Freehand Pipes

[crashthegrey]

Not all freehands are giant. They are hard to make. When someone is used to turning as close to perfection as possible, it takes a ton of creativity and skill to just follow the Grain and let a well made freehand come out of the block. You have to fight every impulse to find symmetry and instead let the wood speak. Some people love it. Some will always find them ugly. Good thing there are classic shapes for the latter type.

 

[crashthegrey]

For instance, is this big and ugly? By my standards, yes, but that didn't stop people from fighting over buying it so that I never even got to list it. But do I think I should make a ton of them? Definitely not. I think the rarity of some pieces is what works, each one should be unique so that people do rush to get it.

 

[Briar Lee]

K B Youngblood was a young business man in Humansville in the early 1970’s, and he had things other common hillbillies either could not afford, or refused to spend their money on.

One of those luxuries was a huge Danish freehand pipe, amd I wanted one some kind of bad, watching him smoke it, I surely did. His tobacco wasn’t Prince Albert or Velvet, either, it smelled like candy of different flavors, in the new A frame cafe he’d opened not far from Humansville High School. K.B said his pipes were Nordings, that cost $35, and he bought them at pipe shops in Kansas City.

K B sold his cafe and moved away, and I grew up and graduated and attended college in Kansas City. While at college the kids in the dormitory threw a big barn dance party, and at that party I won a country dance contest, which wasn’t too difficult me being about the only genuine country boy there that could two step, waltz, do a barroom shuffle and clog dance stomp.

After I’d won the dance contest a girl came to my table and said her friend would like to dance with me, and I looked over and her friend looked like a cross between a young Natalie Wood and a young Emmylou Harrris. Yes indeed, I said I’d dance with her friend.

After we’d danced she asked where o was from, and I said Humansville, and she was from Nevada, Missouri. My father was deceased I said, but he was a dairy farmer, and we still owned the farm. I asked what her father did, and she said he owned banks. Plural banks. As in a dozen banks.

This fair creature became my girlfriend, and soon I was on the Plaza buying us lunch at Dairy Queen, and as fate would have it the DQ was owned by K B Youngblood, who admired my new girlfriend, and we sat at a table and she admired his big Danish freehand.

Afterwards I walked right over to the pipe shop KB directed us and my girlfriend picked out me, a nice Nording pipe.

I was relieved that it was not more than forty dollars, because buying that Grade 3 Nording nearly took all the money I had, but I did get away with it, and it didn’t bust me. I even bought some candy flavored tobacco to smoke waking around the Plaza, with her.

Is a big Danish freehand a status symbol?

I think it was more like required equipment if you wanted to date a rich banker’s daughter during the 1970s.

I’m not complaining, but you’d better leave those bib overalls and Dr Grabows back at the farm, if you want a rich girl to sport around.

FOURTEEN KARAT MIND

 

[bullet08]

No freehand. Have right and left hands, but none are free. Guess I won't be smoking one.

 

[Sweet Home Alabama]

Good point, it’s like what are you smoking with your free hand

 

[gervais]

There are several freehand pipes that I have and love. More reserved than some, but beautiful to me. I prefer to hold a big narly hunk of briar to a little 1oz, piddly acorn sized pipe. It's all personal preference, like anything in life.

 

[anotherbob]

Yes! Before I got one, I was just a square joe wall flower. Then I strode over to Gucci, went back into their pipe department and dropped some Benjamin’s on these. Do you have any idea how many bitches I get when I roll up on them smoking one of these? Freehand are the new Escalade! Holla son!

View attachment 107118

That's not how status symbols work. Would any of us even recognize any of the designers of "high end fashion"?

 

[Briar Lee]

One other consideration smoking a big Danish freehand besides giving the appearance of having more money than you actually have, is that every one I own is a dynamite good smoker.

Every briar pipe is a hunk of briar and a stem, and with a Danish freehand the makers cannot shortchange you.

They must use a plateaux of briar that must be old enough to be large, and they fashion this into a very large pipe that shows plateaux on the top and the shank end.

With briar pipes, all other things being equal, bigger is better. Bigger pipes hold more tobacco, there’s more briar to insulate the burning cherry, and there’s longer for the smoke to travel that cools the smoke stream.

But they are showy, flashy things, and the bigger they are the more pretentious they look.

I prefer the larger Ben Wade to the smaller Knute, but the bigger pipe is a little better smoker, I think.

Both of them look like you own a franchise restaurant and drive a Cadillac Eldorado convertible, but at least you get a sweet and cool smoking pipe to show off.

 

[Chasing Embers]

Are big ugly things status symbols?

Where do you see ugly?

 

[cigrmaster]

I have never owned a Danish freehand as they just don't appeal to me. I do own a couple of large pipes but one is a Billiard and the other a Dublin. They are group 6's - ODA.

 

[hauntedmyst]

Pipes aren’t status symbols. Outside a pipe forum or show, almost no one can tell the difference between a Iverson, a Bang or a Grabow. The difference between a good smoking $100 pipe and a $1000 pipe is negligible if not nonexistent.

When you see someone drive a Ferrari, do you think “Wow! That guy has high status?”

 

[bayareabriar]

Big and Beautiful. I only smoke it in front of others to let them know I’m a big deal.

 

[bayareabriar]

Pipes aren’t status symbols. Outside a pipe forum or show, almost no one can tell the difference between a Iverson, a Bang or a Grabow. The difference between a good smoking $100 pipe and a $1000 pipe is negligible if not nonexistent.

When you see someone drive a Ferrari, do you think “Wow! That guy has high status?”

Where I live, you have to have at least 3 Ferrari and smoke a pipe.

 

[tobefrank]

Are big ugly things status symbols?

People with big freehands are compensating for something.

 

[Chasing Embers]

People with big freehands are compensating for something.

People with little bulldogs are admitting something.

 

[kcghost]

Love me some Gene Watson!!!

 

[puff_not_snuff]

Where do you see ugly?

View attachment 107175View attachment 107176View attachment 107177View attachment 107178View attachment 107179View attachment 107180

Did you mean where don't I?

 

[puff_not_snuff]

K B Youngblood was a young business man in Humansville in the early 1970’s, and he had things other common hillbillies either could not afford, or refused to spend their money on.

One of those luxuries was a huge Danish freehand pipe, amd I wanted one some kind of bad, watching him smoke it, I surely did. His tobacco wasn’t Prince Albert or Velvet, either, it smelled like candy of different flavors, in the new A frame cafe he’d opened not far from Humansville High School. K.B said his pipes were Nordings, that cost $35, and he bought them at pipe shops in Kansas City.

K B sold his cafe and moved away, and I grew up and graduated and attended college in Kansas City. While at college the kids in the dormitory threw a big barn dance party, and at that party I won a country dance contest, which wasn’t too difficult me being about the only genuine country boy there that could two step, waltz, do a barroom shuffle and clog dance stomp.

After I’d won the dance contest a girl came to my table and said her friend would like to dance with me, and I looked over and her friend looked like a cross between a young Natalie Wood and a young Emmylou Harrris. Yes indeed, I said I’d dance with her friend.

After we’d danced she asked where o was from, and I said Humansville, and she was from Nevada, Missouri. My father was deceased I said, but he was a dairy farmer, and we still owned the farm. I asked what her father did, and she said he owned banks. Plural banks. As in a dozen banks.

This fair creature became my girlfriend, and soon I was on the Plaza buying us lunch at Dairy Queen, and as fate would have it the DQ was owned by K B Youngblood, who admired my new girlfriend, and we sat at a table and she admired his big Danish freehand.

Afterwards I walked right over to the pipe shop KB directed us and my girlfriend picked out me, a nice Nording pipe.

I was relieved that it was not more than forty dollars, because buying that Grade 3 Nording nearly took all the money I had, but I did get away with it, and it didn’t bust me. I even bought some candy flavored tobacco to smoke waking around the Plaza, with her.

Is a big Danish freehand a status symbol?

I think it was more like required equipment if you wanted to date a rich banker’s daughter during the 1970s.

I’m not complaining, but you’d better leave those bib overalls and Dr Grabows back at the farm, if you want a rich girl to sport around.

FOURTEEN KARAT MIND

Green Acres is the place to be (with a Falcon).

 

[OzPiper]

People with little bulldogs are admitting something.

They don't have size anxiety ?

 

[Chasing Embers]

They don't have size anxiety ?

Nor lasting stamina.