This could actually be two fold as far as making money. I only hope that I can explain this the way I'm thinking about it.
First, a person can make a bit of money making pipes, if and when your making becomes good enough that others are even intersted in purchasing them. There is a lot of competition out there also, even for the makers not intent on aiming at collectors/smokers, whom are willing to spend a lot more than your typical smoker.
Someone just starting out as a hobby maker can get by with a pre-drilled block of lesser quality and save a bit of money. You can make a fine smoking pipe from these blocks, but they aren't usually of the quality that most would expect for what a person would have to charge for a handmade pipe. As you progress and think about making pipes for sale, you'd then have to begin also to think about drilling your own blocks. This raises the question of how to do it and still make affordable pipes for a beginning maker. As well, once you begin to think about making pipes you can sell, you also have to think about better briar blocks with less chance of flaws and briar that makes more desireable looking pipes.
Now the second part to this answer: As you progress toward making pipes you would be happy selling, you will as said above, need better briar. (Which cost more!) This will cut out pre-drilled blocks for the most part, unless your willing to pay a premium and I'm not even sure where you'd get great quality blocks (For great looking grain and no flaws) without paying more than a beginner could get for a finished pips. Thus You'd want to drill your own blocks, which of course opens another can of worms, in that you'd then need the equipment to do so. This can be costly and lead to a never ending search for the next best way of doing a procedure in pipe making.
Of course, then there are the other materials involved in pipe making. There are materials that one can get by with and still sell a pipe, such as stem blanks, which of course you'd have to alter to fit your pipe and make it a better stem. If you don't do modifications, it would limit the types of pipes you could make that would look right with these stem blanks. If you didn't want to go with stem blanks, you'd then have to make your own stems which as a lot of people know, can take as long as making the pipe, be a harder endeavor than making the pipe (In my experiences) and cost more for the raw materials to make a stem than a pre-made stem costs. Of course, then there are the tools to make stems, which can differ quite a bit from the tools to make the pipe.
Pipe making can be costly and for the most part it can take quite some time to get to a point where you could sell your work. If you have made a few and enjoy it, with some time and quite a bit of investment in both that time and money as well as lots of practice, you can sell pipes and make the hobby somewhat self sustaining. You have to be self motivated with lots of patience and not easily put off by failures to succeed.
And I say this not to disuade anyone from making the attempt. I also don't say this as any kind of expert on the subject. I only mean to point out what I've learned from my experiences in my own work at pipe making.
If your serious about making pipes and trying to sell them, I'd suggest do lots of research. Talk to both new carvers as well as well known and established carvers that make a living making pipes. I'd also do a lot of research on at least the basic tools used in pipe making. For the most part these tools are adapted from things made for other purposes. Some of these tools can be costly, while others are easily adapted from very reasonably priced tools.
Pipe makers/smokers for the most part are a very friendly bunch and very open with sharing some of the basic information. This said, there are some that use processes in pipe making that they keep close to vest, and I understand the thinking on these items. Start out slow in this hobby as well, as it can sprial into a money pit quickly and talking to others can save you some of the mistakes, I as well as many others, have made. These mistakes being:
1) Purchasing tools I thought would work fine, only to quickly find out that I needed to upgrade when I found the tool just wouldn't do what I needed it too.
2) Purchasing inferior materials/tools that either didn't work, or took more time to make them work. I'd have been better off buying better items in the first place. (Most of my mistakes fit into these two)
I tend to jump in with both feet on things sometimes and this has cost me money that I could have saved, if I'd taken some of my own advice above and taken just a bit more time.
If there is any advice I can give, I'm more than happy to do so........ Be it in the making itself with tips or tricks or where I've picked up some of my tooling and changes I've made to use them for my pipe making. It also doesn't hurt to have a pipe maker whose shop you can visit. Although I'm in no way an expert, I'd be willing to have visitors in my humble shop and show anyone some of the tips and tricks I've picked up by visiting with other pipe makers.
If your thinking of getting into pipe making, I hope that I haven't confused anyone even more.
