Antique Cob Pipes

[Briar Lee]

Before cheap briars in America, the standard pipe was a nickel cob, with a reed stem, and the tobacco smoked was a nickel sack of tobacco.

The modern cob pipe, was patented by Missouri Meerschaum, which used automatic machines to shape the bowls and then plastering and polishing to toughen the cob.

By 1900 the patent had expired and there were 20 makers of cob pipes in Washington Missouri, and dozens more along river towns in Missouri.

The last corn cob pipe factory in Boonville Missouri closed about 1950. Thirty years before making cob pipes was Boonville’s biggest industry.

A Message to Boonville (Gutenberg Project) :: Tobacciana History

This is from the Gutenberg Project, from a collection of short prose and essays about 1920. At that time Boonville had a cob pipe factory, but the heart of the Missouri corn cob industry has always been another Missouri River town downstream a bit named Washington, still home to Missouri...

pipesmagazine.com

For $15 delivered, I bought this antique cob made in Boonville.



Notice a previous owner chewed on the plastic stem but never fired it up.

 

[mikethompson]

Finally, a 'real' vintage cob, and not something new hawked as such on eBay.

Looks like yours has enjoyed an interesting life, being chewed on but never used. Theater prop perhaps?

 

[Briar Lee]

Finally, a 'real' vintage cob, and not something new hawked as such on eBay.

Looks like yours has enjoyed an interesting life, being chewed on but never used. Theater prop perhaps?

Either a theatre prop or, an aid to quitting cigarettes.

 

[MattRVA]

Interesting tenon. I really love old cobs, especially unsmoked. Very cool.

 

[Briar Lee]

Interesting tenon. I really love old cobs, especially unsmoked. Very cool.

I was fortunate enough to tour the Missouri Meerschaum company about 25 years ago.

It’s a factory making a consumer product, and a helluva lot of ‘em.

Right after the American Civil War, for about forty or fifty years there was creeping deflation.

A corn cob pipe cost a nickel at the local general store. If you could sell a plastered and polished nickel corn cob it was an advantage.

Eventually all the other makers except Bull Durham had to double the amount of tobacco in the nickel sack to two ounces.

World War One put an end to deflation.

Then the Great Depression temporarily brought deflation back.

By then the cob pipe makers had to sell a product much like this $5 MM Legend today.



MM figured out how to use a one piece Amber plastic stem, no metal tenon, and note the cob used on the MM has tighter rows of “grain” because MM patented a hybrid corn, working with researchers at the University of Missouri. They even imprinted a fake cob pattern on the wooden dowel used for the shank.

Even today, everybody at the last corn cob pipe factory gets a raise when the minimum wage goes up.

The last time I was in Washington Missouri it was so isolated I don’t think they had a Walmart.

The lady at the front desk bragged on how rich the factory owners in St. Louis were that owned the factory, and proudly declaimed they’d never drug test any employee, and if they needed time off to farm or fish they were free to take it, on their own dime, of course. She pointed out more than one grandfather, son, and grandson on the lines.

When you buy a MM buy the top tier products like the General, Country Gentleman, Diplomat or Freehand.

The Freehands are made one at a time by one gray haired worker at one starion. The other larger pipes use selected cobs large enough to have a wooden dowel inserted in the bottom.

But many of the machines used are over a century old.

It’s a wonderful piece of Missouri history.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

We used to have this guy on the forums...

He had a company called Old Dominion (I think) that made pipes that actually were like the traditional corn cobs.

Are these still a thing?

 

[CoffeeAndBourbon]

We used to have this guy on the forums...
View attachment 197663
He had a company called Old Dominion (I think) that made pipes that actually were like the traditional corn cobs.
View attachment 197664
Are these still a thing?

Missouri M. bought Old Dominion a few years back.

 

[Briar Lee]

We used to have this guy on the forums...
View attachment 197663
He had a company called Old Dominion (I think) that made pipes that actually were like the traditional corn cobs.
View attachment 197664
Are these still a thing?

Maybe in China.

The problem with making the traditional nickel corn cob pipe with a reed stem is all the best reeds come from one area in China and are called Whangee bamboo.

Whangee definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary

Whangee definition: any tall woody grass of the S and SE Asian genus Phyllostachys, grown for its stems ,... | Meaning, pronunciation, translations and examples

www.collinsdictionary.com

There’s an exhibit at the MM factory about how they had a Missouri Senator get Whangee bamboo on the duty free list, just fascinating.

The folks at MM even dug up an old MM “Whangee” to sell me. It has a real bamboo shank, but it’s not a true reed.

MM is like Walmart.

Nobody in the world is ever going to beat MM at the game of making lots of cob pipes.

The cheap Chinese cobs you see for sale in the smoke shops don’t have the hybrid corn cobs, nor a 150 year old factory and generations of highly skilled workers making pipes.

And if one guy wants to make a few cobs, he can have at it.

There’s no way in the world he can duplicate a Country Gentleman for $12 retail. None.

Missouri Meerschaum - Country Gentleman Corn Cob Tobacco Pipe (Straight) | eBay

They make a great gift for a husband or father.

www.ebay.com

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Maybe in China.

Ummm, Old Dominions are/were made in Virginia. The owner was a member here that saw a need for corn cob pipes that were more traditional than those cheap plastic stemmed things made in Missouri.

Plus, there were movies about the old days that they used those stupid modern looking MM cob stems, and the bad props just broke the suspensions of belief that an audience requires. There was one about the Klondike gold rush that bothered the hell out of me. So, this guy started a business and production factory. Old Dominion.

I believe it still exists... Old Dominion Shenandoah Corn Cob Pipe | Smokingpipes.com - https://www.smokingpipes.com/pipes/new/Old-Dominion/moreinfo.cfm?product_id=234103
I had one, and preferred it to MM's. But, I am still not partial to cobs.

 

[Briar Lee]

Missouri M. bought Old Dominion a few years back.

They bought out a bunch of cob pipe makers.

The last really big Washington Missouri cob pipe maker besides MM was Buchner’s that MM bought about 1976.

That Phoenix American Pipe Works pipe I just bought likely was a merger of Phoenix and American, then MM likely bought them about 1950.

MM knows how to make cob pipes, I can promise. They don’t need machines or workers.

But a list of customers for a brand name, does a have value.

 

[Briar Lee]

Ummm, Old Dominions are/were made in Virginia. The owner was a member here that saw a need for corn cob pipes that were more traditional than those cheap plastic stemmed things made in Missouri.

Plus, there were movies about the old days that they used those stupid modern looking MM cob stems, and the bad props just broke the suspensions of belief that an audience requires. There was one about the Klondike gold rush that bothered the hell out of me. So, this guy started a business and production factory. Old Dominion.

I believe it still exists... Old Dominion Shenandoah Corn Cob Pipe | Smokingpipes.com - https://www.smokingpipes.com/pipes/new/Old-Dominion/moreinfo.cfm?product_id=234103
I had one, and preferred it to MM's. But, I am still not partial to cobs.

I just paid $12 for a Country Gentleman.

It’s a large pipe, with an acrylic stem, hardwood dowel in the bottom, and made of MM hybrid corn cobs aged two years in the attic of the factory.

This neat Old Dominion is $15.



For a production of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, the old style pipe is best, except that Old Dominion is plastered and polished. Huck and Tom smoked rough natural nickel cobs.

But to smoke the thing, nobody will ever beat MM at making cob pipes.

 

[timt]

I bought a couple Old Dominion cobs awhile back just to give them a try. I like that they aren’t plastered and that they have decent sized chambers but the draw was way too tight for me and I’m pretty sure I tossed them.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Ha ha, I, of course, didn't like them because they were corncobs that made me look like a homeless person.

 

[timt]

I look homeless regardless of what I’m smoking.

Speaking of that, my wife, son and I were killing time at the mall yesterday and I saw this sweet looking suede jacket and I thought maybe, just maybe, if I wore that… nah, I’d just look like a homeless guy wearing a nice jacket.

 

[didimauw]

Ha ha, I, of course, didn't like them because they were corncobs that made me look like a homeless person.

It's not the cob that makes you look like that.....

 

[Briar Lee]

Fifty years ago I made a good corn cob pipe. For this endeavor even Harry Hosterman could give me no advice as he’d store bought every cob he ever had, until he could afford a briar pipe and then after that he’d given up cobs.

But another old man named Alva Rains had made his own cob out of curiosity when he’d worked for my Great Grandparents, as a boy.

The cobs must be aged, the longer the better, two years minimum.

A corn crib on our home place provided me an assortment to choose from. I used a power drill to ream out the chamber and a smaller bit to drill the hole in the side. On Alva’s advice I left the cob rough. You can sand the bowl, but this risks chunks of cob falling out.

The hardest part of making a cob pipe is finding a proper stem.

Back then hardware stores still sold cane fishing poles. I had an old one, and experimented until I cut off a usable section and then opened up an airway using a heated coat hanger.

Then it was simple to glue the stem into the cob.

I made myself a cob pipe that looked like a 75 cent MM cob pipe, smoked like one, but it didn’t last like a Missouri Meerschaum. It started cracking and burned out after only a few months of occasional smoking.

I asked Alva why, and he said the same reason that new inner tubes made lousy sling shots, modern progress.

Funk’s G Hybrid corn seed improved corn yields but the cobs weren’t good for pipes, the same way synthetic rubber was vastly better than natural rubber for tires and tubes, but not for making rubber bands for slingshots.

 

[mso489]

If I recall, Old Dominion cobs were made by the Savage brothers of Virginia, and I think it was Robert Savage I met at the TAPS pipe show at the N.C. Fairgrounds where I bought two pipes from him. Their pipes were favored by re-enactors among others, for their authenticity. MM bought Old Dominion a few years ago, but I haven't seen them marketing the pipes yet.

Someone on Forums a year or two ago reminded us that MM in Washington, Mo., a St. Louis suburb, has a sheltered workshop program for disabled employees. The MM site which my gimpy PC can no longer access, has a good history of their company, which was founded by a Dutch immigrant who started making the pipes in his off hours as a craftsman in another trade, but soon started selling the pipes in quantity enough to support himself. So score one for the Dutch. MM is definitely the highest volume pipe producer in the U.S., I believe.

I'm a fan of MM cobs. I fitted three or four with Forever acrylic stems. The orange swirl stem goes nicely with a cob. More recently, I've bought the MM special edition cobs that come with acrylic stems. I also recommend their little hardwood pipes that are low-priced and smoke well. They're good to have on your rack, and are also perfect for giving away to friends who might like to try a pipe.

 

[Briar Lee]

Why MM rules the market for cob pipes is shown by this $5 grade example.



When I toured the factory they had $1 rejects out in boxes for sale, and I bought all they had, about a half dozen, out of untold thousands made in the course of a week.

There’s a final inspection done by older ladies who have inspected cob pipes all of their lives, and the men making them know that.

Would you want your grandmother rejecting your work?.

 

[anotherbob]

We used to have this guy on the forums...
View attachment 197663
He had a company called Old Dominion (I think) that made pipes that actually were like the traditional corn cobs.
View attachment 197664
Are these still a thing?

yes and that guy and his brother still make them. But they're sold through the other Cob guys. And that means they cost a few bucks more then they did. And the story goes from M.M. stand point it was less an absorbing the competition and more buying out a company that couldn't keep going. Mainly because it got bigger then the brothers want it to get. Personally they're my cob of choice. They're more fragile then the others but more then make up for it by being both more Pop Eye accurate and smoking in my opinion better. And the thing is that these pipes were not the only business these brothers had and to continue at current demand they'd have to hire people and make it their main business. I think they're also regular farmers too. So the deal lets them make the pipes but not have to sacrifice the other things they do.

 

[anotherbob]

If I recall, Old Dominion cobs were made by the Savage brothers of Virginia, and I think it was Robert Savage I met at the TAPS pipe show at the N.C. Fairgrounds where I bought two pipes from him. Their pipes were favored by re-enactors among others, for their authenticity. MM bought Old Dominion a few years ago, but I haven't seen them marketing the pipes yet.

go to M.M.s web site. They're certainly selling them at least. That seems like marketing them to me.