Moving Beyond

Tyler Beard, master pipe carver

Given who I am, what I enjoy and my skill level, it's only logical that I might consider pipe carving in my future. I've always enjoyed woodworking. I enjoy pipes and pipe smoking. I certainly enjoy tools and gadgets. Therefore, becoming a pipe carver is a logical extension of all these things, or so one would think. I've been receiving encouragement from a friend of mine, a pipe carver of some renown, Tyler Beard. Tyler is a pastor in Midland and has been carving pipes for some years now, having honed his skills to a keen edge. He's a great guy, always willing to share his skills with others and to encourage growth of the pipe carving community in whatever ways he can. If I ever become a pipe carver, you can be assured that Tyler will have played a major part in that.

At the simplest level, one can get into pipe carving with a kit. This is a block of briar, with all the holes drilled, fitted with a stem, ready to be shaped into a masterpiece. This is a logical starting place, as more advanced levels require machinery. Making a pipe from a kit can be done with simple hand tools that most men will have. A bench sander would make the job easier, for sure, and these are not too expensive and take up only a small amount of real estate. Mark Tinsky (www.amsmoke.com) is a reputable source for kits. He has a good reputation in the pipe community and one could do worse than to start there.

Advanced pipe carving is what attracts me though. This involves taking absolute raw materials and fashioning a great pipe with them. A block of briar and a rod of vulcanite or acrylic, some bench tools, a goodly portion of elbow grease, and a bit of skill and imagination, and out pops a nicely made, great smoking pipe. Tyler makes it look easy. Most of his work is done on a Delta bench lathe. He drills on it, turns on it and sands on it, making it almost a one-stop-shop for an aspiring pipe carver. The only other equipment I've seen him use is a Taig MicroLathe, which he uses to drill and machine his stems. He also has a Delta dust collector, making the work of sanding less messy and not so unhealthy. Who the heck knows what breathing that Mediterranean wood dust will do to you?

There are a few obstacles to my embarking on such a venture. At present, I don't have a garage or shop in which to work, so purchasing the tools to use will be secondary to that. Then there's the raw materials. Blocks of briar are not cheap and are notoriously unpredictable. Many a block has ended up in the woodpile after the carver discovered a pit in the bowl or uncovered a crack as he turned or sanded. Rod stock, whether high-quality Cumberland vulcanite or lucite/acrylic, isn't that expensive, but isn't being given away either. All  of this adds up to create a few obstacles to my pipe-carving enterprise.

Some years ago, Tyler and I plotted to make a series of instructional videos, improving on his older videos that are still available on YouTube. The cares of life swept in and the plan evaporated, but I still think it would be a good idea. Let's see what the future holds. Hopefully, my roles as producer/director and as carver will merge someday and beautiful things will flow out of both.

On Tobacco

To me, collecting pipes that you don't smoke is like collecting CDs that you don't listen to. It makes no practical sense. So, being a pragmatic collector, my hobby has been fueled with various tobaccos over the year. Some have become favorites, others not. For the most part, I wander around amongst different tobaccos, rarely settling down in one area for long.

The journey has been interesting. My first purchase was a pouch of Captain Black, which I most likely picked up at Walgreen's. After that experience (unsatisfactory), I started purchasing bulk blends from a local brick-and-mortar shop. They were most certainly Lane Limited tobaccos, treated with propylene glycol to increase jar life, and I grew increasingly frustrated with how much of each bowl was lost to the goo-soaked dottle that remained. By this time, I had connected with an online pipe smoker's community and was getting some good referrals on premium blends to try. In the early years, I tried Escudo (too intense), GLP's Haddo's Delight (made my head spin), Peterson's Sweet Killarney (not bad), Blue Note (still one of my favorite aromatics), MacBaren's Plumcake (not a favorite) and Vanilla Cream (still a favorite). I never took a shine to English blends; for some reason, Latakia tastes like soap to me. I did buy a tin of GLPs Piccadilly, which is a mild English blend. It wasn't bad at all. In those early years, I also bought a few better bulk blends from a fellow I knew in Michigan (Guy Wallace of affordablepipes.com) that sold pipes and tobacco. I'm sure there were many other tobaccos that came through my cabinet that I don't even remember.

In buying tinned tobaccos, I discovered they tend to dry out rather fast after you crack the seal. I bought some bail-lidded mason jars--the ones with the rubber seal--and started storing most of my tobacco in them. This made moisture management much easier to accomplish.

One of my jars has the label "Kitchen Sink". Into this jar I pour all my little bits of tobacco that have been left in tins or pouches. This makes "Kitchen Sink" an ever-changing blend, a singular creation that can neither be defined nor recreated. I dip into "Kitchen Sink" occasionally, and it always proves to be a pleasant smoke.

Right now, I have another jar that has two or three different Burley blends mixed together. That Burley concoction seems to bite my tongue rather hard, so I've been trying to attenuate it with some BCA (BCA is a very mild Cavendish that is used rather frequently in bulk blends). I bought a half-pound of BCA before I remembered that it was a Lane Limited tobacco, a brand I swore off years ago (see above). My tobacco inventory is usually limited to 3 or 4 choices. When I finish one or relegate its remnants to the "Kitchen Sink", I go out and look for something else.

The quest for a new favorite continues. I've barely made a scratch on the breadth of tobaccos available, so I figure it's a search that will continue for the remainder of my natural life. Something to look forward to, I say.

Now, to Hit the Ground Running...

Here are a few pages I recently posted on my xanga site that relate to my pipe smoking pilgrimage.

Dwelling in the Land of Pipe Smokers: Part I

Dwelling in the Land of Pipe Smokers: Part II
 
Dwelling in the Land of Pipe Smokers: Part III

Dwelling in the Land of Pipe Smokers: Part IV

A New Experiment

As much pleasure as pipes and tobacco have given me over the last decade, I wanted to create a page devoted to the hobby. It's not necessarily true that it'll take off or that it'll be read by more than myself and one or two more, but I've always found pleasure in writing and creating, with or without an audience. If anyone else enjoys what's thrown up here, then that's all gravy.