tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-176533832012-02-25T19:54:04.558-05:00A Blog devoted to news of the Talbert Pipes workshop, our pipes, and the craft of pipemakingTrever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.comBlogger335125TheTalbertPipeBloghttp://feedburner.google.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-81025946658082184532012-02-11T21:48:00.000-05:002012-02-11T21:48:53.047-05:00

Everybody already knows how pipes are drilled using drill presses, wood lathes, and spoon bit/hand drilling, so I thought I would put together a visual demonstration of how I just drilled a Talbert freehand today.  It's a different technique that doesn't rely on the drawn centerlines of spoon bit drilling, but which still allows one to shape the pipe first and drill after, letting the pipemaker

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-12964851733390109302012-01-31T20:04:00.000-05:002012-01-31T20:04:20.709-05:00

Note - This is a product review of a new toy I'm using.  If this review gets you all wildly fired up to buy one of these things, you can buy one from this link and I'll get a few bucks of credit and you'll get 15% off, which is nice savings on a gadget that can run $100 to $200, depending on how fancy you want it.  I was not given a free pen or anything else to shill for these folks, I just

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-27675358022850793322011-12-18T23:47:00.001-05:002011-12-19T22:20:32.613-05:00

The following is a true story from our last Christmas in France. Christmas for expats is the loneliest time of the year.  You're far from home, no family, few friends...  I'm not a very social person by nature, but the feeling of being locked out in the cold is inescapable.  It's Christmas Eve night, 2008, and we're going out for a midnight walk through our small village of Herbignac.  Around

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-6247201331622111072011-12-01T16:53:00.001-05:002011-12-01T16:58:41.228-05:00

I recently did a repair job on one of our Ligne Bretagne tenons, replacing one that the owner had melted with a new one, and I thought it might be worth photographing to show the process involved in even such a simple repair as a tenon replacement.  This is an excellent explanation for why $50 factory pipes aren't worth the labor costs to repair, not compared to the replacement cost, unless

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-83668808137443517582011-11-17T23:28:00.001-05:002011-11-18T21:13:11.363-05:00

Yep, that's a movie poster, but have no fear, you haven't accidentally wandered into our "other" blog, Kentucky Fried Popcorn - Instead, it's a reference to what I want to write about today, which is not pipes but the pipe community and our community of fellow humans in general.  I was thinking about this after spending some time writing a long letter to our French friend Claudie, trying to sum

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-40978514907660145062011-11-03T17:26:00.000-04:002011-11-03T17:26:02.546-04:00

The pic to the left is an oldie from the year 2000, the last year that we made a Talbert Yule pipe.  After the move to France, we just found ourselves with too much to do to tackle the complexity of a full-scale handmade Talbert Yule pipe, though we did do a Ligne Bretagne Yule series for two years before quitting the Christmas season pipes altogether.  It was a pain in the ass coming on the

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-7581811061758949702011-10-20T17:23:00.000-04:002011-10-20T17:23:42.785-04:00

Today's photo is a quick snap of what's on the workbench at the moment.  Today's topic is one that's come up often, that every pipemaker has to deal with eventually - How to deal with the pipe beggars.   They're out there!  These are the folks who come up with some of the most original, twisted, and occasionally downright ludicrous reasons to try and talk you into sending them a free pipe,

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-26860143444129440822011-10-12T22:18:00.002-04:002011-10-12T22:18:54.696-04:00

Here's a useful trick to know.  I found myself in the annoying position of having to change the grade of a pipe yesterday.  This is not something that I have ever done before, but I felt it was warranted.  There have been a number of times in the past when I've looked at something and thought, "You know, I really could have marked that a grade higher."  This time, however, it was something I

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-74992133384266678062011-09-22T20:49:00.000-04:002011-09-22T20:49:02.760-04:00

I've posted about this pipe on G+ and Facebook recently, but thought it was worth a proper blog posting because it is a finish that raises a variety of issues.  This is a pipe finish that I've been working on for a while, which I've informally been referring to as bleached bone - It isn't a stain, but rather a leeching of color from the outer wood to leave it as pale as possible.  It's a

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-47193899401086356282011-09-11T20:52:00.000-04:002011-09-11T22:47:37.025-04:00

It seems like there's been a round of late-summer flamewars on various pipe forums over the usual suspects.  I don't know what it is about these topics that makes it impossible to ever have a rational public discussion about them, but in my 18+ years in online pipe forums, I can't recall any conversations about these things that ever didn't degenerate into arguments and name-calling.  And while

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-29028755086942410752011-09-01T21:48:00.000-04:002011-09-01T21:49:03.006-04:00

Back in October of last year, I wrote a blog piece about the new subsection of the smoking hobby, the increasing popularity of e-cigs.  To recap, a typical e-cig is something roughly like the diagram to the left - A battery, an atomizer, and some sort of cartridge to hold the flavored liquids that replace tobacco as the "smoke".  There are a thousand varieties of these devices now, and all

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-27072783347517087552011-08-20T22:45:00.000-04:002011-08-20T22:45:15.752-04:00

For several days now, I've had in my To-Do list the nagging, unchecked reminder that the Pipe Blog is due for a new article (Yes, I now have reminders scheduled into my To Dos, to be sure that the blog is updated regularly and avoid those 6 month long desert periods when I used to forget it existed).  But I've been stumped for a subject.  When a blog about pipes has run for as many years as this

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-30143008447978715022011-08-01T22:15:00.001-04:002011-08-01T22:15:47.613-04:00

Here's a bit of news - Our local pipes & tobaccos & beer & cigars & wine shop now has their website open and stocked with available pipes.  They even have one of mine, a Talbert ring grain sandblasted freehand from 2007, probably our best year in France (It was a bit odd to see our old "Faite en Bretagne" stamp on one again).  Sharp-eyed folks may notice I've included their logo and a link to

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-87489985656751616712011-07-21T17:17:00.000-04:002011-07-21T17:17:14.970-04:00

Ten years ago, before we moved to France, I made this silver-banded morta pipe.  It was during the year prior to our move, when we were working out the detail of the workshop purchase.  I asked for some scrap morta to be mailed over, so that I could spend some advance time working with it to see what it was like.  One of the chunks was this piece, a fairly large block by morta standards, though

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-85852667413532477902011-07-18T22:32:00.001-04:002011-07-18T22:33:58.201-04:00

I'm currently in the process of working through the last of our larger-sized blocks of Breton morta.  I've got plenty of small blocks, but they're good for thimble-size bowls only - The last of the bigger bowls will be turning into pipes through the rest of this summer, most likely (And I should add, I'm not taking any orders for any of these - I'm just going to play with them and make the best

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-3234115617487529882011-06-17T17:23:00.000-04:002011-06-17T17:23:12.360-04:00

I've just finished up this Morta Calabash project I've been working on all week.  After that last, very avant-garde calabash design, I wanted to do something in a more classical shape, and also something that was a bit more practical - More compact, more portable, and just plain more rugged.  I've gotten a great deal of enjoyment out of my own little sandblasted meerschaum over the years, but I

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-66844156203369090362011-06-07T18:08:00.000-04:002011-06-07T18:08:09.295-04:00

I've just finished up one longstanding project, to turn all my old pre-drilled blocks that I've accumulated over the years into pipes - I first posted on this subject in blog entry Variations, and in the pic to the left you can see the very last pipe made from those old blocks, a rusticated Ligne Bretagne Collector with a horn shank ring (It isn't on the website yet, but will get posted with the

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-17321655415975163002011-06-02T15:49:00.000-04:002011-06-02T15:49:23.615-04:00

Once upon a time, I came very close to designing and writing a pipe shop comic strip for this blog.  Coming up with subjects to write about time after time, for the (Good lord) 9 years that this blog has been going, can get to be a hell of a challenge - Most of the article topics I think of, I've either already done or Neil Roan has done better.  But a few years back, I wrote a post called "The

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-74916936489935485042011-05-23T17:27:00.008-04:002011-05-23T17:47:36.901-04:00

So, today I sit myself down to write the last part of my article series on this pipe.  Please pardon me if I ramble a bit, as I was up late last night for our regular Sunday night "Twitter and a Movie", a recurring internet get-together where various friends and I all queue up a streaming Netflix movie to watch and comment on (Last night we managed to survive 1960's Dinosaurus!, a stop-motion

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-89256854260591063232011-05-16T15:35:00.003-04:002011-05-16T15:42:15.048-04:00

Here is the continuation from the first part of this story.  To recap, I've been thinking about an expansion chamber design that would be a modern, more exotic variation on the traditional calabash.  My last post brought me up to the stage of designing an African meerschaum insert for the lower body of the pipe, which was made from aged Holly.  The meerschaum insert separates the smoke from the

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-83356532129026677442011-05-05T13:57:00.002-04:002011-05-05T14:01:07.168-04:00

I posted this sketch page recently to our Twitter feed, and after a bit of work on this project, I thought it had the makings of an interesting blog post.  The story begins with the various doodles at left.  Of the lot, my favorite was the top one, but it does have the minor problem of not having any sort of airhole connection to the stem, so I knew it was going to be a project requiring some

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-59567640163826897452011-04-19T20:14:00.000-04:002011-04-19T20:14:50.536-04:00

I sit down to write today both jubilant and a little exhausted - Tax season is finally over, and the tax nightmare that was our move from France to the USA is now finished.  Nothing like doing two years of taxes at once AND having to figure out which moving expenses count as deductions and how to handle losses across an international line. I've got two bits of news regarding Ligne Bretagne pipes

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-36635363027821439652011-04-07T22:56:00.001-04:002011-04-18T21:56:29.668-04:00

I've just posted three new Ligne Bretagne Collectors to the LB catalog.  LB Collectors are, to quote from our website: Every so often, I produce handmade pipes for the Talbert Pipes line which, for one reason or another, don't meet my standards to become a genuine Talbert. These are typically pipes with some minor cosmetic flaw of some sort, nothing that would impact their function or

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-42900161894839183312011-03-25T16:53:00.001-04:002011-04-18T22:01:08.263-04:00

Wow.  Well, as I've posted elsewhere, this turned out to be a huge success, far beyond my initial expectations.  I thought we might make a few hundred for donations, but never expected we'd top two thousand!  It was a really gratifying experience, and I was happy to see so many people among the pipe (and non-pipe) community rallying together to donate to a good cause.  With it all finished, the

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-16194860706374755692011-03-15T19:01:00.001-04:002011-04-18T22:01:46.490-04:00

I write today with news regarding our Ligne Bretagne pipe brand.  I regret to inform of this change, but we will no longer be able to accept any special requests or commissions for Ligne Bretagne pipes.  Back when we started the brand, we operated under this "No Orders" rule for seven years, but I though I would try taking some orders after we re-opened our business in the USA.  Alas, it just

Trever Talberthttps://profiles.google.com/100349385696759889390noreply@blogger.com1