ejames -- The shank is made of black walnut. The band between the shank and the bit is German silver and the bit itself is Vulcanite.
twanghang -- I try to stick with straight Virginia blends when smoking at Civil War events. Red burley did exist during the period but white burley (initially discovered as a mutation) wasn't discovered until a few years after the war.
jitterbugdude and homeguard95 -- I have to beg to differ with you re: briar and cob pipes not being period correct for the Civil War period. By the mid-1850s, briar had quickly gained popularity in Europe as well as here in the States. First, I would agree with you that briar pipes would have been less common among enlisted men as these pipes would have been expensive compared to clays, but there is plenty of photo evidence of officers during the Civil War smoking briar pipes (photos do exist of some privates (probably from more well-to-do families) smoking briar pipes as well). It would, however, have been easy for a Confederate soldier, for instance, to acquire such a pipe as a battlefield pickup taken from a dead or captured Union officer or from a captured baggage train. There's even evidence that briar pipes were being smuggled into the Confederacy by blockade runners from Europe as a "luxury" item to increase their profit margins on their cargo. I portray a 1st Lt. in my reenacting unit, so as an officer the briar pipe would certainly have been accessible for my rank and pay. Re: cobs, the argument that cob pipes were invented after the Civil War is inaccurate. There is plenty of evidence to support the use of cob pipes before and during the Civil War. Most folks get confused by the 1869 date which is the date credited to when Henry Tibbe began commercially producing the corn cob pipe, however, homemade cob pipes did exist prior to 1869. First, in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, set in the 1840s, Mark Twain has Huck smoking a cob pipe. It's doubtful that Twain would have made the mistake of using a cob pipe in his novel if it didn't exist during the time period of his novel. Second, Confederate President Jefferson Davis in his memoirs noted that cob pipes were commonly smoked on his antebellum plantation. Also, in his September 1863 diary entry, a soldier in the 37th Indiana Regiment commented that his regiment had encountered a field of corn and noted that while the corn was too green to eat, it did make for some nice pipes to replace their "fragile clays" that kept breaking. I firmly believe that cob pipes were a common utilitarian tobacco pipe of the period that could easily be made with a simple pocketknife and once the cob was no longer usable it was simply discarded with no fanfare. Most rural folks of this era were very self-sufficient and if they could make something without having to purchase it they would do so. Being organic, cob pipes would have quickly deteriorated and therefore leave little archaeological evidence of their existence unlike inorganic clay pipes. With all that said, white clay pipes and reed stem clay pipes (often referred to as trade pipes) would have been extremely common during the Civil War among enlisted men and these pipes are often found at archaeological excavations of both Union and Confederate campsites. I should also note that while chewing tobacco was a common way of enjoying tobacco during the period, pipe smoking was just as common if not more so. Cigars also gained tremendous popularity during the the war but were rather expensive and so they tended to be more commonly smoked by officers rather than enlisted men.
