Autopsies Performed On Several Old Pipes

[stvalentine]

It is a good thing to bumb this thread every once on a while to stop all this gibberish about "saturated pipes" that need to ne discarded. It´s easy to see that nearly every pipe can be resurrected (even a burned through one).
Thank you for showing this again!

 

[deathmetal]

Great thread. One learns quite a bit from viewing those old corpses...

 

[randelli]

Nice thread! It also helped clear up the eternal question of how bent stems are drilled.

 

[lonestar]

The drilling on some of these pipes makes the perfectionist in me cringe...

 

[misterlowercase]

The drilling on some of these pipes makes the perfectionist in me cringe...

Drilling schmilling...
...a pipe is just a piece of wood with a couple of simple dumb holes,

all of this talk of "perfection" or "well made" or "attentive engineering" is just silly marketing jargon invented by clever hucksters trying to pull the wool over an unsuspecting publics eye and separate our wallets from our hard earned cash.
My corncob smokes better than any $300+ "artisan" pipe!

:wink:

 

[stvalentine]

Although I like a perfectly made pipe as the next guy I dare to follow MLC opinion. Especially when I see some people lament over the quality of some of the bigger brands. Well, in the end it´s just a piece of wood and rubber with two holes in it.... :roll: This is just IMHO of course....

 

[lonestar]

Well I may be wrong, but fairly certain MLC was being facetious :D The truth is likely somewhere between the extremes, as usual. In the end it certainly is two holes that meet in the middle, but comfort and performance can be elevated to exceptional levels with care in production.
All you really need is a walnut shell with the top cut off and a hollow reed stuck in its side to burn tobacco. Or even better, find a small hill of dirt, burrow a hole in the top for tobacco and shove a stick through the side of the hill to drill an airway. Drop a red hot ember on top and get to sucking ! Alfred Dunhill claims this was the original pipe and some African tribes still used the method when he wrote of it.
What I see in the pics is interesting, I can see several techniques that would really speed up mass production. Of course the drilling is to make production quicker, not a pipe smoke better. Perhaps it won't smoke worse though, I am just an extremist in the opposite direction. I work hard to find the slowest, most difficult, least profitable way to make a pipe :D In the end they both combust tobacco, and from the looks of all the pipes they were well loved.

 

[hawke]

Along these lines... Here's a picture I grabbed somewhere. It shows how flaws in the briar may not show themselves even from quality pipemakers. They can turn into a burnout if subjected to high heat.

 

[feloniousmonk]

Now that was cool. Thanks for sharing.

 

[georged]

Well I may be wrong, but fairly certain MLC was being facetious :D The truth is likely somewhere between the extremes, as usual. In the end it certainly is two holes that meet in the middle, but comfort and performance can be elevated to exceptional levels with care in production.
All you really need is a walnut shell with the top cut off and a hollow reed stuck in its side to burn tobacco. Or even better, find a small hill of dirt, burrow a hole in the top for tobacco and shove a stick through the side of the hill to drill an airway. Drop a red hot ember on top and get to sucking ! Alfred Dunhill claims this was the original pipe and some African tribes still used the method when he wrote of it.
What I see in the pics is interesting, I can see several techniques that would really speed up mass production. Of course the drilling is to make production quicker, not a pipe smoke better. Perhaps it won't smoke worse though, I am just an extremist in the opposite direction. I work hard to find the slowest, most difficult, least profitable way to make a pipe :D In the end they both combust tobacco, and from the looks of all the pipes they were well loved.

It can't be summed up much better than that, so I'm not going to try. 8)

 

[stvalentine]

I work hard to find the slowest, most difficult, least profitable way to make a pipe

Which certainly honors you!

 

[misterlowercase]

...recently overheard (overread?) while lurking over at another forum,

the question was:

Artisan, or Pipemaker?
I loved this answer:

All these definitional kind of things are a little slippery.
Can we assume that artisanal pipes are made by one maker? S. Bangs are made by two guys. So they are out. LOL I didn't get very far.
Because I focus on basically traditional English, French, and Italian shapes, does that make me something different than a guy making Danish styled stuff? One seeker of Danish-style pipe design said to me at a show "I see you more as a craftsman than an artist." I didn't disagree. The question of course, becomes "is THAT guy an artist because he glues a hunk of whale tooth to the end of a tear drop shank?". The definitions are unclear, the meanings clearer.
There's about 8 zillion guys hammering pipes out of their garage or basement right now. I don't consider most of them artisanal pipe makers, because to me, I want to see a certain skillset mastered before I call a guy an artisan. Pulling a lumpy, over-salted loaf of bread out of the oven doesn't make me an artisanal baker, it makes me a shitty baker. There's lots of that in the pipe world right now.
So I'd apply the label "artisan" to guys who have put in time, perfected skills, possibly guys who have shown that they have a recognizeable style (this is a whole nother kettle of fish really). Whether their intent is to make art or not... I don't think that's too relevant in our context. The intent to make something unique, and wonderful, and presumably as good as it can be, combined with enough skill to get it there....
It's probably a thing where we aren't going to generate a definition that works for every case, and certainly even inside the community, people kind of shrug about terms like "artisanal" and "handmade" because in a way, every pipe is those things, no matter what. Our intent with defining something is by necessity to exclude something else, and it's kind of unclear in these cases what we are hoping to exclude.

Badly made pipes? Ugly pipes? Who judges this?

:lol:
- Sasquatch

Some very good points to ponder as this thread has seemed to produce a few more fish in the pond for swimming into other related areas.
Pipe is simples ain't they?

 

[lonestar]

A few sentences in to your quote, I knew that was Sasquatch. No one has quite the same way with words :D

 

[bigpond]

A few sentences in to your quote, I knew that was Sasquatch. No one has quite the same way with words :D

This is due to the fact that Canada hasn't abandoned it's budget for Education. To your average Canadian, Sasquatch reads just like your average Texan :nana:
What I find interesting about those photos is just how shallow the various byproducts have leeched into the briar.

 

[jpmcwjr]

The drilling on some of these pipes makes the perfectionist in me cringe...

And the physics lover in me think, "WTF??" Especially the bent, second from bottom. A pipe cleaner isn't going to find the chamber unless care is taken with the stem out. Is the thin bottom due to heavy gouging with a knife or pipe tool?

 

[stvalentine]

And the physics lover in me think, "WTF??" Especially the bent, second from bottom. A pipe cleaner isn't going to find the chamber unless care is taken with the stem out.

It´s a system pipe like the Petersons and meant to be like that. The moisture is to be trapped in the chamber.

 

[misterlowercase]

Here's a Savinelli system pipe:

And here's a classic Pete:

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...and this old thread has some other cutaway pix as well, it's quite difficult to find images of these online,

but here's a whole nother can 'o wiggly worms!
(also includes a cutaway shot of a Rad Davis pipe!)

:
http://pipesmagazine.com/forums/topic/the-breathability-of-briar-wood-what-do-you-think
:
:idea:

::

Hawke,

...that pic you posted originated here:

http://pipesmagazine.com/forums/topic/briar-burnout

:puffpipe:

 

[jpmcwjr]

Thanks, St. and mlc: that really illustrates how they were designed. Ugh. Glad I don't smoke wet OR have any system pipes!
Anyone else think that the bottom of the chamber is so close to going through was due to excessive gouging by pipe tool or knife? Other ideas?

 

[jefff]

Bump! Because this is worth seeing.
And since Ryan is making me a pipe right now, I feel pretty damn good about it.

 

[fnord]

LMAO, Jefff.
One of these days, Ryan will make my first custom pipe.
Fnord