Corn Cob Pipes, The Making Of at Missouri Meerschaum
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Kevin Godbee - Sep 4, 2009
- 6 min read
The Corn Cob Pipe is an American icon and known the world over. They have been around for over 100 years and are still popular today.
This is the story of the Corn Cob Pipe with the history of it’s origin, the founding of Missouri Meerschaum, it’s manufacturer, and a step by step photographic guide showing how they are manufactured.
Washington, Missouri has long been known as the Corn Cob Pipe Capital of the World. It was the Missouri Meerschaum Company, still the largest manufacturer of corn cob pipes in the world, that began the tradition for which Washington became famous.
It was about 1869 when Henry Tibbe, a Dutch immigrant woodworker, first began production of the corncob pipe. Legend has it that a local farmer whittled a pipe out of corn cob and liked it so much that he asked Henry Tibbe to try turning some on his lathe. The farmer was well-pleased with his pipes, so Henry made a few more and put them for sale in his shop. They proved to be such a fast-selling item that soon he was spending more time making pipes for his customers than on his woodworking. Soon Tibbe went into full time production of corn cob pipes. In 1907, the H. Tibbe & Son Co. became the Missouri Meerschaum Company.
Meerschaum is a Turkish clay used in high grade pipes. In German, the word means “sea foam”. Tibbe likened his light, porous corn cob pipes and their cool smoke to that of the more expensive meerschaum pipes and thus called his pipes “Missouri Meerschaums”. Tibbe and a chemist friend devised a system of applying plaster to the outside of the corn cob, then sanding the bowl smooth after it dried. In 1878, Tibbe patented this process.
A nationwide distribution system was established for the sale of his pipes. Other pipe firms also developed; between the turn of the century and 1925, there were as many as a dozen corn cob pipe companies in Franklin County, most of them in Washington near the river. The simple wooden building which originally accommodated the H. Tibbe & Son Co. was soon replaced by a two story brick building on the corner of Front and Cedar Streets. This building later had a third floor added and over the years four more additions were built. Ownership changed hands in 1912 when the company was purchased by Edmund Henry Otto. It remained in the Otto family for over fifty years, with Edmund’s son, Carl and grandson, Steve. In 1978, it was acquired by Fendrich Industries Inc., of Indiana who owned it until 1983 when it was sold to John and Geraldine Brandenburger. In 1988, it was purchased by the present owners, Michael Lechtenberg, Robert Moore and Larry Horton.
Back when the industry began, cobs from an open-pollinated corn served nicely for the pipes. Today’s pipes are made from a special white hybrid corn developed by the University of Missouri. The variety produces big, thick, tough cobs. The corn is grown on 140 acres owned by the company in the Missouri River bottom. The company employees do the corn picking, and haul the corn to the crib area, also located in the river bottom. The corn is shelled using only old, out of production shellers dating to the 1930’s, as the newer shellers break up the cobs. The cobs are then stored in the upper two levels of the factory for a year or two until they are properly dried and cured.
Today, there are about 50 employees working in the same brick building on Front Street, who produce, pack and ship about 5,000 pipes per day to nearly every U.S. state and several foreign countries. Cob pipe making has not changed much since those first pipes were fashioned; the pipes still take a lot of hand labor, although some operations have been automated by shrewdly adapting machines from other uses. Production begins with the cobs being dumped into a chute that sends them down to the lowest level of the building. The remaining husks are removed and the cobs are fed into multiple gang saws where they are cut into uniform lengths. The cob pieces tumble onto a conveyor belt of a grader that sorts them by size. Tobacco holes are bored into the cobs, then most go to one of the four turning machines to be shaped. It’s the turning or shaping process that determines the pipe style. Some larger pipes are still turned by hand. The white plaster coating is then smeared on the bowls and they are allowed to dry a day before being sanded smooth. A boring machine bores the stem hole, then bowls are varnished either by being tumbled in a cement mixer or run through a lacquer spray booth. Then they go to the finishing room where they have a ferrule (metal ring) attached to the wood stem that has been printed to look like cob. The plastic bits (mouthpiece) have a filter inserted and then they are hammered into the ferruled stem. The stems are glued into the bowls, a label is placed on the bottom, the pipes are packaged and they’re ready for shipment to all parts of the world. The company ships to every state in the U.S. and about 13 foreign countries.
There are eighteen different styles of corn cob pipes being produced today. Most styles also have a variety of bowl shapes and come with either a bent or straight stem. Missouri Meerschaum corn cob pipes are popular as souvenirs but most are sold for the smoking pleasure that caused their popularity over a century ago.
Here is an illustrated step by step description of the making of corn cob pipes at the Missouri Meerschaum factory.
Missouri Meerschaum Company’s Website
Click Here to Buy Corn Cob Pipes
Written by Kevin Godbee
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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.
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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! 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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. 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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, […]
Hey Kevin, just realized your post over on my blog http://www.yahwehssong.com got thrown in the spam. It has now been posted in the comments section. Sorry about that. Loved your article. It was real educating.
Thanks Kevin. I enjoyed your post too:
http://yahwehssong.com/2009/09/03/learning-to-smoke-a-pipe/
My son bought a corncob that I ended up with. I shall try to smoke it more often. I have neglected the cob. I believe Mark Twain bought these pipes by the barrel.
Wow, cool article Kevin!
It doesn’t look like the process has changed all that much since Life Magazine did their photo story back in 1945.
http://blogs.pipetrader.com/TobaccoBarn/archive/0001/01/01/corn-cob-pipe-story-from-life-magazine.aspx
Keep up the good work Kevin!
Ha ha! Thanks Tobacco Barn! And thanks for giving me somewhere to link so people can buy them!
Not a problem. We sell close to 500 corn cob pipes a year and we continue to see a growth month over month. Hopefully this is a good indication that the base of pipe smokers is beginning to grow again!
Greetings from the Blue Grass State! Just wanted to say thanks for your website. My wife won a very nice Dunhill off ebay last December and gave it to me for my birthday. I lost it a couple months later and still haven’t recovered from it. However, in the process of looking for another Dunhill I stumbled upon corn cob pipes, which I already have a few, mainly because my sons kept getting into my good pipes so I let them play with the corn cob pipes to preserve my good ones. Anyway, I found myself becoming quite content with my corn cob pipes and just ordered a General MacArthur straight pipe, plus a few more I saw on ebay. One thing I’m curious about, can I color, stain, or “paint” a corn cob pipe? I haven’t seen anything online about doing that, but I would like to customize mine. That’s why I got the ones on ebay- so I can experiment with decorating them.
Once again, thanks for the great website.
Johnson
Nicholasville, KY
I’ve been smoking a pipe for quite a while now 15 years to be exact I started when I got out of Navy basic. The reason I started smoking a pipe was this old Master Chief smoked one and I kinda wanted to emulate him. Still til this day now being a Senior Chief myself I still remember him giving me my first pipe a Missouri Corn Con and even now I still smoke a Mizz corn cob. Thanks for making a quality product guys
Hallo from Denmark, I was just wandering if anybody know where I can buy a few corn cobs big enough for pipe making, I make pipes as a hobby and the local (Denmark – North Europe) corn cobs don’t grow that big. I read some where that a cob should be close to 2 inches wide. Is that correct?
Best regards, Henrik v. hva@post8.tele.dk