Gimli's Travel Pipe

Gimli's Travel pipe is a fairly simple sitter, a strong pipe with a wooden stem. The stem is maple instead of vulcanite. The bowl is straight grain plateaux briar. The briar is not stained and the stem is stained with a black stain. This is my first attempt at a wood stem and am quite satisfied with the result. It is also my first pipe with a stem I made on it. 

I call it Gimli's travel pipe, because despite what the movie would have us believe I don't really think that all the Lord of the Ring characters traveled with outrageously long Churchwardens. Sure, those are beautiful pipes but when you're walking for miles fighting with sword and ax, carrying all your own gear  you don't want to bring you churchwarden and risk breaking it. You need an old standard. something strong, pleasant to smoke and nice to look at and preferably shorter than your sword. None would have known this better than Gimli.

The Wizard (or the Whale)

After I made the pipe featured in "The Big Block" I got a lot of positive feed back on it, especially because of the natural burl on the top. This pipe is an attempt to create a similar surface with a wire brush on a less expensive piece of briar. While I was carving this I thought it looked like a cartoon whale that was blowing water our of the hole meant for blowing water out of(I do apologize to all of you lovers of whale anatomy out there. I'm sure I learned the correct word for this at one point but some how it just hasn't  come up much since and thus I have forgotten it), but then a friend of mine thought it looked like a wizard's pipe, and I had to agree. I know that it looks nothing like the pipes from "The Lord of the Rings" movies but I don't think Gandalf would turn this pipe down if it were packed with a nice "Southfarthing"

Once again this is a Briar Pipe. The wire brushed surfaces have been stained with a black stain and the rest is stained with a red mahogany under coat and a brown mocha on top. It has a slightly curved freestyle stem.