I was, again, totally unaware) is using the same readymade setup as my other page format, the one from Pipemaker in Brittany! At least I had mine up before theirs, though... by about 20 days. So, alas, it looks like pipe people really do all think alike, or at least gravitate naturally to the same graphic designs. Now I'm really going to have to do some customizing of my pages to set them apart....

The Annoying Side of Sandblasting

Much apologies for the delayed and scattered blog posts of late. We are into the countdown race to next month's bills, and I am in very high gear trying to pull us out of the hole. Thus, lots of pipemaking but little internet time.

The act of sandblasting is loads of fun. I love the feel of the blaster and it brings back memories of everything that I enjoyed about airbrushing... but also all the annoyances that go with it. When we moved here in 2002, we purchased our Skatblast sandblasting cabinet and all of our hoses and accessories from Matthys. It has not been a pleasant experience in quality, compared to my previous system in the US. I used my original equipment hard, and it consistently delivered. This system, unfortunately, has been trouble from the story of its installation (See entries for October 15th, November 6th, and December 4th).

Through the course of four years of use, we have replaced the vacuum motor once, had the replacement fail, tossed the entire vacuum for a newer and supposedly improved replacement vacuum, replaced two sets of gloves due to them wearing through and developing holes (which never happened with my previous cabinet gloves), and we've done ongoing battle with the poor-quality air tubing that Matthys supplied. For the past six months, it became a regular occurence to hear a pop from the workshop, and find that a hole had blown in the tubing and compressed air was blowing around wildly.

Finally, after lots of wasted time cutting and patching the hose, we had to replace it. I do not plan to order anything from Matthys again, if I can help it, because of my bad experiences with their products, but this meant searching out replacement bits en français... which turned out to be no problem at all! A quick trip through the phone book turned up several local compressor shops, and a little bit of driving and asking questions led us to a wonderful professionals-only supply store in St. Nazaire, where we bought a much tougher replacement hose (Made in France, I must note, while the one that fell apart was made in the USA. Imagine my annoyance!). The last hour has consisted of me crawling around in scattered sandblasting media, tightening clamps and fiddling with the system from end-to-end in the eternal quest for the mythic land of No Leaks. It's so nice to be productive with my time....... :/

And did I mention the hole that opened in the cabinet's media tube, that I had to patch with duct tape?

I look forward to the day when I can boot this irritating cabinet out the door (and its little vacuum too!) and replace it with a better unit, possibly something from Cyclone. Oh yes, and did you notice the hammer in the photo above? It's there for the really delicate repairs....