The 2009 IPCPR Show (formerly RTDA) – Part I
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Kevin Godbee - Aug 21, 2009
- 14 min read
Official Name: IPCPR 77th Annual Convention and International Trade Show.
The "IPCPR Show" took place August 8 – 12, 2009 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The IPCPR is the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association.
The show is described as … "the retail tobacconist’s most important event of the year – a four day extravaganza featuring the industry’s largest trade show – and only open to IPCPR members. Thousands of products from more than 300 suppliers filling 200,000 square feet of exhibit space. Informative seminars and meetings. Unparalleled networking opportunities between retailers and their suppliers." From: http://ipcpr.org/about.html
Basically the show is the main event of the year for manufacturers to introduce new products, such as pipes and tobacco to retail tobacconists across the country.
PipesMagazine.com provides our coverage of the show here.
Our first stop was FGT Enterprises (see our profile of FGT here) where we spoke to Frank "Smitty" Smith. He explained how retailers hand-pick the exact pipes they want from the display, then they are individually bagged with the retail shop’s name for later shipping after they are cleaned and polished. Our conversation went like this.
Smitty: We bring the pipes and they pick them out and then we put them in a bag and then take them back to the warehouse, and make sure everything is okay, and then we ship them back out to the customer.
PipesMagazine: Okay, so they can choose the pipes here and then you ship it to them?
Smitty: That’s exactly right. When we get back to the warehouse, then we check all of the pipes to make sure that there’s not any problems with them or any damage. Sometimes, when you are putting 40 or 50 pipes in a bag, they get scratched or something and we make sure we correct that before it goes out to the store.
PM: Very good and tell me about the pipes that you have here. These are…
Smitty: These are exceptional grain pipes. In other words, this is one of the best pipes that you can buy. There is no one in this whole convention that will sell pipes of this quality for this price.
PM: Right, the prices are very reasonable.
Smitty: Very, very reasonable as I said. You notice the grain in the pipes.
PM: Beautiful.
Smitty: and so forth. These are exceptional grains and they maybe will have just one or two little fills in them that we have to, you know, but you will never see them.
PM: And these are handmade?
Smitty: These are handmade.
Smitty: These are ABC First and ABC First means no flaws, nothing, and for what we sell them for. When you are running say, you are cutting 2000 blocks for pipes, of the first, you might get 1 1/2%, that’s it that are flawless so most people in this range would sell these pipes for $200 or $300 but always we keep our prices very low.
PM: I see $52.95.
Smitty: $52.95 for a perfect pipe. As I said no one, you can go all over this show, and you won’t find this quality of pipe at this price anywhere because of the small amount of pipes you get when you run as I said 2000 pipes, you only get 1 1/2 to 2%, I don’t care any manufacturer over the world, that’s all they get.
PM: Right, that’s just the nature of the briar.
Smitty: Exactly, that’s the nature of the briar.
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The FGT booth was also showing some new tobacco blends to replace some of the discontinued Lane blends. I spoke to Gordon Smith about this.
Gordon: When Lane discontinued a lot of their blends, at one time, Lane had 13 or 14 basic blends, but that changed when they were sold to Imperial Tobacco.
Imperial came in and was working with a jobber that was selling all of their product and, what they did, they reduced to the top six Lane tobaccos. Once you get somebody on a pipe tobacco, they want it. So what we did was we went back in to our blending area and we came up with some of the blends that Lane used to sell, their TK6 and their LL7, their HGL … Ours is called ATS tobaccos, Alternative Tobacco Solutions.
PipesMagazine.com: And that is to replace the discontinued tobaccos?
Gordon Smith: The Lane tobacco, that is correct. We came out with a raspberry. Their issue 2000 which is a burley base, their hazelnut which has a hazelnut taste, their HGL which is a Virginia and a Black Cavendish blend, and their LL7. All of these were very popular tobaccos but the main volume was done with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
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Our next stop was Villiger Stokkebye, marketers of Orlik Tin Tobaccos, W.Ø. Larsen, Stanwell Tin Tobaccos, Erinmore Tin Tobaccos, Escudo Tin Tobaccos, Balkan Sasieni, Skandinavik, Sail Tobaccos, and Troost Tobaccos.
We spoke with Lois M. Siler, Division Sales Manager, and Sandy Porter from The Porter Agency – Villiger Stokkebye’s Advertising, Marketing and Communications agency.
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Every year W.Ø. Larsen introduces a Limited Edition pipe tobacco. We saw the festive looking tin for the 2010, W.Ø. Larsen. It is limited to just 1,000 tins in the U.S. and will be on the market in November 2009 in time for the holidays.
We didn’t have definite information on the blend at the show, but according to Sandy Porter, it will be similar to last year’s blend; "It was more of an aromatic and if I remember right about last year’s I think maybe some fruit, apricot and honey and that’s just out of my memory.
Sandy walked us through some more products.
"It’s new to this company and we had this last year at this show too, but Escudo, Troost, and Sail Tobaccos are old brands that were formerly made in a factory in Holland, and the Orlik Company bought that company out about 18 months ago. The Scandinavia Tobacco Group bought it out and these were really hard to find in the U.S. because that company, the Dutch Company, kind of lost its focus on the U.S. market and so now these are much easier to find. There is much better distribution through Stokkebye."
Stokkebye was another tobacco maker showing new replacements for discontinued Lane blends. Sandy went on to tell us, "This new version is very much like BCA. It’s Dansk Black, and the other one is Golden Dansk. It’s very similar to 1 – Q, the Lane product.
They’re hitting the market right after this show."
Since Stokkebye distributes Stanwell Tobacco, they have a relationship with Stanwell Pipes. Sandy was nice enough to walk me over to the Stanwell booth and introduce me to …
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Søren Lundh Aagaard, Managing Director of Stanwell in Denmark.
Søren started off by showing us an innovative new fashion in pipes that has already won the 2009 Red Dot Design Award, The Moyo, which is a briar pipe covered with rubber and uniquely packaged.
Søren explained the ideas behind the Moyo pipe.
"Our average smokers, at least in Denmark and Sweden are 55 – years – old. And people that are 55 today will be 65 in 10 years and soon they will be gone. So, we definitely have some challenges in terms of recruiting young pipe smokers."
So we wanted to add some story-telling to the product because we know that’s really big today in accessories and fashion accessories. It’s much more than just a product itself, it’s also the story that goes with it. So you have a conversation piece also in your hand.
We took our featherweight series which is a series of small pipes that don’t take too much tobacco. They don’t take up too much room in your pocket and they’re easy to smoke. And we found out we could give it a rubber coat. So, we rubber coated these pipes and they come in a very nice box. There’s a story to the product. Moyo in Swahili means feeling and smoking a pipe is a very emotional thing. So we came up with the Swahili word also because where Swahili is spoken is also the regions where they harvest the rubber. So that would sort of bring a circle to the story and that was our intention."
"And another challenge we had is of course that we’re not allowed to communicate these great stories because we are a tobacco related item. So, that’s more of just a test. I’ve added this pipe to a very large European Award for the Red Dot Designer Award. And we won first prize in the Industrial Design for Fashion Accessories. And now all of the sudden we are able to communicate a design story and I’m actually allowed to call up a journalist and tell them hey I have a great story for you here and it’s not illegal for me anymore."
"It’s been very warm and receptive and we’re already working on a fall edition that would come out at the end of this year. It will be more of a brownish rubber coat with some sort of like covered dust in it. It doesn’t look metallic but it gives some depth to the rubber coat. And it comes also in a very nice box which is made out of tobacco leaf.
PipesMagazine.com: When will this product be available on the market?
Søren: It’s available now.
PM: What is the base material of the pipe?
Søren: It’s briar, but rubber coated.
Actually it’s high grade wood. It’s the same we use for our black polish pipes. People might think that we want to cover up a lot of sand pits here to be honest. They are good bowls, but with bad graining. But if we had big fillings in these, the fillings will, will move independently from the wood and you would be able to see it underneath the rubber coat because it’s just a very, very thin coat – just like with the black polish pipes. These are high grade bowls the only thing with them is that they have bad graining.
The approximate retail price range is between $260 and $300.
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Another new thing is the Nana Pipe. Nana Ivarsson (pronounced "E-varsson") is the granddaughter of Sixten Ivarsson. That’s Nana over there – the young, beautiful, also industrial designer and pipe maker. Nana and her grandfather founded the basis of all of our standard shapes back in the ’50s and ’60s. He was doing most; he was doing 80% of all the shapes that came into the company. And even today, I think from in, in the standard line 50% of it is still his old shapes. And her father Lars Ivarsson, Sixten Ivarsson’s son, has also done pipes for us. And now we sort of wanted to close the circle and bring her in for us as well. She is a very expensive lady. Her pipes they retail from $1,000 US dollars and upwards. But here you can, you can get close to her feel at a much more affordable price because we machine manufacture our pipes.
PM: Okay, so it’s Nana’s hand made designs done by machine?
Søren: Yeah, exactly. She delivers prototypes for us and we do test runs and do mouth pieces for her. And this is exact down to the 100th of millimeter copy of her, of her prototype she’s done for us.
PM: So, the $1,000 and up that’s her handmade…?
Søren: That’s her handmade pipes yeah.
PM: And then this line?
Søren: Depending on the quality the most expensive one is about $300 and the sandblasted ones around $250 depending on if they’re smooth chock or, or they’re all black.
Søren: Then we have our, our flawless pipes. The flawless pipes usually go to customers in Russia and China. Whenever we turn, when we do a turn, we do approximately 500 – 700 pipes per turn. And out of these 500 – 700 pipes we will get three to four, maybe five, maybe two with bowls which are completely flawless. So, these are like the pearls of our entire production.
PipesMagazine.com: When you say per turn – that’s when you have like a batch?
Søren: Yeah we do a batch – whenever we do a new shape and when we start the production of a shape we do approximately 500 – 700 pipes at a time.
Søren: And out of these 500 – 700 pieces when we are going through the different qualities, we will get some which are completely flawless. They are very unique. But this is the first time I’ve presented it to the US market and as you can see these were basically sold on the first day. I have seven or eight left. So, it takes time for us to get them but you will find beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, fantastic pipes which from competitive brands are even more expensive I think.
Søren: Then we have the revival series. It’s a new series we started up doing last year where we built – we had a pipe museum in Denmark with all of our old shapes and we’d go down and we’d pick out a shape and we’d do a re – run. So this is a rerun from the ‘60s from something we called the Elegant Series. Today we use all acrylic mouth pieces, but this is old style mouth pieces we got. We do the original S which is embedded in the mouth piece and then we chalk it up with just normal writing chalk. And this is how we used to do it back in the ’60s. And this is this year’s.
PM: So that’s the name of the range is Revival.
Yes, Stanwell Revival.
Next year’s will be this. It’s shape 168. It used to be called Golf because it sort of looks like a golf club. Then we have – these are not new, but I’ll just give you a little story to how we do these because I think it’s unique how we do it.
All of our rings have been nailed. So this is not just glued on, we nail them with brass nails. And before doing that when we have turned off the excess material to mount the ring, we take all the bowls and we bake them in an oven overnight. And this means we drive out the last humidity that’s in the bowl which is between 8 to 10%. And once this is driven out, it makes the bowls shrink just a tiny, tiny bit and we then stick the ring…And this will – once the pipe has been outside in a normal environment again it will obtain this natural humidity from there and sort of press against the side…
This will make sure it doesn’t come off. So, I will guarantee you we don’t lose our tough rings. And another thing if we look at the black polish pipes and like the black polish bamboos – all black polish is not, it’s not a lacquer. This is a stain.
We stain the black polish pipe 11 times with a staining process that takes two weeks because they have to dry up between these stains. And this means that we don’t put color on the surface of the pipe, but we put it inside the wood. Because we do it so many times we even, we are able to polish it up so it actually looks like paint. But this will not chip. It will of course after 10 – 15 years when you smoke the pipe you will be able to wear it off because it is just a stain and not a lacquer.
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Another new series we are also launching here, at the fair, is the Naval Series. I was always bothered by the fact that the rings don’t have a story to it. It, it’s just there for the looks. So, I wanted to add a story to the product like we’ve done with the Moyo pipe. And I’ve always thought that the brass rings sort of look like the distinction on Naval Officers.
So we have copied four different ranks from the Naval Officers. So we have an Admiral, we have a Commander, and a Captain, and a Lieutenant. And of course, the rings are representing also the quality, the different qualities of the pipes. So the Admirals would be the highest grade and the Lieutenant will be the lower grade of sandblasted pipes. All of the pipes come in a miniature sea bag.
The Pipe of the Year ’09, this was shaped by Tom Eltang. We have a close working relationship with Tom and he’s done a lot of shapes for us and he’s usually the guy doing our own non – filtered pipes of the year. So, this is the ’09. It’s a beautiful, beautiful shape. And in 10 we have also worked with him and he has done a special shape for us. So this will be out at the end of the year and probably be in the US market in the beginning of ’10. And we have a Christmas pipe that we bring out in October and this has been shaped by Lasse Skovgaard. It’s a young Finnish pipe maker.
Lasse Skovgaard is the son of Benni Jorgensen.
Benni is also one of the original Larsen pipe makers which we are still collaborating with. And he is doing some of our high grade Larsens. And Lasse has his shop in our factory. He is doing a lot of our repairs so … It’s a small world.
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This concludes Part I. Watch for Part II of the IPCPR Show next month.
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.
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, […]
Great stuff Kevin!
Kevin, nice articles. I will forward this on the Soren so he can read it as well. One correction in the Stokkebye article – the Lane blend is BCA, not DCA.
–> the Lane blend is BCA, not DCA
Fixed! Thanks 🙂