A Rumination on the Glory of the Unboxing of a Grade 1 Nording Freehand

[Briar Lee]

Title edited to capitalize important words. Warning: This had better be the last time you make careless titles. More points towards a ban will be forthcoming. I've edited at least five of your "Rumination" series, and pointed out the etiquette of titling.

It’s been almost fifty years since that foil pouch of Velvet, instead of the little can, that I paid a quarter for at the grocery store had this glorious picture of a big pickaxe style Danish freehand pipe on it.

K.B Youngblood, the businessman who owned the A Frame Cafe even smoked a real one, he had several, he rotated. K.B. was tolerant of a kid asking questions, and he said he’d bought them at the PX when he was in the service, and you could still buy them at real pipe shops in Kansas City, down on the Plaza.

He said they were all different prices from about $35 to as much as $100 for the best ones.

I wanted one, some kind of bad, but didn’t want to pay $35 for a pipe and didn’t know where to buy one if I did.

K.B. Youngblood sold the A Frame and moved away. It was in the late 1970’s, I was in college at Kansas City, and my girlfriend and I walked into a new Dairy Queen near the Plaza abd there K.B. was, the owner, smoking his big Danish freehand.

He admired my girlfriend while she admired his pipe and that day I went to the pipe shop on the Plaza and bought my Grade 3 Nording, which almost busted me, after paying for lunch, as I remember it was forty dollars.

I have a different girl now, my wife for twenty years, and today this glorious Grade 1 Nording came in the mail, brand new, only $83 delivered.

My girl and this new pipe are much higher grade, but what’s more glorious than a Number One Grade Nording.

I wonder how much it costs, to produce a Nording?

They don’t waste money on style changes, for certain.

 

[Morrison Jeremiah]

Always seems to me that a straight grain bowl gives a sweet smoke.
That's a beauty.

 

[wolflarsen]

Beauty!!

 

[lawdawg]

Made in Denmark?! What? Bet that piece of junk doesn't even have a stinger

Just kidding of course. Great looking pipe! I love freehands, and used to have a beautiful Ben Wade freehand with beautiful grain. I have no reason to believe it was carved by Preben Holm, but it was carved in the "grainchaser" style nevertheless, and it's overall shape looked a bit like yours. I loved the pipe's appearance, but for whatever reason it tended to gurgle on me, so I had to let it go. It was my only freehand, and I need to pick up another just to have one in the collection. Love the plateaux.

 

[Briar Lee]

Always seems to me that a straight grain bowl gives a sweet smoke.
That's a beauty.

Harry Hosterman wasn’t a watch witch, he didn’t have “the gift”.

His boy Alva Hosterman was, a gifted water witch. A few years after I’d married my college sweetheart we took our son way off down in Spout Spring Hollow, everything looking like a scene out of Deliverance (but with righteous natives) so Alva could give a demonstration on water witching. He didn’t then and might not still, have telephone, nor running water.

When wells were dug, by two men who traced an outline of a wagon wheel on the ground and started digging and rocking the sides of the well, a water witch was in high demand, I’d reckon.

Alva Hosterman found all the quarters I’d hide in the brush, using a forked stick he’d cut from a peach tree. I witnessed it. None of us had “the gift” but Alva, but he did.

I can’t explain it but some people have the gift of divination, or at least are pretty convincing to watch.

There also are briar wizards. They select briar and cure it, that smokes sweeter and cooler. I can’t explain how or why, but this new Nording is going to smoke hot, until it’s broken in. If this thing was a Lee the first smoke would be delicious, and I wish I could hire somebody to break this one in.

Eventually it should be a dynamite smoker, but this minute it’s so hot I can barely hold it, although a carbon coating masks the taste of new briar.

 

[Briar Lee]

Made in Denmark?! What? Bet that piece of junk doesn't even have a stinger

Just kidding of course. Great looking pipe! I love freehands, and used to have a beautiful Ben Wade freehand with beautiful grain. I have no reason to believe it was carved by Preben Holm, but it was carved in the "grainchaser" style nevertheless, and it's overall shape looked a bit like yours. I loved the pipe's appearance, but for whatever reason it tended to gurgle on me, so I had to let it go. It was my only freehand, and I need to pick up another just to have one in the collection. Love the plateaux.

I’m at the bottom of my first bowl and now it’s horribly bitter, and still hot.

Please don’t tell me there was not a briar wizard at Lee, and his buddy worked at Marxman. The Marxman Jumbo I broke in earlier this week was not Lee cool and sweet on the first bowl, but it wasn’t this bad.

Maybe because every new old stock factory smoker has aged for five or more decades, but when you unbox and fire up a new old high quality pipe such as a Lee from the forties and fifties they aren’t a chore to break in.

There’s been five times inflation since the middle seventies.

I read where a Grade I Nording is $175.

They were $100 then, and should be $500 now.

Maybe Nording fired the briar waizard, or he retired.

And maybe the previous owner tried this one anc cleaned it back up to new, and auctioned it on eBay.

 

[Misanthrope]

Anything wood that's handmade or partially handmade is going to have, for lack of a better term, a personality of its own and the quirks that come with it, and the asking price of any given thing also isn't always in proportion to its objective quality. That said, there's a chance that it might not be a huge chore to break it in.

I'd suggest you try packing the bowl with a lighter touch, and don't tamp too firmly. Gravity feed, a light swirl pack for ribbon, whatever works for the kind of tobacco you use. The pipes I have that smoke hot respond better to a lighter, fluffier pack than they do to the typical three-pinch sequence.

 

[sandollars]

Great looking pipe!

 

[lawdawg]

I’m at the bottom of my first bowl and now it’s horribly bitter, and still hot.

...

Maybe Nording fired the briar waizard, or he retired.

And maybe the previous owner tried this one anc cleaned it back up to new, and auctioned it on eBay.

Hope it smokes a little better after a few bowls!

 

[cigrmaster]

Congrats on your new pipe, it is a very nice looking freehand. I am sure once it gets broken in it will smoke fine. It could take 10-20 bowls to break her in. Don't rush it and don't smoke it hot. Take your time, fill it to the top, smoke it to the bottom and make sure you put the pipe down if it gets heated up.

 

[Morrison Jeremiah]

Briar Lee. Sir, may I take this opportunity to say how much I enjoy reading your posts.
You are obviously a man with a wealth of experience in pipe smoking and much more.
You paint a wonderful background to your narrative.

 

[Briar Lee]

Congrats on your new pipe, it is a very nice looking freehand. I am sure once it gets broken in it will smoke fine. It could take 10-20 bowls to break her in. Don't rush it and don't smoke it hot. Take your time, fill it to the top, smoke it to the bottom and make sure you put the pipe down if it gets heated up.

I wiped the bowl with an Everclear soaked paper towel and cleaned with a pipe cleaner. This pipe was truly new, never smoked. The orange dye came off bright orange.

Every Danish Freehand from that first one over forty years ago until now, has been a chore to break in, as have all “artisan” pipes.

I broke in a Pre War Large Ball 4 hole stinger Four Digit SuperGrain Kaywoodie once.

It wasn’t hot, wasn’t bitter, but I could taste sweet briar at the bottom of the bowl, on the White River in Arkansas.

My friend David said when I hit the bottom of the bowl, that it smelled like smoke from a hickory pit.

Kaywoodie learned first how to make a cool, sweet smoker but they cost five Depression dollars.

Ten years later, after the war, Lee did it best. None of my Lee pipes are spectacularly well grained like this Grade 1 Nording, but they smoke spectacularly good from bowl number one.

As the little boy asked:

Hows dey do dat?

Only Lee knows, and he can no longer tell us.

 

[elvishrunes]

That’s a sexy pipe for sure! You could easily see that listed for 300-500$ if you didn’t know that was a classic Nording. Him and Neerup make the best pipes, for the most affordable prices. I’m still collecting Neerups, but a Nording like that is definitely on the list. He has some unusual colours too.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

That's gorgeous!

 

[mso489]

Love them Danish freehand. I have a Johs with plateau, like yours, and a Nording signature, and a Thompson Cigar house pipe stamped West Germany (not Danish!). Roomy, long-smoking chambers.

 

[Morrison Jeremiah]

Roomy, long-smoking chambers.

Dreamy deep bowl delirium.

Can't wait to light one up now you've said that ?

 

[Briar Lee]

On my fourth bowl, using generic vanilla cavendish, I can’t say it’s enjoyable yet but it is getting less and less unpleasant to smoke this beautiful pipe.

The bitter taste is gone.

It’s my opinion that heat somehow cures the briar, which is more important than cake acting as a heat sink to break in a briar pipe.

There’s hardly any cake formed, yet the huge thick bowl walls that were blistering hot on the first smokes are now much cooler. After it’s fully broken in the outside will only be warm, not hot to hold.

I wonder if the tobacco burns cooler, or a broken in pipe vents heat better, than a new one?

The people back seventy or so years ago that made many, many times more pipes than today I think had, better processes for curing briar before it was made into pipes.

It’s something to ruminate over, before slumber.