A Rumination on how Tiny Flaws Depreciate a Good Pipe

[Briar Lee]

As I sit on my deck in the gloaming, smoking my Pipe Maker (that could have been born a Lee Three Star) off in the distance a Missouri mule brays, maybe three miles from here.

Eric Nording’s first pipes were marketed under the SON brand name, before he disentangled himself from a partner. They are usually quite collectible, but I’ve just won this one for $35 because of what the seller says is a tiny surface crack on the left side, not through the briar and not going to the top of the bowl.



We men are so fickle with our pretty baubles. The slightest flaw, and they sell for a dime on the dollar.

But if a feller is willing to tolerate a little flaw, he can accumulate more, better, things he already has enough of.

 

[mso489]

Ruination, it's another Rumination. Hey, that's a pretty pipe. A few small nicks and jolts give a pipe some character.

 

[gamzultovah]

That’s why I love the pipes Ed Burak made. He didn’t allow little flaws to detract, he was actually proud of the character that they brought to his creation. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Briar Lee]

After my father’s mother died in May 1960, Daddy had her house plumbed and installed a bathroom (she would not permit a bathroom in her home while living, as she claimed she’d never been in a home with a toilet inside she couldn’t smell it) and rented it to a retired railroad engineer named C. L. Christian and his gracious wife Evelyn.

I knew as a boy, that the best fiddle player I knew lived in my Grandpa’s house and he’d regale me with stories of knights of the road, railroad bulls, hobo jungles, and high balling steam locomotives in Arkansas, and Evelyn was a stamp collector.

She gave me her stamp collection, and I still have it. All the stamps had been cancelled, so it’s only valuable for the memories.

I also have Chris’ fiddle, she gave when Chris died in 1968 when I was ten years old. I had a luthier look at it about forty years ago, and he said it was just a common middle grade violin, but not worth the $200 or so would cost to restring the bow and reset the neck and get it playable again.

When my trophies at last I lay down, my grandkids will eventually wonder why I collected worthless cancelled stamps and a fiddle that needed work to play.

It’s because of the memories, of Chris playing me Wabash Cannonball while Evelyn went over her stamp collection, in the house my Grandfather built just the way my Grandmother wanted, in 1931 after the first big house burned, when my Daddy was only 12. I still keep it rented, and each month get a check because he did.

Chris had no trouble playing that fiddle, with a slightly sprung neck, and an almost worn out bow.

 

[OzPiper]

The Japanese concept of wabi sabi and the Persian carpet/rug weavers who would deliberately include a flaw into their creations (in the believe that only the Almighty could be perfect) had it right after all.

Just ruminating ?

 

[LotusEater]

I’m all for flawed pipes - I love a good scratch and dent sale

 

[burleybreath]

Very desirable pipe, above. I'm currently breaking in a Morgan Bones brandy, with repeated bowls of Granger. Smokes really great, and it has a quite loveable flaw on the bottom, kind of like some women I've known. Or myself, for that matter. TMI?

 

[OzPiper]

Very desirable. it has a quite loveable flaw on the bottom, kind of like some women I've known.

That's kinda kinky - women with flawed bottoms ?

 

[jpmcwjr]

I did notice there were no pics of the chamber!

And, yes, something I didn't need to learn!

And, there are women with lovely bottoms, and the tiny flaw- a bite mark perhaps- shows no body is perfect!

 

[Briar Lee]

Briar is generally not prone to surface cracking, likely because the pipe maker either kiln dries his briar or allows it to air dry for several years.

The easiest explanation for a minute surface crack (I cannot see it, but the gold rated seller with a 100% rating says it’s there, so it must be) is that when Nording was new in the luxury brandy snifter pipe business almost 60 years ago, so was his briar.

It’s dried out by now, surely.

I’ve often wondered why Osage Orange (hedge) isn’t used for smoking pipes. You can only drive a steeple into a green, freshly cut hedge post. After it dries out it’s almost as hard as iron and simply will never rot. I can claim ownership of hedge corner posts still in service that are well over a century old, some maybe 130 years old, with three or four sets of barbed wire still visible.

I had one pulled that was visible in a 1903 photograph and below ground it was still fresh looking.

What might prevent it being used for pipes, is the old timers claimed hedge apples were poisonous.

The squirrels that eat them, seem to suffer no ill effects.

When my beautiful SON pipe arrives I intend to photograph that surface crack where we can see it.

 

[verporchting]

Wabi Sabi just about nails it.

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

I wish they were all flawed.
Many of my best pipes are $50 bargains that would have sold for 5x more under a different brand.

One of the best examples is a Lorenzo Titano Oom Paul, huge brair, amazing sandblast, excellent drilling in the shank (of course the stem was industry standard and I just recently drilled it out to proper smoking quality).
As a Ser Jacopo that would have been a $400 pipe.

Then I have a set of 8" long Canaidan shape pipes from Ropp, Smokingpipes found a batch of them and sold them off for about $70 each, I bought five, one of the best investments I've made. Any time I see another Canadian shape pipe with such a long shank they go for many hundreds of dollars.

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

Anyone who wants to own a Dunhill on a budget need look no further than the retailer basket pipes in the U.K.

These pipes have some of the best sandblasts you will find anywhere, all selling for under $50.

GQ Tobaccos Pipes - GQ Tobaccos

GQ Tobacco's pipes are made in London by one of the most famous pipe makers in the world. Find out more here

www.gqtobaccos.com

Barber B-Line Pipes Archives

Buy Barber B-Line Pipes from James Barber Tobacconist. The oldest family run UK tobacconist established in 1867.

www.smoke.co.uk

 

[Morrison Jeremiah]

Anyone who wants to own a Dunhill on a budget need look no further than the retailer basket pipes in the U.K.

These pipes have some of the best sandblasts you will find anywhere, all selling for under $50.

GQ Tobaccos Pipes - GQ Tobaccos

GQ Tobacco's pipes are made in London by one of the most famous pipe makers in the world. Find out more here

www.gqtobaccos.com

Barber B-Line Pipes Archives

Buy Barber B-Line Pipes from James Barber Tobacconist. The oldest family run UK tobacconist established in 1867.

www.smoke.co.uk

Thanks for that, I just bought 5 pipes from GQ tobaccos.

That has to be good value !

 

[Sweet Home Alabama]

Great OP and thank you for the fiddle video.

May I make a delineation. between a new product with a flaw and a used product with a flaw. At least the seller was honest and you got a discount.

 

[burleybreath]

That's kinda kinky - women with flawed bottoms

?

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I’m having to rethink a conversation I had with @lawdawg on the art thread. People wearing pj’s to Walmart… maybe all of this hipster BS has led to decline in quality of civilization. When I first got here on this forum it was all, S.Bang, Eltang, and some of the most beautiful pipes ever made. Now, its all corncobs and Grabows? Ha ha.
In college, I worked my way through with the grounds crew. There was a wirey old man named Mud who would tell all of us students that we would be happier in life if we lowered our standards, “fat girls and ugly girls make better lovers and are easier to leave.” We of course laughed at the guy, because his head would follow those round women with big 80’s hair and wearing their dresses like a coffee table.

I don’t disparage Dr Grabow, a working man’s pipe. I have one of my uncle’s Grabow Starfires. And when a renowned pipemaker got on a corncob thread here years ago, and chastised us for celebrating a pipe that was no more regal than a pair of dime store flip flops, I saw these days coming.

We are a culture that celebrates participation over winning. Look, I got me a fat ugly girl!! I’m going to get a job that I can wear a tshirt to work and cut off bluejeans. Why strive to better myself, when I can just wear boxers and some old rag of a shirt out to Walmart, and then to dinner at Waffle House. PBR for life!!!

Ha ha, for the record, I don’t really have anything against cheaper pipes, and it’s great that someone loves a flawed pipe. If we all defined beauty the same way, the human species would die out…. But…. I was just ruminating.

 

[Sweet Home Alabama]

If a $500pipe could be proven to smoke better, you might have a point. In my experience, and to use an old golf analogy, that certainly applies more often than not, "you cannot buy a good golf game".

Cobs and cheap pipes have a role to play for new and more active smoking where damage and losing is a chance.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

If a $500pipe could be proven to smoke better, you might have a point. In my experience, and to use an old golf analogy, that certainly applies more often than not, "you cannot buy a good golf game".

Cobs and cheap pipes have a role to play for new and more active smoking where damage and losing is a chance.

“It’s too risky. I could lose. Why play the game.”
If everyone thought this way, we’d still be living in caves in fear of being eaten. Everything has a risk.
But, as I said, just ruminating. I’ll smoke my aged tobaccos in my Beckers while Rome burns. Ha ha!

 

[telescopes]

I play golf all of the time. I NEVER keep score. I have found that enjoying my own path by rules that make sense for me rather than what other people would impose on me makes much more sense. Smoking a Kaywoodie that is sweet and a joy, is better than a custom that can never be boogered up because it’s just too nice. There is a joy in comfort.