Blowfish Wizard

The Blowfish Wizard is a sturdy freehand pipe with a quarter bent double ball freehand stem. The  use of the orange and blue dyes leaves the bowl with just a slight greenish tint in the darker grains while leaving the forefront color an almost natural brown. It sits pleasantly in the hand. Many a pleasant evening can be spent over a chessboard with the earthy tones of tobacco smoke pouring from this pipe as one enjoys the company of a good friend. 

The Wizard's Prow

The Wizard's Prow tobacco pipe was a gift pipe made for a young lady of whom I am quite fond. It is the first time I have used a Steck stem, as well as the first time I've made a straight freehand wizard pipe. It is a smaller break/lady pipe size bowl. The pipe ended up being wonderfully light because of the smaller bowl and an excellent little all around good pipe.

The Wizard's Horn

The Wizard's Horn tobacco pipe is a very different pipe. I am not entirely sure how well I like it. Visually it is beautiful. The straight grain of the plateaux briar is stunning and I have been improving on the way I use the dyes which have given this pipe an amazing finish and the rough outside of the root burl is always fascinating. What I am not happy about is the curve, and how that has effected the way it sits in the mouth. This is not a lazy pipe, all the weight is out at the end and the stem doesn't displace any of the weight from out to down. Still it is smokable and looks amazing, you just might want to build up your biceps before smoking this one.

I want to give a return shout out to Catholic Stuff Podcast created by the willing minds of Fr. John, Fr. Peter, Fr. Mike, Joe Doman, and, last but certainly not least, the esteemed Nathan Goebel. Joe recently lead a podcast on our own St. John Kemble and encouraged the listeners to check out this site, so thank you gents over at Catholic Stuff. Listen to this podcast, they have some amazing topics and deal with them thoughtfully and enjoyably. 

The Lucky WIzard

It's been a while now since I've created a wizard pipe. I  decided to combine the idea of my lucky pipe with the my freehand wizard design and thus was created the Lucky wizard. this pipe has substantially thicker walls on the bowl than the lucky pipe which became a concern of mine the more I looked at it. I do like freehand pipes but they quickly become very similar and as I am trying to stay on the more unique side of pipe designs I don't want to wear out a good thing to quickly. I did want to try the green Dye again and it looks great on the italian brair. This is most certainly my last St. Patrick's day inspired pipe of the year. I am hoping to turn my eyes back toward the Lord of the Rings Travel pipes soon, strong, sturdy pipes with wooden stems.

The Mountain

I have been working on this tobacco pipe for a while. My initial inspiration was from St. Pier Giorgio Frassati who was an avid mountain climber as well as a pipe smoker. I have many friends who are mountaineers and some of whom are pipe smokers and while I am not much of a mountain climber I am most certainly an enjoyer of mountains. So for a while I have wanted to make a mountain pipe and I was hoping to make it not a volcano pipe like so many are. I feel that I have fairly succeeded. If this mountain was a volcano it seems at least an inactive volcano, like many of the Rocky mountains.

The mountain is a freehand pipe made from Italian plateaux briar with a quite modified ring stem. The trees are etched into the surface and I added intentional nicks and gauges to attempt to mimic natural contours. As I was making this pipe I started liking it less and less but now that I have the finished product I have begun to like it again.

The Wizard's Knife

Once again I have revisited my freehand series I call wizards. This briar pipe was made at the request of a friend of mine and so I slightly changed the design specifically to comfortably fit a thumb between the stem and the rim of the bowl as well as adding the knife edge bottom. 

I also turned the stem for this pipe on my lathe from a piece of Lucite rod. I am happy with the result although it took three attempts to get it right. The first stem I ended up making the tenon to small and it didn't fit the pipe correctly. The second stem looked great but broke when I was trying to get it off the rod I was turning it on. The third stem came out wonderfully. 

I'll be posting a couple more pipes this week so keep an eye out for them.

The Wizard's Folly

The Wizard's Folly is the result of making to many wizards pipes in a row without having a new name for the next one, thus the folly. I tried a different method of distressing the rim, which turned out beautifully. Anyway it is another good looking freehand pipe. 

The Wizard's Beard

Finally I've finished another pipe. Another Wizard freehand pipe, and this time it's the Wizards Beard. I played around with the ball and ring freehand stem a bit for some variation as well as giving it a strong bend. It came out well

The Wizard's Bag

The Wizard's Bag is a variation on The Whale. The primary difference is on the rim around bowl. I like both in different ways. I enjoy the distressed look of The Whale but the smooth concave surface is also satisfying. The variation of stains on different surfaces seems to be becoming a fixture to many of my pipes but I am not entirely sure I like it as much as I use it. All in all this was a fantastically fun pipe to make. I enjoyed reworking The Whale's shape. Notice also the modified ball and ring freehand pipe stem and look for more variation in the stems as time goes on. 

Hopefully I will finish my first Churchwarden pipe sometime this week. I'm also playing around with techniques for inlaying silver wire. I'll post the results soon.

The Briar

The pipe that I featured at the end of The Kemble Pipe was the second pipe I carved. I carved it from maple and was carving it more or less at the same time as the Magnus Pipe. Before I had even finished those two, I was so excited about making pipes that I came upstairs and told my wife, Kate, "That's it, next year everybody's getting a pipe for Christmas."

Having felt so good about those two pipes I ordered my first briar online from Pimo (http://www.pimopipecraft.com/index.html). I have been quite satisfied with their service, prices and quality. It has been amazing how quickly they fill my orders (amazon isn't always as fast as they have been). When the briar arrived I used the first piece to create a freehand. I also started using an upright bandsaw for the initial shaping. The bandsaw is so much safer than my previous technique. I also switched to a carnauba wax finish. This pipe I left the natural briar color and started experimenting with bending the stem.