Breaking it In
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G. L. Pease - Nov 8, 2022
- 8 min read
Predictably, the Vegas pipe extravaganza of 2022, the first pipe show I’ve attended since 2019, was an absolute delight. I met up with old friends, made some new ones, and just had a complete blast. If you didn’t make it this year, I hope you’ll consider coming in 2023. If you were there, I hope we had at least a few minutes to chat. If we didn’t, see above. One of the most heartening things to me was meeting so many young people, new to the hobby, who brought an infectious enthusiasm with them to the show, and with it hope for a new generation of pipe smokers to keep the embers going in years to come.
There were so many beautiful pieces on exhibit, both old and new, and any list I attempt to cobble together would be embarrassingly incomplete, so I’ll stop with that. I came home with only three pipes, though it was very nearly four and easily could have been ten times that number. Two of these are new, one from a maker I met for the first time, the third is an estate piece. Then, there’s the one that got away. I’d spotted a bamboo shank beauty that I really wanted. I was on my way to make it mine when I was briefly distracted. Those few seconds might as well have been an eternity during which the universe conspired against me; as I rounded the corner on my way to this maker’s table, I watched as my pipe was tucked into its bag and put into the hands of another. “Scoundrel! You bought my pipe!” Just as in horse racing, those few seconds were all it took. Those few seconds represented the difference between taking home the purse or going home empty.
It’s okay. It’s just a pipe. There will be another. There will always be another. The three of us had a bit of a laugh over it, and in time, yes, I’ll get a similar piece from this maker, maybe one I like even more, and the balance of the universe will be restored. Since returning home, its new caretaker, its maker and I have had a bit of good natured banter over it, as it should be. That pipe stimulated two new relationships more valuable than having the pipe would have been. (Yeah. I’m being philosophical here. Truth is, I’ve been fomenting plans to lay siege to this fellows pipe fortress, nick that pipe, and replace it with an accurate simulacrum produced on my friend’s son’s 3-d printer. In truth, who’s to say that hasn’t already happened?)
The two new pipes I brought home are, first, a beautiful Peterson silver spigot 107, a classic stout billiard. Everything about it just called to me – the wood, the silver, the shape – and as I was already working out a trade deal with its vendor, the transaction was painless. Yes! The second is a delightful modern interpretation of a bent bulldog from Dustin Franc, a maker new to me, but one I’ll certainly be watching closely. Dustin’s work is inspired, playful, interesting, and exciting. If you haven’t seen his pipes, look him up.
Both of these pipes have shown themselves to be wonderful smokers, too, but this month’s chat is really about that third pipe, a beautifully made little sandblasted, squat bulldog by Mike Burkes. Mike is a mechanical engineer by profession, and it shows in the precision of his work. The pipe had been nicely restored, the price was right, and had to have it. The only problem, revealed later, is that its previous owner had enjoyed some pretty powerful aromatic tobaccos. Smoke what you like, of course, I’m all for that, but to my palate, the specters of aromatics past brutally interfere with my enjoyment of the unflavored blends I generally prefer. Some ghosts just don’t play well with others. (I know some feel similarly about Latakia, or even Perique. Such heresy will not be accepted!)
So, when I got home, the ancient and sacred rites of exorcism began. I lit candles, drew a small triangle and a large circle surrounded by mysterious symbols on the floor, turned the lights down, donned ceremonial robes, and lit the censer filled with a consecrated incense of pure Latakia and Perique. I placed my ancient copies of Alfred Dunhill’s The Gentle Art of Smoking, and Georges Herment’s The Pipe (a serious yet diverting treatise) upon an altar made from a bale of nearly petrified tobacco leaves procured from Sobranie House just prior to its shuttering. I take this stuff seriously.
Carefully reaming the bowl back to the walls and cleansing the shank thoroughly, I prepared the pipe for its subsequent anointing with holy alcohol and salt purified by the light of the full moon. After carefully placing the pipe on the altar, I began chanting from the sacred tomes, fascinated as diaphanous wisps screeched and howled, attempting to distract me as they were compelled to fly through the smoky air into the prison of the magical triangle. By sunrise, the first part of the ritual was complete.
What is this foolishness, Pease? In less esoteric terms, the alcohol helps to dissolve and pull the goo from the wood; the salt serves as a new home in which the goo can take up residence. This method doesn’t reach the deeper layers, of course. Smoking a pipe is a dynamic process, and the temperature gradient that results from smoldering tobacco creates an environment in which the capillaries of the wood can transport oils and aromatic compounds more deeply into its core, and back out when you least expect, or want them. The rest? Theater or madness. You decide.
It’s never a 100% cure, but it can really help, and in this case, the ghostly roar was reduced to a whimper that I hoped would dissipate over time as I broke the pipe in to begin its second life. Since I now have essentially three new pipes, I thought I’d give a few words on the process I use when breaking-in a briar. (I offer the following as both a reminder to myself, but also especially to those relatively new to the pipe. Knowing some of this stuff early on might have saved my tongue from some truly dreadful early experiences…)
Unlike some, I enjoy breaking-in pipes. When the walls are bare, I find I can smoke them often without the need for much resting time between bowls, and this affords me with an opportunity to really get to know them. I have no special technique apart from filling them a little more delicately and smoking slowly, gently to the end.
I’m no expert here and even after all these years, I’m still trying to figure it all out. A few times, I’ve had the “coveted” experience of smoking a pipe to the bottom with only a couple of lights, and that’s always a fun surprise, but it’s not my goal. It’s more important to enjoy and be mindful of the smoke, and when the pipe begins to go out, re-light as needed rather than trying to stoke the fires back to life with furious puffing.
In general, slightly drier tobacco usually works best for me, especially in a new pipe, as it’s easier to keep smoldering and is often sweeter tasting. Since combustion produces moisture that will accumulate in the tobacco below the ember, the drier the leaf is at the bottom of the bowl, the easier the process will be. I’ll often start with virginias, as the higher natural sugar content tends to start the formation of a good cake readily.
I filled the pipe gently and evenly with a fully rubbed VA/perique flake, being careful not to over pack it. Since tobacco will expand as it smolders, absorbing moisture both from the air and from combustion, a tight pack will only get tighter. And, something true of both new pipes and those that have established themselves well after months or years of smoking, but rarely mentioned: tamping should be infrequent and gentle. When the pipe goes out, a very soft touch, the weight of the tamper alone, provides all the force necessary to settle the mound of ash before re-lighting. Hard tamping is probably the greatest impediment to a successful smoke, and most of us have had the experience of over-tamping, the result being a brick of soggy-dottle that won’t burn unless lit with an oxyacetylene cutting torch.
And, to ensure continued sweet smokes, keeping the pipe clean is essential. Pipe cleaners are cheap and necessary. I’ll use them during a smoke if moisture begins to accumulate, and then as many as necessary afterwards to keep the shank clean. The best cleaning method is to not let the pipe get dirty in the first place. (Still, once in a while, even the most meticulously maintained pipe will benefit from a bit of a swab with an alcohol moistened cleaner, vodka works well, and thorough drying.)
The first smoke in my newly refreshed pipe went very well, revealing only hints of the old ghosts as I got into the bowl’s final third. The second was better still, and finally, after a dozen bowls or so, it is delivering a wonderful, effortless smoke tasting of my tobacco, not someone else’s. Success! The other two? They’ve been just great right out of the starting blocks.
I’m really looking forward to the next show I can attend. The fun, the fellowship, the banter are all wonderful reminders that things don’t have to be as gloomy as the media would have us believe. A pipe show is a place where folk sharing a common interest can congregate and exchange thoughts and ideas freely and openly, all while enjoying our hobby. After the last three years, it’s clear to me that this is not only something enjoyable, it’s almost essential to maintaining my relative sanity, and I’m really happy to have had the recharge. The pipes I bring home from a show, and in some cases the ones I don’t, are more than just objects. They are like talismans, little physical reminders that the pipe world is still a damn cool place.
Photos by G.L. Pease
Written by G. L. Pease
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Ok, so it’s that time of year, as we all know. Family feasts, houses, yards, and big trees festooned with lights and dangling ornaments, just high enough to keep the cats from reaching a paw into the greenery. It’s also the time of year when your pipe-smoking-significant other makes vast hints about a new pipe. That’s to be expected since he or she was a good boy or girl during the year. Yes, ladies smoke pipes, too. Oh, you want an example? Okay, try Actress Greta Garbo, Millicent Fenwick, Mary Frith, and my late grandmother (who died when she was 93) dipped snuff and smoked a cob occasionally. So now that we have settled that the gentler side of life will puff a pipe too, let’s move on to the upcoming biggest holiday of all. Of course, that huge event is brought to us by the hefty fellow in a red suit, puffing his pipe all the way in a sled filled with presents, being led by a reindeer with a red nose. Or some such. That’s Santa Claus, of course. Becoming a bit more serious, Christmas is such a wonderful time for families and friends. It’s also quite special for pipe puffers. For many of us, this brings up a nostalgic look back to our pipe-smoking or cigar-smoking friends who have died during the current year. A great journalist pal whom I often joined in a local brick-and-mortar pipe and cigar shop. I puffed my pipe, and occasional cigar, as he enjoyed a cigar. He died in October and will be missed. On the happier side of things, Christmas is also a time when mind workers of the world renew their collections with fresh additions. Pundit included. A French passion has overtaken Pundit, from reading more Albert Camus, a heavy cigarette smoker, as were many French intellectuals of a certain time. Instead of cigarettes many of us prefer the more relaxed enjoyment of pipes for that “calm and objective judgment” in the comings and goings of the world. This brings me to French pipes. While visiting France once in the long ago, I happened by a “Tabac” shop in Paris, Tabac Des Vosges. I purchased a beauty of a Chacom bent. I also later bought a Ropp made from ancient briar. To learn more about the dawn of briar pipes and beginnings, take a peek at a well-done piece by Davin Hylton in Pipe Line on April 12, 2023, on Saint-Claude, France, the birthplace of briar. Also in the long back when, on a cold Christmas afternoon, Pundit wandered into an Atlanta bricks and mortar pipe shop to look around. There, resting in an enclosed glass counter was an exquisite Comoy. An older gent, smoking a beautiful bent, asked me if I wanted to look at that pipe. It had a $100 price tag. A college student working for a grocery store chain to help with college tuition at the time, Pundit didn’t have one hundred cents, let alone a C note! I declined and found a $5 basket pipe. A Christmas tradition had just begun. Since that early time, Pundit has made it a holiday ritual to either reward himself, or a special friend, with pipe or tobacco. A Claudio Cavicchi would be nice. Just sayin.’ And now for a couple of December-born Pipe Smokers of the Past: Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born on Dec. 30, 1865, and died on Jan. 18, 1936. I always prefer to believe the best of everybody; it saves so much trouble—Rudyard Kipling. Martin Van Buren, born Dec. 5, 1782, and died July 24, 1862, U.S. President, 1837-1841 As to the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it—Martin Van Buren. And one more note to recall a deceased World War II veteran who loved William Somerset Maugham, the author. Maugham, a pipe smoker, was born in Paris, France, on Jan. 25, 1874, and died on Dec. 16, 1965. One cool afternoon as the veteran and I talked while sitting in his backyard patio, he looked off into the distance as if studying something. Nothing in particular. Just looking. He turned to me and said if I wanted to learn about life, “read Somerset Maugham.” I did. It wasn’t until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, ‘I don’t know’ –W. Somerset Maugham And now a Parting Shot: Any day with an old friend with pipes and tobacco is a good day.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 637. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Nate King. Most people know of Nate as an excellent pipe artisan. He also has an honorary Master of Pipes degree from the Chicagoland Pipe Collectors Club, and is a member of the prestigious Confrérie des Maitres Pipiers de Saint-Claude. To be inducted into the Confrérie, this past May Nate travelled to Saint-Claude, France with master tobacco blender G.L. Pease, who was also inducted. It was quite a time in France, and at the ceremony. We’ll hear all about those adventures on the show. At the top of the show we’ll continue the virtual tour of Brian’s pipe collection with six of his Satou Dublin-shape pipes.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 636. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Barry Kane. Barry started smoking a pipe in 1961 when he was 14-years old. Back then it seemed like everybody smoked, and you could buy pipes and tobacco just about anywhere. Barry is a true old-school pipe smoker, sticking to just one blend. See if you can guess which one before listening. At the top of the show Brian will give his take on Scandinavian Tobacco Group’s purchase of Mac Baren and Sutliff Tobacco and their announcement that they will be shut down.
There’s a pipe in my collection that I cannot bring myself to smoke, though I’ve had it for more years than I care to recall. It’s old, or shall I say, well experienced; that experience, that oldness came to it long before it was in my possession. The pipe is an old Comoy’s Grand Slam from the 1940s. The shape (#93), a slightly canted, stack billiard (sometimes referred to as a Belgian) is right up my alley, and it’s a beautiful example of it. It came to me with some wear and tear; nothing unusual for an old pipe, but more the signs of one that has been well loved, smoked a lot, treated as a favorite tool, cherished, in a sense, by frequent use. It’s the pipe equivalent of a vintage car that’s been driven a lot, enjoyed fully and maintained adequately, rather than one kept in a spotless garage, dusted and detailed weekly, brought out only for leisurely Sunday drives, or to be ogled behind the ropes at the next Concours d’Elegance. When it arrived, those uncounted years ago, it wanted a little restoration. Nothing dramatic needed to be done to it, but the stem was oxidized, the finish a little dingy. The cake was even and fairly thin, and the airway was relatively clean, both signs that its previous owner cared for it, but the bowl’s surface was a little drab and dull. It took little effort to reveal its beauty, to show the lovely contrasted stain and interesting grain beneath the old wax. I often think I should do before and after photos of pipes that I work on, but those thoughts always come after the work’s been done. This one would have been a great illustration of how years of handling that can sometimes make a pipe more beautiful, can other times make it just look grungy. Once I’d cleaned up the externals, it was time to address the inside bits. I approach this a little bassackwards, I realize. It would be more sensible to take care of the inside before addressing the outside, but it’s how I roll. If an old pipe isn’t pretty to look at, it’s unlikely that I’ll care much about it, and cleaning is usually the hardest part, or at least the most boring part of any restoration for me. Alcohol and pipe cleaners. Lots of pipe cleaners. That’s why I leave it for last. Sometimes, I’ll even give a pipe a test smoke before a deep cleaning, just for a point of reference. I gave it a sniff to get an idea of what I was up against, and it stopped me cold. There in that bowl was an aroma that I had not smelled in decades. My head was instantly filled with memories of being in the back room of a fabled Berkeley tobacconist’s shop where I stumbled upon a few jars of long discontinued blends. One of them, a blend called Forty and Eight, had the most engaging and unusual scent of any tobacco I’d stuck my schnoz into. It was sweet, but not in a candy store way. There were none of the usual vanilla, cherry, berry or anise notes of typical aromatics, nothing that could be compared to aftershave or deodorant soap, but something almost musky, a little earthy, something exotic. The shop’s owner couldn’t tell me what was in it, how, or where it had been produced. The old blend had been retired before he’d bought the place. The printed catalogue gave no clues, either, other than being overprinted with the word “DISCONTINUED” in bold, rubber-stamp type. (And, I don’t recall it as being “highly aromatic” as the description indicates.) There was still quite a bit in the jar. Being, at that point, an intrepid explorer of all kinds of tobaccos, whether I thought I’d like them or not, I had to give it a try. It was burly based, but also comprised a good measure of virginia leaf, and maybe some other varieties; I didn’t have enough experience at the time to really pick it apart. But, that aroma was unlike anything I’d experienced before or since. It was something now completely lost to time. Until it wasn’t. Memories are powerful things, and there is no sense more tightly bound to memory than our sense of smell. One whiff was all it took to carry me back in time, conjuring a vivid recollection of something long submerged in the inky depths of a subconscious mind. Look, I know as well as anyone that pipes are meant to be smoked, and that many feel it almost sacrilegious to have a pipe and not set it to its intended task. In this case, I simply can’t. I won’t. Ever. Rationally, I am fairly certain this pipe would probably be a great smoke. It was too well loved by its previous caretaker to be anything less than that. My choice not to smoke it is an emotional one, not something rational. Of the thousands of pipes that have passed through my hands over the years, this is the only one to create such a singular and vivid, almost Proustian recollection of temps perdu, of lost time. It revivified a long dormant memory that is mine, and mine alone, and that’s enough. I keep it in a drawer with other old English pipes. In some ways, it’s nothing special, just a nice old pipe. I don’t lavish it with any particular care that arguably befits the hidden treasure that it holds. It’s not in a special box, or displayed preciously in a glass cabinet. Every once in a while, I take it out, point my nose bowlwards, and every time, those memories return just as powerfully as they did the first time. I have no idea how long it’s been since its last owner smoked it, but in the years I’ve had it, there seems to have been very little degradation of the aroma, and that’s […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
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.
