Look at this typical ugly Marxman Benchmade.
The maker was a 29 year old kid in New York City in the very depths of the Depression.
That pipe cost $5 in a world where twenty five cents bought a pretty briar pipe.
They had to taste good, you know?
It Was the "Sap"
- Thread starter Briar Lee
- Start date
SmokingPipes.com Updates
Watch for Updates Twice a Week
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
Site Sponsors
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
- Status
Look at this typical ugly Marxman Benchmade.
The maker was a 29 year old kid in New York City in the very depths of the Depression.
That pipe cost $5 in a world where twenty five cents bought a pretty briar pipe.
They had to taste good, you know?
One can win MUCH more than a court case this way.
Sources cited:
Everyone is saying it.
For all his marketing genius, I fail to understand why Robert Marx forgot to mention any of the “amazing” qualities of his pipes as reported numerous times in the last few months here in this forum? Marx mentioned only once in a passing statement that the pipes were “sweet” but seems more forcused on talking about the beautiful grain and the “flawless briar”. - something @briarlee refers to as a dogturd coloring at best and even Marx’s 400s - and everone knows I am a fan - have fills. I am confused. Should I believe that Marx knew more about his pipes or perhaps someone many decades removed does? I joke of course, but another word for dog turds is “shit”. Hmmmm, I am so confused. As Shakespeare once said, “If I shit, does it not stink?”
Algerian briar has also been known to have a porous quality, slowly changing from Snow White, to a rich, deep amber over the years. I sit here today puffing on the finest Algerian briar, likely dug up by a 17 year old in the 1880s, during the French occupation. This pipe sold for $50 in 1905, which roughly translates to $1,000,000,000 in today’s money. There’s gotta be some reason people would’ve been willing to pay for such a sweet smoke ya know?
0 smokes
80 smokes
As we look closer at the grain, we can see the way the sap interacts with the growth rings, and the homemade spermaceti. I’ve never smoked a finer pipe in all my days.
(I love your posts Briar Lee, the fruit was just too low hanging for me to resist.)
0 smokes
80 smokes
As we look closer at the grain, we can see the way the sap interacts with the growth rings, and the homemade spermaceti. I’ve never smoked a finer pipe in all my days.
(I love your posts Briar Lee, the fruit was just too low hanging for me to resist.)
It took all my willpower to resist posting something similar last night.
Algerian briar has also been known to have a porous quality, slowly changing from Snow White, to a rich, deep amber over the years. I sit here today puffing on the finest Algerian briar, likely dug up by a 17 year old in the 1880s, during the French occupation. This pipe sold for $50 in 1905, which roughly translates to $1,000,000,000 in today’s money. There’s gotta be some reason people would’ve been willing to pay for such a sweet smoke ya know?
View attachment 277230
0 smokes
View attachment 277229
80 smokes
View attachment 277231
As we look closer at the grain, we can see the way the sap interacts with the growth rings, and the homemade spermaceti. I’ve never smoked a finer pipe in all my days.
(I love your posts Briar Lee, the fruit was just too low hanging for me to resist.)
Great Birdseye on that one. I may need to grab an Algerian pipe after all..
OBVIOUSLY some have more sap than the others
I am thinking the new insider word posters will start using is “sap”.
“Hey Joe, why you think that Captain Black Grape tastes so good? Could it be the Sap?”
”What sets a Jack Howell billiard apart from other makers is the way he uses the sap.”
This year, @gawithhoggarth has cut back on the sap they use to flavor their sauce. I can’t prove it but God doesn’t make mistakes.“
“Hey Joe, why you think that Captain Black Grape tastes so good? Could it be the Sap?”
”What sets a Jack Howell billiard apart from other makers is the way he uses the sap.”
This year, @gawithhoggarth has cut back on the sap they use to flavor their sauce. I can’t prove it but God doesn’t make mistakes.“
Last edited:
All this talk of pipes and (rising) sap is getting too risqué for me
Hummmm...It seems that we could benefit from being educated about sap. How about a tutorial?
I don’t tell too many war stories, but this calls for one.
At age 52 my father died from infection from swallowing a chicken bone he didn’t know he’d swallowed in September 1971 when I was 13 and my mother was 45.
That ended the dairy operation right then and there. We had an auction, sold the herd and all the machinery and equipment and the neighbors harvested and sold his last, good crops.
We weren’t going to be poor, but the issue was in doubt in the fall of 1971.
And I walked out to the mailbox, in October and there was this Social Security Survivors check for $60 made out to my mother, for me.
I had pretty well spent the $60 by the time I reached the house, but my mother convinced me to save that sixty.
I never forgot. I never will forget.
If I can’t win you Social Security disability you’d best go get a job.
About 25 years ago I took a disability case in Kansas City Kansas.
The lady was 32 years old, had no medical records, at all, except one exam by Social Security doctor that read
Rule out Co Dependency Syndrome
Back then you saw the records thirty minutes before the hearing.
I was in the brand new Bob Dole Federal Courthouse, just opened. You could smoke in the halls and I sat outside wondering what in the world I could say to help this lady when a very well dressed , sharp as a tack, high heeled woman was clicking her heels up and down the hall and chewing some kid’s ass out on her cell phone.
And then I heard her say
I have to go to a hearing now, one of us has to work to pay the rent
She was a vocational expert for Social Security, with a slug of a boyfriend or husband. They still have those.
So I went back inside and my client’s husband was there, who literally was a wino she met and married.
Her mother was there, who was still a barmaid at a tavern in the stockyard bottoms, and the three of them lived on her tips and wages in an apartment over the bar. My client grew up over the bar, and her father was long, long gone.
At age 32, my client had worked for two weeks as a library assistant at a library and was fired, for incompetence.
I’d say, she was the walking definition of co dependency syndrome.
So for the only time in my career, I asked the judge to hear from my client’s husband, then her mother, and finally her.
I used her husband and mother as exhibits to establish co dependency syndrome.
The highlight of the hearing was when the judge asked my client’s mother if she’d played any sports in school.
She crossed her still sexy, varicose veined legs and said my daughter didn’t even make a good spectator.
The high heeled vocational expert in a wool suit was of the opinion the lady so suffered from co dependency syndrome she was precluded from any job in the national economy. She could never hold substantial, gainful employment due to her severe co dependency.
There was a medical expert who had a long neck, sort of like Ichabod Crane.
The Judge asked Ichabod his medical opinion and he said there is nothing in this file except one line that reads rule out co dependency syndrome.
He said without any doubt this has been the most riveting and I must say entertaining case I’ve ever seen presented. The lawyer has made his entire case directed at the vocational expert and it worked.
There is no medical evidence whatsoever of co dependency syndrome. None at all.
The judge asked him, if I choose to believe the testimony is that, medical evidence?
Ichabod said yes, if you choose to believe all that show.
The judge smiled, and in a few weeks he ruled in her favor, as I correctly predicted to my client that day.
I went over to visit my Uncle Jiggs and Aunt Bobbie in North Kansas City.
They always greeted me like I was royalty.
When the guitars came out, I led off with Barmaid in the Honky Tonk Downstairs.
I like telling stories about the wins, not so much the heart breakers, you know?
And if this nation can’t afford SSI for the pitiful children who grow up over bars in the stockyards of Kansas City Kansas, maybe we should shut down the beer joints, you know?
At age 52 my father died from infection from swallowing a chicken bone he didn’t know he’d swallowed in September 1971 when I was 13 and my mother was 45.
That ended the dairy operation right then and there. We had an auction, sold the herd and all the machinery and equipment and the neighbors harvested and sold his last, good crops.
We weren’t going to be poor, but the issue was in doubt in the fall of 1971.
And I walked out to the mailbox, in October and there was this Social Security Survivors check for $60 made out to my mother, for me.
I had pretty well spent the $60 by the time I reached the house, but my mother convinced me to save that sixty.
I never forgot. I never will forget.
If I can’t win you Social Security disability you’d best go get a job.
About 25 years ago I took a disability case in Kansas City Kansas.
The lady was 32 years old, had no medical records, at all, except one exam by Social Security doctor that read
Rule out Co Dependency Syndrome
Back then you saw the records thirty minutes before the hearing.
I was in the brand new Bob Dole Federal Courthouse, just opened. You could smoke in the halls and I sat outside wondering what in the world I could say to help this lady when a very well dressed , sharp as a tack, high heeled woman was clicking her heels up and down the hall and chewing some kid’s ass out on her cell phone.
And then I heard her say
I have to go to a hearing now, one of us has to work to pay the rent
She was a vocational expert for Social Security, with a slug of a boyfriend or husband. They still have those.
So I went back inside and my client’s husband was there, who literally was a wino she met and married.
Her mother was there, who was still a barmaid at a tavern in the stockyard bottoms, and the three of them lived on her tips and wages in an apartment over the bar. My client grew up over the bar, and her father was long, long gone.
At age 32, my client had worked for two weeks as a library assistant at a library and was fired, for incompetence.
I’d say, she was the walking definition of co dependency syndrome.
So for the only time in my career, I asked the judge to hear from my client’s husband, then her mother, and finally her.
I used her husband and mother as exhibits to establish co dependency syndrome.
The highlight of the hearing was when the judge asked my client’s mother if she’d played any sports in school.
She crossed her still sexy, varicose veined legs and said my daughter didn’t even make a good spectator.
The high heeled vocational expert in a wool suit was of the opinion the lady so suffered from co dependency syndrome she was precluded from any job in the national economy. She could never hold substantial, gainful employment due to her severe co dependency.
There was a medical expert who had a long neck, sort of like Ichabod Crane.
The Judge asked Ichabod his medical opinion and he said there is nothing in this file except one line that reads rule out co dependency syndrome.
He said without any doubt this has been the most riveting and I must say entertaining case I’ve ever seen presented. The lawyer has made his entire case directed at the vocational expert and it worked.
There is no medical evidence whatsoever of co dependency syndrome. None at all.
The judge asked him, if I choose to believe the testimony is that, medical evidence?
Ichabod said yes, if you choose to believe all that show.
The judge smiled, and in a few weeks he ruled in her favor, as I correctly predicted to my client that day.
I went over to visit my Uncle Jiggs and Aunt Bobbie in North Kansas City.
They always greeted me like I was royalty.
When the guitars came out, I led off with Barmaid in the Honky Tonk Downstairs.
I like telling stories about the wins, not so much the heart breakers, you know?
And if this nation can’t afford SSI for the pitiful children who grow up over bars in the stockyards of Kansas City Kansas, maybe we should shut down the beer joints, you know?
"A man who can't look another man in the hairy eyeball and tell him he's heavy on the sap ain't much of a man."
----- Albert Soady
----- Albert Soady
Fighting for the poor, I for one salute you. Give that man a ceegar.
This is the bedrock of all ideology.
Only a sap would believe all this sappy stuff.
250 - 400 year old briar is the stuff of copy writers.
Case in point, in the early 1920’s, Barling, famed for their Algerian “old wood”, published a brochure entitled “The Romance Of The Barling Pipe” wherein they stated that they sought out burls that were about 60 years old. I included this material in the Pipedia Barling page that I edited.
I’d go into more detail, but I’m late for the pixie hunt.
250 - 400 year old briar is the stuff of copy writers.
Case in point, in the early 1920’s, Barling, famed for their Algerian “old wood”, published a brochure entitled “The Romance Of The Barling Pipe” wherein they stated that they sought out burls that were about 60 years old. I included this material in the Pipedia Barling page that I edited.
I’d go into more detail, but I’m late for the pixie hunt.
I’ve read the Barling page and other sources that either deny briar used is over sixty years old or say it’s bad when it’s too old.
It sure isn’t fancy or pretty.
Look at how on the same piece less than an inch away it wasn’t regular.
Marxman pipes matched or even exceeded Kaywoodie pricing when a Kaywoodie cost more than a comparable Barling or Dunhill.
They didn’t sell on their perfect looks, for sure.
I’ve smoked this Benchmade all day.
It’s a better smoker tonight than this morning.
They will not get hot to hold, they smoke dry as a bone, and the flavor is better.
Not a whole lot better, but better enough I don’t want others.
Last edited:
- Status