What Does "Hand Made" Mean?

[mso489]

When a pipe is stamped "Hand Made," what does that mean? Does it mean one thing? Does hand made mean it is an artisan pipe made entirely by hand including the stem, or does it mean hand finished, or does it mean something else? I'm never quite sure when I see this stamp exactly what I am looking at, or if I should take it literally, or how literally. Any ideas?

 

[cosmicfolklore]

We've had this argument before. Some will say that there are laws regarding this, but apparently not in Denmark, because I have some obviously machine made Nordings stamped "handmade" and the two 204 Valhallas, with the exact same rustication, scary clones, that are way more exact than any hand can do. The stems are obviously machine made also. Mr. Nording himself, told me that if you wore out your stem, you could just tell him your pipe # and he could send a new one.
Laws governing things like labels such as this with crafted items are ambiguous. While some lawyers will tell you that they are strictly enforced, I can attest that they are not. No policeman will ever arrest anyone because of a stamp like that. It is only enforced if someone is willing to spend the money to take it to court. And, I guarantee you that no one will take a pipemaker to court, especially because there's no money to be gained from it. So, the title "hand made" is as good as spit on the sidewalk.

 

[carolinachurchwarden]

I've read before that some brands can call it "hand made" if someone touches the pipe at some point during the carving process, even if they are manufactured by machines.
Personally? I would say that a pipe is "hand made" if someone carved that pipe "by hand". At least, that's how I see it. I wouldn't necessarily consider having to cut the stem or turn it to be a requirement for a "hand made" pipe, although some places and carvers do. I would say that my limit would be buying a pipe kit and carving it yourself. If a machine does all of the carving, then I don't consider it "hand made" and I don't really like that about a lot of manufacturers. If it costs more to have that label on it, then fine, but "hand made" should mean just what it says.

 

[cortezattic]

Is any pipe brand totally machine made? Maybe Grabows & Careys come close.

 

[saltedplug]

Even if a maker says a pipe is hand made, I think they are machine made to the extent his income has allowed him to buy machines to speed his making. Certainly there are some tasks that are better when guided or done by hand. Maybe hand made means that they are done more slowly by hand.
Makers have to earn a living. Do you remember when Walt Cannoy broke from the ranks of artisan carvers and started his Cardinal House pipes? He said that that was where he was going to concentrate to up his earnings.
I think what is meant by hand made and why makers bowl coat is proprietary.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Wasn't Nording an engineer of those slot and fraiz (sp?) machines early on, or maybe even before he started making pipes?

Plus, if just holding a pipe to put a final sanding on a pipe makes it handmade, then the stamp still doesn't mean diddly squat.

 

[ashdigger]

It means the stem and the pipe were physically touched at some point. I honestly think that's all it REALLY means.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

In the US, I cannot stamp Handmade on anything I have made, if I use a faceted stone. Even if it was faceted in the US... by me, because the stone could have been mined somewhere else, despite that the silver most likely wasn't mined here.
But, just like those "14k" or "Sterling" stamps, there is no police force that will enforce it.

 

[crashthegrey]

Every company is different with pipes, and it is nuts. I do know that the Kaywoodie "HANDMADE" stamp means that Bill personally made that pipe, cut the stem, and made every bit of it. I have a Nording that is stamped handmade and very clearly was not. Other than Kaywoodie, which is a line of pipe, I disregard that stamp.

 

[saltedplug]

"Hand made" probably varies from one maker to the next. But I think the term consistently means that they do "X" number of things beyond "machine made." Aside from the variation, the real problem is that what they mean is proprietary. Their silence protects their reputation and income.

 

[irishearl]

I have a couple of pipes stamped hand-made, all Danish. I wonder if I can trust those Danes. :P

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Despite being machine or hand made, whether they were really made in Denmark or Poland, I have never had a Nording that wasn't an awesome smoker. And, they're cheap as Hell.

 

[swilford]

When a pipe is stamped "Hand Made," what does that mean? Does it mean one thing? Does hand made mean it is an artisan pipe made entirely by hand including the stem, or does it mean hand finished, or does it mean something else? I'm never quite sure when I see this stamp exactly what I am looking at, or if I should take it literally, or how literally. Any ideas?

I could make equally good cases that all pipes are hand made or no pipes are hand made. It's a super slippery idea because pipes at all levels require both a lot of work on machines and a lot of work with nothing more than hands and sandpaper. I've watched pipes ranging from Petersons and Savinellis to Nanna Ivarssons and Hiroyuki Tokutomis being made and while there are vast differences, all of them do certain things on machines (think turning a tenon; it would be bad to do that by hand) and certain things by hand (think staining). That doesn't mean that the production processes for these various pipes don't vary enormously: they do. It takes Nanna days to make a pipe. Savinelli (and I'm a giant fan of theirs too) makes a couple thousand pipes a week. It's just that hand made vs. not-hand made is a bad way to delineate those differences.
I'd kind of like to see the term 'hand made' disappear from the pipe making lexicon simply because it doesn't mean anything. Failing that, hand shaped is something that at least makes sense: was this template driven shaping to a predefined shape (using French-style fraizing, CnC milling or Danish style copy fraizing)? Or was it shaped freehand on a lathe and or disc sander or belt sander? It's still far from perfect because you have extremely high quality fraized pipes and extremely poor quality hand shaped pipes, but it at least means something that can be agreed upon.
Sykes

 

[warren]

It means what the manufacturer desires it to mean. Same as the last time we discussed this. The various governments where pipes are made have, thankfully, dabbled little in the business and so, there is no national nor international control which could/would define the term.

 

[sablebrush52]

I agree that "hand shaping" is a better term. Every pipe is partially made by machine, drilling for example. But not all pipes are merely fraised, smoothed, stained, and polished. Some pipe carvers put more handwork into their creations than others, but if they're shaping by hand, that's what "handmade" infers.
Going back to Barling pipes, they were turned on lathes, then finished by hand. But part of that finishing included refining the shape carefully by hand through the "cut down" step to remove any imperfections, such as pits. So, each pipe that came out of that factory was a little different in shape even though they finished within the tolerances of the model pattern.

 

[anthonyrosenthal74]

To me, Hand Made simply means that the pipe (as mentioned by others) was at some point being touched by hand during the process. Even with most machines, your hands are still at play in working the machine or what is being created by the machine. And fitting stem, adornments, etc, onto the pipe is done using hands as well. So although much or most of the shaping was done for example on a lathe, the pipe can still be considered hand made. If a pipe were to be made entirely by a machine... materials all added to the machine, a button pushed, and out pops a pipe, then "Hand Made" can no longer apply.
Pipes shaped on a sanding wheel, sanding belt, or using hand tools such as rasps and files, I consider Freehand regardless of shape. Other than the widely accepted term "Freehand" being used for the dublin-esque shaped freehands, I think any pipe made in that manner can and should be called a "freehand" as well. So a Freehand can be a dublin-esque shape, a classic billiard, or something like a blowfish or volcano.

 

[saltedplug]

Sometimes the pedestrian experience of reading and posting goes to a higher level, as has this thread. I love it when it does, thanks to those who know something!

 

[npod]

So here is an interesting tid bit that adds nothing to the OP or current discussion, but is germain to the discussion. I just took delivery of an estate pipe from Europe. The darn thing was held up in customs all last week with lots of back and forth questioning of what “it” was. I finally said it was a handmade pipe similar to what a “grandpa” would smoke and they let it through. So in this obscure example I literally used the phrase “hand made” and it made a difference. Carry on.

 

[jpmcwjr]

It means everything and nothing as noted above. I suppose 18th C and some 19th C pipes were actually hand made, no power tools, no automatic lathes. And it could be overrated. Would you want to drive a hand made car?

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Jpmc, my inner Devil’s advocate says that those clay pipes weren’t “handmade” because they were mold made. And, fraizer machines are a mid 19th century thing. They are much more acurate and precise now, but there were... amd lathes were common in any gentleman farmer’s tools back, back 18thc maybe earlier.