Lights, Smokes & Leaves
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G. L. Pease - Apr 24, 2013
- 14 min read
The Care & Feeding of the Pipeman – by G. L. Pease
Indulge me. Take a moment to close your eyes and reflect on your earliest experience as a budding pipe smoker. It could have been months ago, years, or even decades. Imagine that first bowl in as much vivid detail as you can conjure. How does the memory compare to your current experience?
Most of us, without much effort, can recall our first pipe, our first tobacco, our first smoke. For some, it was the opening of a sensory door that would lead to a wonderful new world of taste and aroma; for others, it was like entering a chamber of horrors, a dread-filled experience that, if lucidly recalled, makes us wonder why the hell we ever again chose to wander those darkly haunted halls.
I’ll share mine. One of my high school science teachers smoked a pipe. I don’t remember much about his pipes, but I remember his tobacco well. He’d smoke in his office, in the lecture hall, when wandering the courtyard. The aroma of Borkum Riff often preceded his arrival, and mapped where he’d been; if you needed to find him, it was easy enough to follow the scent.
Mr. Havel, not any family member (the only relative I knew who smoked a pipe was an uncle by marriage, a cantankerous geezer whom I would sooner have avoided completely than chosen to emulate in any way), established my mental association between the pipe and men of science and learning. My journey into pipedom was thus set.
I confidently strode into the local druggist’s, a lanky, nerdy kid with my courage screwed as tight as a fully wound clock, to purchase my first pipe, an inexpensive Medico, sandblasted, blister-packed, hanging from a hook in the tobacco aisle. With it, of course, a pouch of Borkum Riff Whiskey, selected from the dazzling array of brightly hued pouches of Green Apple, Captain Black, Mixture 79, Sail, and all the other mass-market tobaccos that were once prominent in every supermarket and pharmacy. Despite being under-age, I managed to make my purchase without the gens d’armes being summoned, and left the shop armed with the necessary equipment, if not the knowledge, to become a pipeman. That afternoon, I attempted to emulate what I’d seen so many times, filling the bowl with the moist, fragrant leaf, pressing down with my thumb, testing the draw, for what, I had no clue, striking a match, and puffing enthusiastically, an impressively impenetrable fog enveloping my head and blinding me to the eye-rolling of my comrades. Any potential reverie was cut short when I was struck by violent spasms of coughing, interspersed with gasps for air and my friends’ raucous laughter. Lesson one: Do not inhale.
After recovering, I managed to get the thing lit again, and more amazingly, keep it going for a few minutes at a time, but by the time I’d burned through half the bowl, and most of a box of matches, I was dizzy, my tongue feeling as though a battalion of tiny soldiers in muddy boots and armed with flame throwers had marched across it, my mind filled with the sense that I had done something irreconcilably stupid. Then, waves of nausea crashed over me like the results of an E-ticket ride on the Whirl-n-Hurl. Lesson two: Do not puff continuously, no matter how cool it night look in the movies.
Why would anyone voluntarily visit this sort of torture upon themselves and claim to enjoy it? I was obviously missing something, doing something wrong. I tried again in a few days, with slightly less dramatic results, and then again and again. I tried a few other tobaccos, hoping that one of them might taste as "good" as they smelled. They didn’t. I managed to figure out how to keep the fires going a little longer, but still found little actual pleasure from the experience. Finally, I put the pipe and the tobacco away as a trophy of another failed experiment, and didn’t think about it again until I was at university.
A little knowledge, and some guidance on the care and feeding of the pipe might have gone a long way towards making those first trials less painful, and I suspect a lot of nascent pipe smokers fall off the rails because of similar experiences, tossing the offending pipe and pouch into a box in the attic to be covered with the dust of time, forgotten until the grandchildren go up to play.
Rattling about in my freshly matriculated mind, though, I still associated the pipe with the world of learning, and wanted to be a pipe smoker. All around me, professors and older students were seen with their pipes, as often used as devices for pointing out important details as they were instruments of smoking. Pipes were like little wooden hands in learning’s gloves. The pipe continued to call to me.
One misty fall day, I drifted into Drucquer & Sons, Berkeley’s premier tobacconists’, and put myself at the mercy of a patient fellow named Ken, who promised guidance. Over the months to come, I spent many of my free hours there, learning all I could, trying the different house-blends and the contents of exotic, beautifully decorated tins, acquiring over time a few inexpensive but good smoking pipes, always looking to the knowledgeable staff for guidance. Drucquer’s was like a pipe smoker’s reform school for me, and I owe whatever success I have had as a pipeman to the gentlemen there who gave freely of their time, and taught me the ropes. It was a much better beginning than my first aborted attempt; this time, it stuck.
We all have different stories, different reasons for being drawn towards the pipe, the most common and compelling being the pipe’s enticing aromas and it’s allusion to deeper thought, gentility, sophistication. And, for whatever reason, even those of us who suffered most from our ignorance of the pipe’s elusive ways persisted, eventually transcending the torture, and learning how to do it more or less right, ultimately becoming initiates into the sacred order of pipemen.
Smoking a pipe is deceptively complex. It looks so easy when seen in black and white in some old film, a tweedy gent stuffing his pipe into a pouch, withdrawing it perfectly packed, and then lighting it with a single match, puffing between thoughts, surrounding himself with clouds of contentment, and on the surface, it really is pretty simple. Fill the pipe properly, apply flame, puff slowly, considerately, with a deliberate cadence that keeps the tobacco just smoldering, tamping as needed to tend the ember, relighting as required, keeping the pipe clean. It’s something that we’re told comes with time, with practice, and it usually does. We reach a level of competence fairly quickly, and our ability to discern different tastes from our tobaccos develops almost automatically as our brains assimilate and associate novel flavors with known ones. But competence is really only the beginning, and there’s much going on that seems to defy understanding that even when we feel we may have cultivated mastery of the skills, we can still get more out of the experience.
For the majority of established pipe smokers, enjoyment seems to come without much effort. They’ll fairly quickly figure out what tobacco style or styles they like most, acquire a few pipes they enjoy, and happily puff away without a care in the world. If they, for some reason, have a bad smoke, they quietly accept it, confident that the next bowl will be better. They seem to have an innate sense of the pleasures and satisfaction of the pipe. I’m sometimes more than a little envious of these natural smokers.
For me, and I’m betting more than a few others, the quest for something more, for the mythical perfect smoke is a longer one. We have them once in a while, and bend our brains to figure out the steps necessary to recreate them. We explore different pipes, different tobaccos, different packing techniques. We geek out about airway diameters and bowl chamber geometries. We talk about what pipes get along best with different mixtures. We dry our tobaccos, or humidify them according to our latest thoughts on what the perfect moisture content should be. We experiment with different ways of preparing flakes, and argue over the best way to cut plugs. We talk about the way our mixtures taste using the vocabulary of other gustatory pleasures, of food, of wine. We discuss the best beverages to pair with different tobaccos, or the most harmonious season or time of day for particular blends. The forums are filled with lengthy discussions on these subjects, and more. Sometimes, it seems like we’re involved both in actual pipe smoking and in some strange sort of meta-layer surrounding the act itself. It’s part of the fun. When the stars align, my envy of the more confident approach taken by the natural smoker dissolves in wisps of bliss, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Vive la difference.
The stream that comes from the pipe’s mouthpiece is a complex mixture of water vapor, dissolved sugars, smoke particles, and volatile organic components. What we experience as flavor is actually a composite impression of a complex interaction between taste and smell. As we puff, and the smoke swirls and cools on our tongue, we first notice the basic tastes of sweet, sour, bitter, salty and a sense of weight and warmth. Then, as we "chew" the smoke, some of the volatile components are delivered through the retro-nasal passages at the back of the throat into the olfactory nerves, adding a much richer dimension of perception. In fact, without this interplay of taste and smell we wouldn’t be able to differentiate complex flavors, and would be left with only the basic taste sensations. The so-called "Breath Smoking" technique, the act of puffing without puffing, of breathing normally and allowing delicate sips of smoke to find their way into our sensory apparatus, works as well as it does not just because we’re slowing down, burning less, warming and volatilizing more, but also because of the mechanisms of this retro-nasal olfaction. By breathing through the nose with a small amount of smoke in our mouths, the aroma components are accentuated, and we get a fuller experience of the tobacco’s character. It’s one of those cases where less is more.
Some smokers often blow smoke through their noses, or perform the impressive "French Inhale" maneuver. While fun, if overdone it can actually decrease what we taste. The olfactory bulb, the sense organ responsible for smelling things, quickly becomes overloaded when subjected to strong scents for an extended period, reducing the "taste" experience. This accommodation of the senses is one of the reasons we don’t smell our own tobacco as well as we smell someone else’s, and why our own smoke always smells more intense when we’ve stepped out of the room for a breath of air, and then return to the delectable clouds. (It’s often reported that habitual cigarette smokers "lose" their sense of "taste." It’s not so much lost, but misplaced. If they quit, even for a day or two, it usually comes back, and they’re often surprised by how much they’ve been missing.)
To the newcomer to the briar, and to those of us who periodically lose our way through complacency, and I include myself in that latter group, following are some ideas, most of which we all know but occasionally forget, that might help put us on the tracks to deeper enjoyment.
The first thing to remember is simply to slow down and focus your attention; first impressions set the stage. Observe the tobacco, it’s color, it’s texture, its aromas. Consider your expectations of how that tobacco will taste. The meat and two veg of flavor perception happens in the brain, so give it a head-start instead of demanding it to catch up.
Fill the pipe deliberately, and take a few "cold puffs" to sample the unburned purity of the taste and aromas. Then, light carefully, teasing the flame over the surface and puffing gently (not like in the movies). I’ve found that letting the pipe go out after the initial "charring light", allowing a few minutes before re-lighting, can amplify the tobacco’s flavor. As you puff, notice the feel of the smoke on your tongue. Is it heavy and chewy, or light and airy, oily and lingering, or delicate and ephemeral? Explore the tastes of the tobacco, and try to associate them with other familiar things. When we read reviews filled with colorful adjectives and descriptions of leather, campfire, grass or hay, green pepper, fruitiness, spiciness, do we experience what the reviewer describes, or something completely different? What about the after-taste, known to wine-tasters as the "finish?"
If you really want to expand your sensory vocabulary, take notes, especially when you’re having one of those particularly great smokes. This can be as elaborate as a smoking journal, with the date, time, weather, mood, music, beverage, pipe and tobacco notes, and everything you notice during the smoke, or as simple as a few notes of basic impressions scratched out the back of an envelope. What kind of spices? Fruits? Is there a savory quality, or is it more sweet? Be specific. This can be a lot of fun, and over time, will help with identifying not only individual perceptions, but the role that different tobaccos play in the flavor profile of a mixture’s composite smoke.
Smoke slowly, and when the pipe is going out, as pipes will often do, resist the urge to try to stoke the fires by aggressive puffing in an attempt to revive the dying ember. This rarely works, and often leads only to hot spots and a scorched tongue. Let it go, tamp very gently, and re-light.
Don’t overuse the tamper; I’m still guilty of this more often than I’d like to admit. The only time tamping is necessary is when it’s time to re-light, and the weight of the tamper is all that’s needed to settle the ash and give a nice surface for the flame to tease. Too much pressure will make the tobacco increasingly difficult to keep lit, and is probably the number two cause of Ye Olde Soggy Dottle (the number one being packing too tightly in the first place). If the tobacco in the bottom of the bowl ends up more like a dense cake of asbestos than fluffy goodness, you’ve over packed or over tamped. Dump it out, clean the pipe, and give it a rest. (Here is where the development of a good bottom cake reveals its value; it will help to retain the heat, absorb some of the moisture, and will make it easier to enjoy the last shreds of our precious leaf.) Keep your pipes clean. Nothing sours a smoke or makes it harsh more dramatically than a dirty shank. I like to leave a pipe-cleaner in the pipe until it cools, then doing a more thorough cleaning. Pipe cleaners are cheap insurance against premature souring of the pipe. For a while, I was neglecting this aspect of my smoking ritual, and ended up with a lot of foul tasting briars. After going through a box full of pipe cleaners and most of a bottle of Everclear, some of it used for cleaning the pipes, I learned my lesson.
As we evolve as pipe smokers, our tastes may change. The same tobaccos that gave us great pleasure might begin to suffer from the contempt bred by familiarity. It’s natural to want to explore new styles, and that’s a good thing. If you find yourself stagnating from a steady diet of the same meal, try something new. Novelty often opens new doors, so go out and explore.
Finally, take breaks. Just like our pipes, our palates need a rest once in a while. I often take a day or two away from the pipe, especially if I’m assessing new blends, in order to get the fullest possible experience of the flavors and aromas. This is especially important after a case of the dreaded "tongue bite." Often, this sort of reboot does wonders for bringing things back in line, breathing new life into even our most familiar weeds.
If the techniques outlined in this article bring a little more enjoyment to even one pipeman, my time in writing it will have been well spent. I’ll leave you with a little homework experiment. Fill a pipe with a favorite blend, air-dried to brittleness. Draw through the pipe to "cold taste" the tobacco. Pull big puffs into your mouth, and "chew" on them. With your mouth full of the tobacco’s aromatic goodness, keep it closed, and breathe through your nose gently. Now, from the bowl side, blow gently through the tobacco a few times to warm and moisten it. Repeat. Then, let the tobacco return to ambient temperature, and do it again. Record your experiences in your newly acquired smoking journal, and report in the comments section.
Your turn.
-glp
 Since 1999, Gregory L. Pease has been the principal alchemist behind the blends of G.L. Pease Artisanal Tobaccos. He’s been a passionate pipeman since his university days, having cut his pipe teeth at the now extinct Drucquer & Sons Tobacconist in Berkeley, California. Greg is also author of The Briar & Leaf Chronicles, a photographer, recovering computer scientist, sometimes chef, and creator of The Epicure’s Asylum. See our interview with G. L. Pease here. |
Written by G. L. Pease
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! Or perhaps it is that sense of satisfaction knowing and appreciating you made it to another day. With the world in a kind of rinse-and-repeat history, reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, it is perhaps a good moment to remember some of Pipedom’s philosophers whose cogent thoughts brought light to clear a path in the mists of confusion and confounding opinions. Ok. No gloom and doom. Just some down-home thoughts. Think of times in the past when history was running off the rails. It took our pipe-smoking thinkers (the mind workers of the world) to speak of better pathways to more light. Think for a moment, with a pipe in hand, these wizards of the world and word: Albert Einstein, J. R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edwin Hubble, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre. All learned and enlightened. They offered wisdom instead of storms of meaningless roads to nowhere. All while smoking their pipes! Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ain’t easy to turn on the lights in Pundit’s rock pit head. Now it’s time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
Well there’s nothing like a touch of the plague to usher in the changing season. Leaving the airport just when the first advertisements for all things pumpkin spice began to appear—lattes, muffins, shampoos, trash bags, and myriad other concoctions—so, too, my ability to breathe freely disappeared. The unfortunate side effect of losing one’s sense of taste and smell for weeks is the utter inability to enjoy tobacco. Not that I consider myself an expert on anything but my own tastes, but be forewarned that this review was made with mildly impugned sensory equipment. Just when a comforting pipe was most needed, its comfort was denied. Be that as it may, the road to recovery found me limping along on one lung this past month, trying to wrest the particulars of two blends on offer from Sutliff: the latest 175th Anniversary blend, Silver Quarter, as well as their spooky seasonal Maple Shadows II. Silver Quarter is a new style on offer from Sutliff, their first coin-cut blend. Naturally a Virginia-Perique, it is enhanced with a traditional core of black Cavendish. In the tin it holds much promise, with a lightly bready and very woody, if ever-so-slightly sour, aroma. After some time acclimating to air, the bouquet softens further and offers hints of the burley with some chocolaty notes wafting through the more dominant dry grassy aspect. The tin art is of a coin-style bas-relief bust, presumably of a founding Sutliff brother, à la The Old Boss On the reverse of the tin we find the blend’s description: Reflecting on Sutliffs 175 years of tobacco excellence, we came across a brand that embodies true value, SILVER QUARTER. This name pays homage to Sutliffs roots, the legacy of two brothers who popularized pipe smoking in the burgeoning mining society of San Francisco. We celebrate this heritage with a coin cut composed of the finest African Virginias, complemented by a core of Perique and Black Cavendish. The tin notes are, forgive the pun, on the nose for a good VaPer blend: mild tart sweetness peeking out from behind dried hay and slight chocolate undertones, with a lightly tannic finish of weathered oak. It is always a joy to prepare a coin cut, my preference being to put a few in my palm and vigorously warm my hands together to fully break them apart. These well-formed discs pack and light easily, and smoke with little prodding to the end of the bowl. For technical points it scores well—it smokes light, and it’s easy to tend the ember. While it gets sharp after a few quick bowls, pacing should be heeded to easily smoke down to the heel without inviting bite. Of the flavor, though, I am left a bit wanting. There are tart and high notes aplenty, but very little of the lemony citrus I would anticipate, as well as scant midtones; they tend more toward the red wine-vinegary and sour. The flavors are muted, also, lacking the sweetness and piquancy of other marques—the small measure of Perique tickles the nose now and again with peppery hints, and there is a smidge of a deeper sweetness to be found in the Cavendish from puff to puff, but overall it lacks some dynamism. The Virginias, to my palate, come off a bit on the dry side, and here they dominate the blend. The aftertaste and mouthfeel are neutral, again evincing more of the dry, woody, tartly tannic end of the spectrum. The blend has plenty of polish, but not enough depth or richness (*yet) to make it a standout. Here, comparisons are inevitable: Luxury Bullseye Flake has more sweetness, both from its Virginia as well as its Cavendish, and a better finish; Davidoff is similar but with a pronounced umami that is absent here; as for Escudo, I haven’t had any fresh tins lately so it would be unfair to compare. While it rates as a solid, fairly mild smoke, particularly to lovers of the genre, it does not surprise with any exceptional flavors. To be fair, all the boxes have been checked for the blend to benefit from some real aging, and it would be worth checking in on this after a couple of years sealed away. I’ve set half my tin aside to sample again in a month or two, in case I’m merely suffering from the lingering effects of parosmia, and will amend this review in that case. Maple Shadows II, on the other hand, made up for the weeks of sniffling and sneezing I’d endured. Offered in a full 8 ounce tin with delightfully spooky Halloween art, it’s (hopefully) enough to last through the season. Somehow I had missed this last year, so it’s a real pleasure to get some in my candy bucket this year. As the chilling winds of autumn draw eerie prattle from contorted, deciduous limbs, we find ourselves possessed by the spirit of the season. 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With a sweet coffee or tea to accompany, the aftertaste of the maple is reinvigorated on the palate […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 632. Our featured guest on tonight’s show is the host of the Pipe & Tamper Podcast, Mike Murphy. Brian and Mike will have an extended chat revolving around the days before, during and after the Las Vegas International Pipe Show. We will hear about their travels to the show and the anxiety of Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida at the same time while running a show and not knowing if your house is going to be there when you get home. In the end, the show went great and our homes survived, although many others in Florida were not so lucky. We’ll have clips from the show, and shoutouts to other podcasts and vlogs that were broadcasting from the pipe show.
Vegas Baby The show started out strong on the 14th floor hospitality suites hosted by the Vegas Pipe Show and Smoking Pipes as well as room hopping to carvers, estate sellers, and vendors to pre-game for the festivities. If you’re interested in what that looks like I’ll refer you to last years pipe show round up. I circled with Brian Levine to get the totals in comparison to last year: This year’s show numbers: 108 Exhibitor tables, 445 attendees, 3,250 Raffle Tickets, 100ish dinners, 172 Rooms in the Hotel. Last year, by comparison, 107 exhibitor tables, 425 attendees, 2,200 raffle tickets, 104 dinners, and 175 rooms on Friday and Saturday nights. We were at capacity, basically, when it came to vendor tables and the dinner, so there is no physical room for growth at this point except for attendees. That said, we filled that smoking lounge to the brim. New Carvers Spotlight Garret Woo (Pipes by Woo) How long have you been carving? Garret: I’ve been carving since 2021, and I’m guessing your next question is probably how’d you get started carving? James: Yes. Garret: In 2021 I took a break from my full time job – that included machining and assembly work and I thought maybe it was time I made something that I would like and I started looking at youtube and Instagram and putting together my shop. I did struggle on the stems to start and there was a lot of failure at the beginning. James: How many pipes have you made so far? Garret: I number my pipes, so I just finished up 186. James: What is your favorite shape you’ve been making? Garret: I really dig Canadians and pipes with longer shanks and lovat Canadian blends. I like to play with different shapes of stems on the longer shanked pipes. The billiard would be my go-to shape but I want to learn more techniques on freehanded shapes. I like to put brass and copper adornments on my pipes with my machining background it helps. James: What is the craziest thing you’ve seen at this show? Garret: The first thing that comes to mind is the table over there with C-Pipes with the shapes and the size and petiteness and the intricate details they did. You can check out what Garret is working on by going to his Instagram. Stefan Cashwell James: how long have you been carving? Stefan: about 3 years. James: What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen at the show? Stefan: The Adam Davidson pipe with the clear shape and the bamboo—I don’t know if it’s 3D printed or what, but it’s amazing. James: What’s your favorite shape to do? Stefan: That’s a tough question. I think they’re all the same shape, but what’s fascinating is that Dublin, volcano, and blowfish are all the same depending on how you turn them. Playing with that, with all its variations, is a lot of fun. My favorite accent to use is also horn; it’s finicky, but it’s a great accent on pipes. You can check out Stefan’s work on his Instagram. Science: Meet Pipes I chatted with Chris from the San Diego Pipe Club; he started off doing stem replacements for estate pipes but also improved the airflow. James: How are you doing 3d printing? What is the thought process? Chris: It’s a 3D-printed pipe with a briar insert. The design is a calabash meets a Peterson system meets a metal Falcon/Kirsten radiator style. It is a bottom draft smoking bowl like a radiator like those metal pipes. The inside chamber is a calabash. The stummel and accent rings in the stems are all 3d printed. The insert is briar, olive wood, or I have the potential to use meerschaum as well. This idea came about through the San Diego Pipe Club, wanting to see if we could 3D print a pipe and being curious about the technology; I have a printer and design ability, so here we are. James: What’s the type of plastic you’re using? Chris: It’s all PLA plastic, a renewable potato starch plastic that is food-safe. The stummels are printed with a plastic that has wood in it 40% wood fiber, bamboo, rosewood, ebony, redwood, and walnut are the woods I’m printing. For the accent rings I just got a new material that I’m printing that has 40% copper, so its real metal that you can sand, and polish the same as wood filament. The stems are 3d printed as well. The concept is renewable and cheap from a production standpoint, with the ability to make a very high quality smoking pipe based on the experience. By combining the calabash system pipe and bottom draft hole and using 3d simulations to see airflow, I can see where I’m having eddies and ripples in my current, and see where my moisture and all the particles are dropping back out from a vapor to a liquid. Most people who have tried these say the stems are clean, and they don’t even have to run a pipe cleaner afterward because everything collects at the bottom. Chris has also been experimenting with color-changing plastics so you can see the hotspots. Chris said he was able to use this to slow down his cadence, which, of course, could mean you could get a slow-smoke training pipe to teach yourself to perform better. If you’re interested in learning more or want to check one out, you can contact him on Instagram: Copper Beard Pipe Works The Negative Space The show was buzzing about one specific pipe, which had everyone guessing how it was made. I chatted with Adam Davidson briefly about it. James: How did this idea come to fruition? Adam Davidson: Smokingpipes.com had an expo back in August open to all of the makers they carry. The theme was to make a pipe utilizing bamboo. Given that the last time we had the expo I made a smooth Almond with three bamboo shanks, […]
Wow, what a wonderful article. Just super informative to the beginner and a great reminder to the experienced piper.
Great essay,Greg. I, too, started with Borkum Riff Whiskey, and had all sorts of technique problems. I really don’t remember how I solved the latter; my move away from the former stated when I discovered Sail Yellow, Troost, and other blends of that sort. I tend to over tamp, too, but am working on that.
It is always nice to read you Mr. Pease.
Thanks for the tips!
This is one of my favorite articles describing the journey of a pipe smoker, along with some great tips and reminders on how to best enjoy a pipe and tobacco.
Great article! I always enjoy reading your insights. My first pipe experience mirrored your in many ways. One never forgets his first, heh heh. You should publish a guide to pipe smoking. Wish I had been able to get one in the early days, but they tend to place books far away from tobaccos at the drug store.
This was really great reading as I just opened my delivery of a new pipe. I will put it aside and wait until later tonight when I can truly enjoy it.
Thanks for the enlightening yet easy reading.
great!
Thanks for the kind words, gentlemen, and glad you enjoyed mine. -glp
Greg – Great article as usual. Full of insightful insights. Interestingly, for me, I’ve found some of my most transcendent smokes have been those I’ve paid the least attention to. Especially those done whilst engrossed in a favorite book. I tend to stick with only three or four tobaccos (Westminster, Star of the East, Pirate Kake come to mind) that over the years I’ve come to deeply appreciate. Simplifying the menu so to speak sometimes allows one to go more fully into the nuances of the blend.
I wish I had read this article before my first attempt at smoking a pipe.
Great article, Greg. Useful advice for both the beginner and the experienced pipe smoker. After 30 years of the pipe, I’m still learning and a good deal of that comes from your writings. Thank you!
That was a great article! I used to smoke a pipe the same way I eat. If the food was really tasty, I ate more quickly. This doesn’t work with food and definitely doesn’t work with a pipe. Savor your food (and drink) and your pipe slowly. In smoking this saves your tongue. In eating this saves your waistline. Lessons learned from pipe smoking apply to many areas of life.
Great article! I’m still learning and I appreciate your wisdom.
Thanks for a great article Greg,you sure jogged my memory. I was maybe 12 or 13 when I borrowed one of my dad’s pipes and went down to the corner drug store and bought a pouch of Borkum Riff Whiskey(back then no one cared about kids buying tobacco). My buddy and I proceeded to attempt smoking said tobacco and like yourself did nothing but burn our mouths into oblivion. My dad and grandfather made it look so easy and so inviting, but it would be 3 decades before I picked up the pipe full time. Today I would consider myself a pipe geek as I do enjoy spending a lot of my free time talking pipes and tobacco and immersing myself into different aspects of this thing of ours.
Top notch!
Well said, as always, Greg. My first exposure to a “pipe man” came onlyy a few years ago on vacation. A silver haired gentleman, a few balconies over at our hotel would enjoy a 15 min smoke every afternoon. He made it look effortless, which I later learned too a wee bit of practice and patience. We never met, but he was my inspiration to start smoking a pipe.
great article,brought back lots of memories
As a crossover from cigars guy, and a pipe noob, this article is great. Well written…read it twice. Kudos.
*cheers*
Mike
Welcome to the pipe, and the wonderful world of pipe snobbery, Mike. Glad you joined up. More than a few of us enjoy a good cigar, as well.
.
-glp
Search as I might, I don’t have that first, clear memory of picking up the pipe. Best educated guess is that it was a cob and, most likely Cherry Blend or Borkum Riff.
Great article. Enjoyable and informative, thank you.
A great article, quite poetic on its style! And, if I may say, enticingly good enough to make me want to get my pipe out right now. Wonderful stuff. I remember my first pipe at the tender age of eighteen or so. A cheap pipe and over-the-counter pack of tobacco which I cannot remember. However unsuccessful I was with it, and I am pretty sure I was, the idea of being a pipe smoker stuck and in my mid thirties I took the hobby up properly, never looking back. Now, in my late fifties, I am only just beginning afresh to look at how I smoke and trying to improve my method and enjoyment. Instead of smoking a pipe as a cigarette alternative, I have bought a few new pipes this year (throwing out several of the old ones-really, they were no good for anything by this stage) with some great designs and looks, and I have tried variations in tobaccos too, striving for pure enjoyment through learning the different qualities of blends and even pipe design. I am beginning to taste for the the first time after all these years, as I allow the pipe and smoke to combine into their true pleasures. Reading articles like the above greatly help and nurture this wonderful pastime, and I can only hope that the powers that be allow us to enjoy it for a while to come. My thanks for a marvellous read and a great confirmation of this equally great hobby.
G.
geo3rge, I cannot tell you how much your comment means to me this morning. Thanks for making my day.
-glp