I've been a member there for over a month. Lots of great info there but the guys they call the 'old guard' seem to enjoy being rude and snooty to beginners and new members. They are the pipe making masters, according to them, but I've pretty much had enough of them. I have not encountered that sort of condescension at any other site involved in high end pursuits. Not sure what the deal is. But it only takes a few to ruin a forum/website.
There are some who seem to fit in well after a while, so maybe its just me.
There was a thread there wondering why there is so little activity on the forum. They don't have a clue.
But I think they like it that way anyway. I'll continue to read there but I'm pretty much done with posting.
And for the record, they weren't particularly rude to me. I just didn't like how they were treating other folks.
George
Whoever the old guard is there, and it might be me now, but it's been the same attitude for 20 years, and the that is, if you (not just you George but anyone) show up and ask me a million questions without trying anything yourself, I'm not going to answer, because it's a waste of my time and yours. Likewise, if you show up and bring something you have tried, and attempt to get help with some specific thing, you'll be helped. Sometimes to death - there are answers which a new pipe maker can't even really understand in some instances. There isn't really "snootiness" - what's in it for me? But when someone shows up and says "Here's my masterpiece" and you say "Hey that's cool, too bad about these sanding scratches." and the person loses their mind, you get a little less benevolent. Rinse and repeat. But the people there who bother to answer questions, and right now that's LL, myself, Sandahl, sometimes Ryan Alden, sometimes Scottie Piersel, Kurt Huhn, if you really fuck up Trever Talbert will show up just for fun..... we've been through this process, made the same mistakes, we know how hard it is, so there's no snobbery involved. It's intimidating for a new pipe maker, we realize that. But you can get coddling from boards like this, from facebook, from your grandmother, your friends, all of whom will tell you "Wow, you are SOOO amazing at making pipes." and the truth is, to them, you are, but to the pipe collecting world, the world of hand made pipes, you are a rank amateur and it shows, and until a guy accepts that, accepts that he's not the Einstein of pipes, very little progress will be made.
The next post after yours George is quite accurate: PMF is is pipe maker university. We might be assholes, but
we know what we are talking about and you can't get that hardly anywhere else. It's NOT worth it for some guys, it's not worth it for the hobbiest who is going to make 10 pipes in his life. He can do whatever he wants, it's cool, no one cares or should. But if you want to make money at pipes, if you want to learn to make really good pipes, genuinely good pipes that
guys who know about pipes want to buy.... then you need to run that gauntlet, have the same conversations we all had when we started. I spent 5 fucking years learning to make a halfway ordinary pipe. Slow learner! Now I make that same pipe about twice a week cuz it turns out I have no real artistic drive. But it's a damn good pipe now because I got a lot of help along the way.
Where a guy goes with pipe making is his own business. But PMF exists for one reason and it's to talk real serious talk about high grade pipe making, in the Danish (and now American) tradition.
