Well, first you're going to want to mortgage your home and / or liquidate all your savings and investments--kiss the kids' college funds goodbye! That's ok though, because by not sending them to college you'll have your first employees.
Next you'll have to start buying a ludicrous number of pipes--every size, shape, make, finish and year available. This is necessary to become well-versed in all possible characteristics and combinations that you will want to create in your own pipes. You will also need to buy great heaping mounds of tobacco to smoke in said pipes, as well as stands, cabinets, cleaners, tampers, lighters, matches, and the like.
Once you feel yourself grounded in the background purchases, it's time to invest in the heavy machinery. Saws, routers, lathes, sanders, dust collectors, rotary tools, hand tools, laser-guided CNC machines, sandblasting booths, sandpapers, dyes, waxes, shellacs, chemistry sets, lighting, magnifying glasses, and a dust mask are your basics. To make it simple just tear a page at random from a woodworking supply catalog and order everything on it. Repeat this every day or week until the catalog is gone and you'll have a good start.
Next comes the heart of the material--the briar. To give yourself a real leg up on the competition you could purchase a few acres in Greece or Italy near a quaint coastal town and harvest your own briar. Or, if you're not ready for that much travel then I'd suggest purchasing 2 full 20 foot shipping containers of briar; one of standard quality and one of the highest quality. You'll then need to store and age them in your workshop (did I forget to mention building a workshop?). The beauty of this method is that as you begin your practice pipes on the standard quality briars, your high-quality briars will be able to age for a dozen years or so while you get the hang of it!
Finally, after many years of toil, grey hair, and likely a divorce or three, you'll have created your first masterwork--a pipe the likes of which the world has never seen, a sculpture to rival that of Michelangelo or Rodin. Acquiescing to sell it, you discover you'll need to hire a PR firm in addition to running the pipe show circuit as well as some payola to pipe world luminaries like Kevin of pipesmagazine.com simply to get your name out there. At this point your pipes will surely warrant princely sums, and they'll need to in order to begin recouping your investments. Unfortunately, by this time (I'm estimating around the year 2025) tobacco consumption in any form has been made illegal under World Government directive #3765467.77b; fortunately they have not yet been able to ban pipes, but the only ones who smoke tobacco are forced to live in the lawless outskirts of major port cities like Wichita and Munich (after the global warming floods transformed these into seaside resort towns).
Eventually you'll pass on to the afterlife of your choosing, and glow with satisfaction every time one of your little gems garners a price tenfold of its production cost on eBay, which you were never able to realize while making them.
:lol: :roll: :crazy:
Or you could just make them for fun, and hey, you never know--you could be a complete natural at it!
My (
hopefully amusing) take on it is from personal experience, only *slightly* satirized. Of course I tend to be an extremist in most things, but mainly it's a word of caution against thinking about doing it professionally; as a hobby it's great, and you'll get out of it everything you put into it in terms of a pleasurable pastime, learning new skills, and the satisfaction of smoking a pipe of your own make. Looking at it as a business venture often proves to be a rabbit hole of epic proportions, as can be said of many of my hare-brained schemes.
If you do end up making some, you are required to post lots of pics on the forums, and if they're
really good (stern glance at buckeye) you are of course obligated to sell to members of the forum at substantial discount.
Good luck!
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