Veterans Day: We Get To Win This Time Sir
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Old Hollywood Briar - Nov 11, 2021
- 14 min read
A faded Synoptic Weather Chart for the morning of Saturday, July 1, 1916 read “Light to moderate breezes between East and North, fair to dull. Some showers and mist.” A low-pressure system passing over the English Channel and onto the continent pushed a break in the rain on that first day of July. Bright yellow rays punched down into No Man’s Land and alighted on what poet Siegfried Sassoon described, as a “sunlit picture of hell.”
That morning, as the winds changed direction, in the hour when the last mist still clung to the meadow, the whistles blew 8 divisions of British troops into the valley of the shadow of death. Overconfidence in the previous day’s bombardment led officers to conclude that enemy resistance would be minimal and that the allied troops would need their shovels and full 50-pound packs to reinforce captured German positions. General Sir Henry Rawlinson had given the command that the infantry should advance toward the enemy at a walking pace, in evenly spaced lines, some evidence suggests that this command was ignored. German soldiers would later report that the offensive looked more like a mass suicide than an assault, writing that they didn’t even have to aim, “We just fired into them, and they kept falling.”
That first day marked the bloodiest battle in British history with 57,470 casualties and 19,240 deaths. Military historian John Keegan would later write, “[For the British] the battle was the greatest tragedy. . .of their national military history,” and, “marked the end of an age of vital optimism in British life that has never been recovered.”
In 1914, Major-General Ernest D. Swinton was a journalist covering the front lines of the “War to End all Wars.” Exposed to a wide-ranging view of the newly deployed tactic of trench warfare; he happened upon an idea. He began to sketch out a design for an armored vehicle, mounted on tracks like the one he had seen on a Holt Tractor from the United States. Early adoption of the idea was slow with Lord Kitchener canceling one of his first meetings on the pretense that he was, “Too busy.”
The introduction of slow-moving armor was a hard sell to the Gentleman Officers who placed supreme faith in the swift, mounted charge of British Cavalry. The project languished unfunded for over a month before Sir Winston Churchill in control of the Admiralty, made the unusual move of allocating money out of a Naval fund, for what he would call his, “Landships.” Swinton would later write, “Thus, at a time when the machine gun destroyer scheme had for six weeks been lying moribund at the War Office, abandoned as an impossibility, here was born on the other side of Whitehall a special organization, well supplied with the sinews of war for its support….In May [Churchill] severed his connexion with the Admiralty, though retaining an active interest in the landship project.”
Tanks would eventually be deployed during the Battle of the Somme; but not until mid-September after the rains had intensified. If one were to calculate the delays in the project, the problems of cancelled meetings and intransigent officers; the tally would amount to at least 3 months. Had the idea not faced such an uphill battle; the armored “Landships” might have been available that fateful morning when the whistles blew.
A German report of the psychological impact of the tank once deployed against their troops reads as follows:
“The monster approached slowly, hobbling, moving from side to side, rocking and pitching, but it came nearer. Nothing obstructed it: a supernatural force seemed to drive it onwards. Someone in the trenches cried, “The Devil comes!” And that word ran down the line like lightning. Suddenly tongues of fire licked out of the armoured shine of the iron caterpillar…the English waves of infantry surged up behind the Devil’s chariot.”
It’s hard not to wonder what a difference that factor could have made on the first day of July back in 1916
This Thursday, on the 11th day of the 11th month of the year, we celebrate Veterans Day, formerly Armistice Day, to commemorate the end of hostilities in the Great War. In the 1950s the Congress of the United States changed the name to Veterans Day to continue the extension of gratitude to Veterans of later wars; but they saved the connection to the Armistice of the Great War as a lingering message of remembrance.
The lessons learned in that war were short lived; and it was little time before the sons of those fallen on Flanders Field would find themselves a long way from Tipperary, once again. The lesson of the importance of armor was quickly established by the younger men who survived going over the top and battlefield tactics and minds were changed. Except for Field Marshal Douglas Haig, who commanded the Allied Forces on the Western Front. The embittered old Commander would take his faith in mounted Cavalry to the grave. In 1926 Hage wrote that he, “Believe[d] that the value of the horse and the opportunity for the horse in the future are likely to be as great as ever. Aeroplanes and tanks are only accessories to the men and the horse, and I feel sure that as time goes on you will find just as much use for the horse—the well-bred horse—as you have ever done in the past.”
One hundred years later, Staff Sergeant USMC [Ret] Jeremy Stafford walked into the famous gun room at Taran Tactical in Simi Valley, slapped his pipe roll down on the table and smiled. Stafford is well tanned after a summer working the streets of Los Angeles in an LAPD cruiser. Stout and trim, the 49-year-old veteran of the Iraq War is built like a college fastback, with shoulders as wide as a door frame. A sleek 1990s style USMC tattoo on his bicep occasionally peeks out from under the sleeve of his shirt.
Unraveling a leather chord from his pouch he removed a stout, rusticated billiard with the customary signature on the bottom of JM Boswell. The pipe is an army-mount style with the end of the shank clad in the brass base of a shotgun shell. In his pouch the Latakia laden, Boswell’s Northwoods.
Pulling out a glass mason jar, I pop the top and hand it to Stafford. He breathes in deeply, “Dan’s Blend,” another Boswells favorite. “Wow, that smells like grandpas blend right there! A real classic.”
Stafford’s senses are on point. I am half convinced that the local favorite, “Grandpa’s Blend” at Marty’s Cigar shop in Pasadena, is actually the legendary sweet, golden Virginia cavendish of Dan’s Blend. The smell is somewhere between brown sugar and freshly cut hay with a subtle back end note like the tingle of chai masala. Both Jeremy and I grew up enjoying flavored pouch blends in the 1990s and dipping into the apothecary jars for various well-sauced American blends. The return to an old classic is a welcome experience.
The ribbons are a nice shag cut and present in the usual formation of a sauced blend; rich and slightly damp. Stafford lit his army mount pipe and a delicious aroma began to swirl in the half open enclosure. As the afternoon light peered in through the open gun range behind him the warrior leaned forward, and his eyes sharpened. “There’s definitely some sugar, maybe honey or molasses? I’m getting a little bit of caramel or something.”
“There’s definitely a bit of brown sugar aroma in there,” I say in agreement.
“This smells like America.” Said Stafford.
I managed to retort with a grumbled “Mmmhmmm.”
![Staff Sergeant USMC [Ret] Jeremy Stafford](https://pipesmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Staff-Sargent-USMC-Ret-Jeremy-Stafford.jpg)
NBC News reported in 2004 that early on in the conflict, soldiers began welding any metal they could get their hands on to the vehicles; including sending their Humvees out to Local Iraqi shops to have them armored with scrap steel. Records reveal that the Army was aware of this problem years before the war started. A 1997 paper by Maj. Clifford E. Day, concluded the reliance on soft-skinned Humvees “needlessly put troops in harm’s way without the proper equipment to successfully complete the mission.”Unfortunately, the calls to armor the vehicles in the 1990s fell on deaf ears.
Stafford lead the first joint US / Baghdad Police patrol in the old city. As an LAPD officer back home, he had the training and expertise in civilian police work that would guide him in helping to rebuild a police force in Iraq. Running down a lead from one of his checkpoints revealed that the town of Sumer on the outskirts of Baghdad was in control of the Fedayeen, a paramilitary force fiercely loyal to Saddam. A child had been caught with a bag full of bayonets and, after questioning, broke down and revealed that the paramilitary force had tortured his father and was promising to kill anyone in the town who worked with the Americans.
As the small convoy of unarmored Humvees made their way on to the only road into the town, Stafford was well aware of the fact that his vehicle couldn’t stop a small calibur round fired from a pistol. His eyes were peeled as they slowly made their way into the maze of streets and alleyways. It was sometime around high noon and the bight light on the mud brick walls made shadows appear dark. Just then, Stafford noticed two men armed with AK-47s climbing through a window behind a house, headed to an alleyway, just in front of the convoy. “I remember saying, “GUN GUN GUN!” and jumping out of the Humvee,” said Stafford.
As soon as his feet hit the pavement he ran to the front of the slow moving convoy, sure that an ambush was imminent. No one else had noticed the enemy movement. A hail of .762 rounds would cut through the outer shell of the vehicles like they were made of paper. Running past the lead vehicle Stafford turned the corner and was confronted head on, by two enemy combatants with AK-47s who had begun to take up positions for the ambush, they opened fire immediately, spraying from the hip like a pair of rookie commandos in a low budget Bollywood film.
An old man had been walking in the street ahead of the convoy, Stafford pushed him to the ground and then, as the bullets fell about his person like rain, raised a Mossberg 590 Pump Action Shotgun to his shoulder. Upon deployment, his unit was allowed to bring one extra footlocker everyone was allowed to pack an extra item; Stafford brought a few boxes of Shotgun Slug ammunition. He pressed the trigger
“I was really feeling the urgency of the moment, I wasn’t panicked but the overwhelming urgency caused my first shot to land a bit low, in the hip, it spun the guy around. I remember thinking, ‘breathe, press, breathe, press’ the next shot hit square between the shoulder blades. All my subsequent shots were right on. At that range, I might have been okay with buckshot,” said Stafford, “But the slug is going to be more authoritative way to stop a fight. It’s a huge chunk of lead moving really fast, and it just blows holes in people.”
Stafford continued, “After the first engagement, the bad guy went down. I fell prey to a common problem; you get auditory exclusion, and you also get really bad tunnel vision; I remember looking at him. I had never killed anybody you know? Then I remember thinking, I have to scan and see if there are anymore threats. I looked to my left and there’s another guy standing there, just hosing me with full auto fire man.”
The sound of the gunfire was muted in Stafford’s ears, he said that he could hear it but that it was more of a low thumping in his head. As he swung his gun to the left, he felt a round hit the ground between his feet. Another round, ripped within inches of his ear, “I had auditory exclusion but when that shot went past my ear, I heard the sonic snap.”
He pressed the trigger again and the attacker fell dead. “After that, it was just kind of a free for all,” said Stafford, “These guys were climbing over the wall and I’m just trying to keep up with them, as they’re climbing over it was almost like a video game, they just kept coming over. At one point, I remember getting a click instead of a bang and I turned around and ran back toward the truck for cover, the Humvees had caught up and the MPs were starting to open up with a .50–it jammed.”
I’ve seen Stafford load a shotgun before, it’s like watching a magic trick. Look the other way for a moment and he will have already slid two shells into the tube, almost simultaneously, “I’m sure I was going fast, but brother, it felt like the slowest [reload] on the planet, it felt like I was moving through molasses. I partially loaded, I would put in two or three and shoot, put in two or three and shoot and eventually I grabbed our driver’s M-16 and I started shooting them with my driver’s M-16. We were taking fire from the building itself and the command decision was made, not by me, to push through the objective and call for reinforcements,” Stafford said.
“We kept going on the main street which turned out to be a bad idea as the end was a traffic circle and we were forced to drive back into the ambush. But at that point, they were fleeing and dying. We took a containment position. When our back up got there, they found something around 20 dead. It was an intense little firefight,” Stafford said with a nonchalance that understated the importance of his actions that day. If he hadn’t seen the movement, if he hadn’t run to the front, the full auto fire of the Fedayeen gangsters would have cut the convoy in two and with a jammed .50 caliber turret gun; they would have been nearly defenseless against the ambush.
For his actions that day, Stafford received the Bronze Star with the “V” distinction for Valor, awarded for his heroic actions in battle. When I asked him how many confirmed kills he had in combat, he replied, “I wasn’t a sniper so that’s not something that is normally tracked for infantry.” After a bit more prodding he reasons that he had, killed 7 or 8 in the attempted ambush and about ten more during his time in the desert.
Toward the end of our chat, we spoke about the class structure of military rank and how it can be sometimes difficult to communicate the situation on the ground to those in charge. Another friend of mine in the State Department, arrived with the civilian surge in Iraq, 2009. He wrote a book about his experience of being forced to spend cash by the pallet load to build Iraqi employment projects, like $2 million for a fully automated chicken factory, that employed three people and put out chickens that cost $2 more than the frozen chickens the Iraqis were already buying from Brazil. Or when the U.S. ambassador decided they wanted to have a grass lawn in front of the main Embassy building in the heavily protected “Green Zone.” The sod, delivered from Kuwait under armed convoy, was said to have cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 to 5 million dollars.
It’s easy to get lost in the larger frame of context in modern conflicts. They say that most generals end up fighting the last war, the one they last remembered, and that their tactics suffer because of it. In recent times, victory has been elusive. There always seems to be some office type, clad in the State Department’s unofficial uniform of a Navy blue blazer and khakis to come and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
But on this Veterans Day 2021; we turn the microscope a bit and zoom in to the individual warrior, who laid down his life for his friends and in that moment in time; achieved a Flawless Victory. Good guys 20. Bad guys zero. And for that one small moment the tide in that town turned one degree closer toward freedom. Happy Veterans Day to you all; and thank you for your service.
Written by Old Hollywood Briar
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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. Bewitched by a dissonant charm, we’ve created Maple Shadows. In a season that is defined by the unlikely harmony of treats and frights, we’ve joined the enchanting sweetness of maple with the earthy spice of Dark Fired Kentucky for a smoking experience that captures the senses with an otherworldly fusion of flavor. This may be the best aromatic blend Sutliff’s ever made—and they make a ton of them. First off, it’s not overbearing in the least—quite the opposite, it is also one of the more restrained aromatics they’ve ever made, with a clear but very light topping that melds oh-so-well with their choice Kentucky added to the mix. Opening the tin, the sweet maple is up front and center, but so too is the must of fallen leaves, bready pie crusts, and a crackling fire in the hearth—a perfect invocation of Herbstdüfte in a can. Packing best in an open and capacious bowl, the flavoring is subtle, and recedes to the background while puffing. 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, […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 631. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with pipe maker Dan Keller from Good Made Better. Dan is from South Dakota. Growing up working in the family hardware store where he was always finding solutions to fixing things, he ended up always wanting to make things. He now makes elegant handmade pens, pen holders, portable desks, blotters, blotting paper, book carry cases, and of course artisan pipes. At the top of the show we are continuing the virtual tour of Brian’s pipes with his “f#@k you pipes”.
