Wolf Zheng, Making Pipes on a 30th Floor Balcony
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Kevin Godbee - May 19, 2014
- 7 min read
A. Miller
If you’re anything like me, you spent at least one bowl this last week wishing you were in Chicago and enjoying the glory of shiny pipes and tobacco samplers. I like to imagine it’s a place where flake tobaccos pave the roads, rope tobaccos hang from trees like willows, and ribbon-cut tobacco covers the ground like moss. Tins of glory are everywhere for the taking and pipes grow as the flower of the briar tree, free for the picking.
Alas, I didn’t make it to Chicago, and a ticket from China costs me a bit more than I’m willing to pay at this point to attend the gala (maybe next year?). But while the most significant people in the world of pipe smoking are all gathered in one place and hobnobbing, I can still sit down with a pipe-making hobbyist and enjoy a bowl.
Today I’m with Wolf Zheng in his back office at the home-theatre design company he owns. Sadly we’re in one of the few places in the world where his windowless office is actually less depressing than a view of the outdoors. A friend of his recently gave him a very-aged tin of Ridgeway tobacco made by/for A. Garfinkel, Inc. and he’s been saving the tin for me to be the first to try. At first it’s a bit flattering, and then upon seeing the small bits of rust on the tin and the dryness of the tobacco I have a slight suspicion he may actually be using me as a test-rat to make sure nothing deadly had fermented inside. Nonetheless, I gladly partake and fulfill my role with abandon.
Apart from being on the receiving side of some pretty epic tobacco gifts, Wolf also spends his spare time making pipes. While people have offered him money for his pipes, I refer to him as a hobbyist because he’s (thus far) never been willing to sell one, instead he just gives them away to friends. The truth is, he makes too much money running his own business designing and building smart-homes and home theaters to turn full-time pipe maker.
What makes Wolf interesting compared to the average American pipe-making hobbyist is partly his Chinese viewpoint on pipes, and partly his three square meter workshop. For while many American pipe smokers may be able to light up a pipe and wander slowly out to the lathe in the corner of a two-car garage, Wolf makes all his pipes on his no-bigger-than-a-small-closet porch, on the 30th floor. An apartment as big as his is actually already rather large for a big city like this, but finding space for a lathe is nonetheless an impressive feat.
For Wolf, pipe craft began with his very first pipe. After smoking both cigarettes and cigars and finding neither suited his tastes, a friend in Beijing introduced him to the idea of a pipe. Right out the gate he purchased a Savinelli (readily available) online for around $50 and began smoking. The wood intrigued him for a while, and then he decided to get his hands dirty. Instead of buying a pre-drilled briar block fit with a mouthpiece, he got started by refinishing the Savinelli. First by polishing away the dark finish, only to then realize it was dark for a reason (lots of small, filled imperfections). But this just pushed him to further research and then eventually rusticating the bowl. With a new beauty in his hand he was hooked.
Refinishing a few more pipes led to clamping his drill to a workbench on his porch and importing some Italian briar. After making five pipes very slowly through that method, he purchased a lathe in 2011 and whipped up a lovat.
Since then he’s been turning out pipes whenever he gets time. Wood, he says, is something with which the Chinese are very comfortable. He likens it to Americans driving cars. In America we watch our parents drive from a young age and learn to drive years before the Chinese are legally allowed. Getting behind the wheel for an American therefore, takes very little time before it feels natural. Likewise he says, as a Chinese kid he watched his parents work with wood, and played with it even when he was young. Manipulating it in to a pipe is easy and feels natural for him.
He continued learning and drilling enough pipes until he had a few throwaways, a few giveaways, and eight for himself on hand for regular rotation. Then one day someone broke in to his office, stole all his handmade pipes, a load of tobacco, and his computer and printer. He took to the internet to lament this event and a fellow pipe-smoker responded, “Just think of it as though you donated eight new pipes to eight new pipe smokers, with some tobacco to boot!” He laughs while he tells me this story and says, “Okay great! Now what about my computer?”
It may well be there are eight Wolf Zheng pipes out there on the estate market right now, stolen from that original batch.
Over time Wolf has developed a taste for a specific kind of pipe, and as a maker is able to tailor each to his own tastes. He comments about this carefully, knowing there are rules and unspoken laws in pipe making that he is free from adhering to because he makes the pipes for himself, not to sell. For one, he prefers very thin walls on his pipe. “I like to clench,” he says, “So I make pipes the best I can for clenching.” This means from the use of a bamboo shank to the weight of the briar to the shape of the bit, everything is tailored accordingly. He even jokes that he makes some of the only pipes for a person with an underbite (himself), a slightly unusual bit perhaps, but nothing suits him better.
Over the years he has given most away (and had a few stolen) but has hung on to about 10 pipes which he keeps in his regular rotation. I’m sharing some C&D Opening Night with him and we sit back to enjoy our smoke. He continues to tell me more about bamboo and his love for it. By his own admission the mere fact that he’s Chinese makes him feel some special love for it; it’s just a bonus fact that it’s actually a great material for a shank.
He serves me some aged pu-er tea and I ask about his love for the tea ritual (literally ‘Kungfu Tea’ in Chinese) and how it informs his pipe smoking. He agrees the two have many similarities, there being something about the ceremony—the ritual nature—of both which draws people to these hobbies. You can just throw tea in a glass with hot water and drink it, or you can pour it in a clay pot, wash the leaves, then steep them again and filter the tea to a small pitcher before pouring it in to small porcelain glasses. Likewise you can throw tobacco in a pipe and smoke, but many of us have a slower considered process of sitting down to select our tobaccos and then a suitable pipe (or the other way around) followed by slowly packing the tobacco through one of many different methods. Then we sit back to light, relax, tamp, and then re-light. At this thought I press him to consider referring to a very ritualized pipe-packing and smoking ritual as ‘Kungfu Pipe Smoking’,* but he won’t let me go that far. He does, however, share some principles for tea-pairing with pipes.
Similar to things I’ve heard before, he suggests red teas (we call them black teas) and fermented teas, with their earthy flavors, are better suited to Latakia blends; and green teas, with their grassy fresh, flavors are better suited to Virginias. It’s hard to disagree, and he spends every day smoking this way. I personally find adult beverages help me better maintain a reasonable blood-sugar level alongside the nicotine, but to each his own.
The afternoon slowly fades in to a second and then a final small bowl. Wolf’s secretary stops in a few times to ask for a signature or an opinion for a customer and once or twice he runs out to shake someone’s hand or close a deal. It occurs to me that our pipes may not be from the magical land of the Chicago show, but at least Wolf doesn’t need to travel that far for a handcrafted pipe made perfectly to his liking.
*I don’t know about you, but when people ask me about the hobby I’d love to tell them I’m a Kungfu Pipe Smoker. No reason to explain, just leave it at that.
Written by Kevin Godbee
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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, […]
What a great story. That is a young man who really wants to create something! The use of bamboo seems fitting. I’m sure other materials aren’t easy to come by in China. I wonder what the neighbors below him think with briar dust drifting down!
IN FACT ,HE IS A GREAT PIPE MAKER ,JUST LIKE HIS GREAT REPUTATION IN KWONGFU CIRCLE OF SICHUAN, CHINA. He is the people knows about bamboo material,he has the best bamboo in the world, which served a cold & dry smokes。but it is so difficult to get an wolf pipe even I am the brother of his Master! It spent me 2 lbs of FVF（15years-aged）to get one wolf pipe!!!
Nicely written and well illustrated article. Wolf is indeed an interesting personality with an extraordinary commitment to, and investment in, the hobby. I’m glad you wrote-up his profile.
I’ll take 3
Very good article, thank you for bringing it to us.
What a great read ,outstanding .
Very informative article. The friends wit whom Wolf shares his artistry are indeed fortunate.