Latest News

28 June 2009

Jimeny Crickets, who would have thought it would take so long to set up a shop?! Yeah, I have made a few pipes along the way, but I sure thought I would be completely set up by now, and I'm not.

Thus far, I have my main lathe up and running, lights on, electrical outlets powered up, a belt sander and band saw doing their thing, a nice workbench, my sandblasting cabinet ready to rock and roll, and two air compressors running: one smaller for day-to-day use and one whopper for sandblasting. Of course, the latter compressor had to to be wired up for 230 volts, so that took a little doing.

But I guess I am probably about 90 percent set up, anyway. I have two smaller lathes I would like to set up for special operations, but I am getting by pretty well without them.

And I definitely need to get my air filtration system going, along with a few other things.

I will hopefully have a pipe worth throwing up here on the website in the next week or two if all goes according to plan.

22 Feb 2009

Sorry it has been so long since my last update.

We had a whole string of family crises come up over the last few months, including Adriana's father passing away in January.

Then one of my brothers fell ill, and I quickly found myself looking after his affairs, into the foreseeable future. He is recuperating, but it's definitely going to take awhile before he will be ready to manage his affairs himself.

It hasn't been all bad news, though.

Adriana, Brenda and I were finally able to move into a big enough place. Yeah, I know, as if we didn't already have enough on our plates with the family crises, we also spent the last two weeks moving and settling into a new place.

Of course, the Lord only knows when I will make my next pipe. I'll have a lot more space in my new shop, but I haven't even come up with a decent floorplan yet, let alone wired up the outlets and moved the machines into position.

I am hoping to have the new shop mostly up-and-running sometime toward the end of March, but please wish me luck. I am surely going to need it.

15 Aug 2008

One of these days, I'm going to sit down and write out a unified theory on the Yin and Yang of pipe and tobacco. One of these days...

But in short, I think it requires trial-and-error on the part of the smoker. The reason being that each smoker's palate and each smoker's taste experience from a particular combination of pipe and tobacco are going to be different.

You start off with the concept of "destructive distillation", and you take that one step further with the concept of "fractional distillation".

Now then, for the sake of simplicity, let's just say that under ideal laboratory conditions, smoking a particular tobacco yields equal parts of the following flavors: cinnamon, black pepper, ginger, and orange peel. (Egads!)

But you put this same tobacco in a particular pipe, and cinnamon, black pepper, and ginger are delivered to the smoker's palate, no longer in equal proportions, but now in more pleasing proportions.

Meanwhile the orange peel flavor is basically filtered out altogether in the fractional distillation process, unique to that particular pipe.

So here's this particular smoker. He just hates the taste of orange peel, and if he knew that it was present in this particular tobacco, he would probably throw the stuff out.

But because that flavor was filtered out, this guy is sitting there thinking: "Wow, I didn't realize how good this tobacco was until I put it into this particular pipe."

If he only knew...

And then there's this other guy sitting there smoking this exact same tobacco in a nearly identical pipe, and he's thinking to himself: "Gosh, this tobacco would really be great, if only it had some of that wonderful orange peel taste."

Yeah, you could research this stuff as deeply as you want to go, but I think it's a whole lot easier just to think of it as being the magical and mysterious Yin and Yang of pipe and tobacco. Sometimes the two work together, and sometimes they don't.

They are Yin and Yang.

25 Mar 2008

Yes, I know, it's been like forever since I posted my last update.

Of course, I am still making pipes. The last one I was able to get up on my website was this nifty Bullhorn, but I have made others, too. Notably, I just finished another ball that I am really proud of. It's very similar to some of the others, except that it's smaller, a group 3 clencher suitable for about-town smoking.

Unfortunately, I think I have reached the limits of my current photography setup. Apparently the shinier my pipes get, the harder they are to photograph. I spent literally days trying to get a few decent pictures of the Bullhorn, but this latest pipe is like trying to photograph a mirror ball. No matter what I try, I can see the reflection of the camera, furniture around the room, every picture on the wall, various constellations...

So I ordered a collapsible light tent that I am hoping will cut down on the reflection clutter. But I am a little bit concerned that surrounding a smooth, shiny pipe with that much white will make it look pretty white, as well, so I will have to see how that works out.

Speaking of pictures on the wall, Adriana and I have been pitching around an idea lately to combine our two passions: pipes and art. She has just been making amazing strides with her artwork lately, and we thought it would be neat if we could develop some pipe-related artwork. Adriana could sell some nice prints, and we pipe smokers could carry our hobby into other realms of our lives.

Like, how cool would it be to have some nice pipe-art hanging at the office -- you may not be able to smoke there, but you don't have to be totally pipeless there, either. Makes sense to me.

So expect to start seeing some pipe related artwork coming out in the next month or so. I will definitely be making announcements as the artwork is completed.

23 Jan 2008

Well, I had a chance to make a stem out of Absylux® since my last update, and it looks really promising.

On the downside, the rod stock I purchased is not quite as rich a black as we are used to seeing with vulcanite/ebonite. At first I didn't notice it, but under bright light, next to vulcanite/ebonite, you can definitely see the difference.

But on the upside, Absylux is "FDA compliant for use in food processing applications", takes a nice shine, makes a silky smooth tenon, has a very nice tooth-feel that's much closer to vulcanite/ebonite than to acrylic, works well, has relatively little smell when you are working it and no detectable odor about an hour later, won't oxidize like vulcanite/ebonite over time, and this stuff is just tough as all get-out.

I have been chewing around on my test stem for two weeks now, and I think the only thing I have succeeded in doing is loosening a few of my front teeth. There are a couple of really faint marks there, but nothing like what I would see, had this stem been made out of vulcanite/ebonite.

I mentioned how Absylux has a nice tooth feel, but you know what I like even better about Absylux? I like the fact that it doesn't "glue itself" to the inside of your lips like vulcanite -- and to a much lesser extent ebonite -- does.

Have you ever seen cigarette smokers "glue" a cigarette to the inside of one of their lips and watch it bobble as they talk? Well I personally have had a similar experience with vulcanite pipe stems, and on drier days, it doesn't take long for the inside of my lips to get fairly raw from having the stem glue itself to my lip and then peal off a microscopic layer from the lining of my mouth.

Well, Absylux doesn't do that, and I'm guessing this is due to the fact that it's much less porous and therefore doesn't absorb moisture like vulcanite -- and to a lesser extent ebonite -- does. You could almost think of Absylux as being like vulcanite/ebonite -- tooth-feel-wise -- but with a Teflon coating. It just really makes for an enjoyable smoke.

So expect to start seeing some Absylux stems on my pipes in the future. I am still waiting on some feedback from a few people to see what they think, but for me, personally, I like it a lot.

For those interested, you can check out our discussions of Absylux as a stem material at the Pipemakers' Forum and the Smokers' Forum to see what others think, thus far.

18 Dec 2007

Wow, perhaps it would be easier to list what I have not done since my last update. (Note to self: Maybe I need to do more updates.)

Okay, I will start off with my new friend Richard, with whom I had swapped homegrown tobacco, after we met online at Club Stogie's General Pipe Forum. Richard and I started emailing back and forth regarding the tobacco, and then we started figuring out how many things we have in common.

And he had seen the "Squatty Manzanita Bulldog" in my Previous Pipes section, and I told him that yes, it was indeed made out of manzanita -- AKA "Mission Briar" -- and Richard told me that he had manzanita growing all around him out in California.

Dang, I wish I could go into everything here, all of the emails, the posts on the Pipemakers' Forum, my own experience with processing a manzanita rootball, etc., etc., but I would not want to bore you with all the details.

So to make a very long story short, I hope that Richard and I will be friends for a good, long time, and I hope that he and I will be able to work something out for more manzanita for future pipes.

Let's see here, what else?

Well, a few of us pipemakers have been looking around at different materials for stems and different sources for those materials, and we have been getting fairly excited about this new-to-us plastic called Absylux®.

According to the company that makes it, Absylux® is: impact resistant; dimensionally stable -- so stems shouldn't loosen up over time; machinable; thermoformable; takes a polish; "has excellent aesthetic qualities" -- their words; "FDA compliant for use in food processing applications" -- so you can chew on it to your heart's content; gluable -- so it can be used for trim rings, etc., in addition to stems; etc.

At least on paper, anyway, Absylux® sounds like it might be some really awesome stuff for stems. So I placed an order for some yesterday to give it a try on a few pipes to see how good it looks, how it feels in the teeth, how it mates with briar, and so on.

I will definitely let you know how that works out.

05 Dec 2007

I received some really positive feedback, over at the Pipemakers' Forum, on a couple of pipes I finished up last week: "Grand Calabash" and "Pollywog". I can not easily express how much that meant to me.

Photographing "Pollywog", though, I realized that I had pretty much reached the limits of my old digital camera. So I started shopping around for a new one, and my new Olympus SP-510UZ arrived via Federal Express on Saturday.

So far, it looks extremely promising, but, wow, I forgot how much effort it takes to familiarize yourself with a new digicam. At first, I started to panic, as it seemed to operate so much differently than my older Olympus digital camera.

But then I discovered the "My" Mode, and there were all my favorite adjustments: white balance, ISO, and so on. Now it just looks like I need to pour over the manual, trying, with my own two hands, the various adjustments and features to see how they effect my pictures.

And Adriana finished the first pipe sock last week (Nice job, Mi Amor). I want to take pictures to show future buyers what they will receive with their purchase, but I am still not quite "there" yet with my photography skills.

The same is true for a couple of pipes I have near completion.

16 Nov 2007

Well, I finished my first pipe in about two months, on Thursday.

The pipe stamp I had been waiting for so patiently apparently dropped right off the face of the earth as near as anyone can tell.

UPS scanned it when it landed in Houston, but they have absolutely no record of it after that. They don't know if it was delivered or where it is right now. It just vanished, for all intensive purposes.

And it's not like some disreputable UPS employee saw it and decided that he needed to stamp "R. M. Perkins" on things he had lying around the house, or anything, so who knows :)

It would be nice to think that it might turn up some day and UPS would go ahead and deliver it, in the interest of making a customer very happy, but I am not going to hold my breath.

The good news is that they are going to reimburse the stamp maker, who did a really impressive job of expediting a replacement. He got the news about the disappearance last Thursday, and stamp #2 arrived at my doorstep this Wednesday. Awesome!

And Adriana started on the first pipe sock last night. We had to sit down and work out the details on it, she cut the fabric, and I am guessing she will start sewing on it sometime next week.

She was tempted to start in sewing last night, but I forced her to take a break, as she has been working some pretty long hours, here lately, on other projects.

But once she gets it sewn, I am looking forward to posting a few pictures so folks can see what they are getting with their pipe purchase.

Cheers.

07 Nov 2007

Well apparently UPS is playing some sort of sick, twisted game with me. My pipe stamp has been on-the-ground in Houston since the 29th of October, but I cannot seem to get anybody to bring it to my house.

Each day I do the online-tracking-thing on UPS's website, and each day they say that it is scheduled for delivery that day. But that day comes and goes, I check back at UPS's website that evening, and the status has changed from "scheduled for delivery" to "rescheduled for (the next day)".

So I went so far as to flag down a UPS driver working in my neighborhood to ask him if he had my package, and he said "no", since his delivery area stopped a few streets south of mine. But he did describe for me the driver who works my street, and he did give me a vague description of his delivery area.

I was seriously tempted to try to hunt my driver down yesterday afternoon, but I have this sneaking suspicion he has been on vacation for the last two weeks, and UPS just does not have a plan for delivery in his area until he returns from vacation.

I grew up in a small town, and it was the easiest thing in the world to go and pick up a package after 5:00 PM if UPS was not able to leave your package without a signature or whatever. But I doubt seriously such a thing would even be feasible in a city the size of Houston.

Ah, well.

In the meantime, I have managed to develop another pipe design that I am excited about. I wish I could be like those pipemakers who can sit down with a block of briar and whip out the most brilliant pipe ever created with little more than a couple lines drawn on the side of the block, but I am not.

I have to have a detailed plan and adhere to it steadfastly, or I might as well just plan on cranking out some sort of hideous abomination. Well, maybe not quite that bad, but certainly it will not be a pipe I would want to show off at the Pipemakers' Forum.

And my first tartan-plaid wool blanket came in -- wow, it is nice. I cannot wait to see a pipe sock out of it.

31 Oct 2007

Well, I have been waiting for my latest stamp for about two weeks, and it is driving me nuts. I have five pipes lying in a drawer, ready to be stained, but I am just dead in the water until that stamp comes in.

My first stamp did not turn out as well as I had hoped, so it was back to the drawing board to design a new one. Hopefully this one will do the trick.

I will probably end up starting on another pipe, but sometimes you reach a point where you are juggling too many things, and the next thing you know, you start dropping a few.

However, I think I have been making pretty good use of my time, here lately. Like, I started looking around for some nice wool blankets, which my Better Half will be turning into pipe "socks".

Originally I thought about using some light-weight wool purchased from a local fabric shop, but I would really rather we make our pipe socks out of something heavier for added protection.

So I have been looking at wool blankets, in various colors: red, blue, and some really awesome tartan plaids. I am thinking pipe-sock-color may become a free option at a later date, but I do not want to commit Adriana to too much.

Lord knows she has her hands full just keeping up with all of the other stuff that she does.