tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-176533832026-04-05T02:53:30.185-04:00A Blog devoted to news of the Talbert Pipes workshop, our pipes, and the craft of pipemakingTreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.comBlogger372125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-61382231044520463052019-01-30T18:07:00.000-05:002019-01-30T18:07:35.901-05:00

Another trip down memory lane with another 1998 pipe donation needing some work.  This pipe, which I informally dubbed the Marlowe after a certain PI, was one of the most difficult things I'd tried at the time, though looking at it now it's a terribly clunky thing - To my credit, or excuse, it was my first attempt at a "classical" shape and done without a lathe.  This is a crucial

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-57260874507066442462019-01-30T00:03:00.000-05:002019-01-30T00:03:17.309-05:00

The Saruman Let's roll back to 1998.  We all accessed the net with dial-up modems and most online pipe chat happened in Alt.Smokers.Pipes and on IRC.  The Lord of the Rings movies hadn't come out yet, and there was no advance publicity about them.  LOTR was still simply this quiet, understatedly amazing fantasy series known mainly to voracious readers and fans of fantasy

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-77034162830410660442018-10-08T16:43:00.001-04:002018-10-08T16:43:54.770-04:00

Very recently, I've gotten my hands on a small treasure trove of my older work which I'll be cleaning up and selling in order to raise funds to help pay for my wife's cancer surgery.  It's been a fascinating trip down memory lane, particularly in regard to the oldest pipes of the bunch (I've got the first two pipes here that I ever sold!).  A few of these are even unsmoked after all

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-87319366726970289992018-06-11T22:16:00.005-04:002018-06-11T22:16:58.818-04:00

I realize the site has been inactive for quite a while.  This is about to change.  As most of our visitors and friends know, Emily and I have been distracted this past year via an ongoing family health crisis.  I may write more on that later, but the news of the moment is that the Lizards are back. Yes, back in action, with their own dedicated photography stage too.  Even

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-11896547974440042412018-01-10T18:02:00.001-05:002018-01-10T18:03:17.223-05:00

The Ligne Bretagne Collector grows up When you're running a business year after year, it's funny how the seeds you plant grow lives of their own, over time. When I first created Ligne Bretagne, I envisioned a solid pipe with a lot of "indie" artisan style for the price of a good factory-made pipe. Over time, I began gradually putting more and more work into each Ligne Bretagne until they

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-71356054875690344212017-03-01T18:33:00.000-05:002017-03-01T18:33:55.141-05:00

Back when we were readying to leave Brittany to return to the US, we had to choose what we brought and what we left behind.  We brought all of our morta stock, all of our briar stock, and roughly 20,000 rough-turned Ligne Bretagne stummels in medium and larger sizes.  What we left behind, however, were entire crates of tiny stummels... Group 1-sized billiards and others. I opted to

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-35822687008499459542016-09-17T17:15:00.003-04:002016-09-17T22:33:07.665-04:00

It's that time of year again!   Although, in our case, a rather challenging time of year...  Our Halloween pipe production has waxed and waned over the years depending on the circumstances of the moment - It's not always possible to set aside the long stretches of working time needed to make elaborate Talbert Halloween Pipes.  This year has been exceptionally difficult.&

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-15038055654498404812016-08-05T23:41:00.000-04:002016-08-05T23:42:30.503-04:00

Big news! We're doing something new with Ligne Bretagne.  For the 14 years they've been in production, we've been plagued with one consistent issue - Lack of stock.  We post them, they sell out, and casual website visitors then write me to complain that all the pipes are always sold.  I don't blame them, I would not want to have to watch a site like a madperson 24/7 to

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-18014115049514503792016-07-31T21:24:00.000-04:002016-07-31T21:24:07.268-04:00

I thought I might talk about the rules that individual pipemakers work by, in terms of form vs function.  I've seen a lot of beautifully sculptural pipe shapes in the past few years, and I love the looks of them and admire their originality and would make similar work myself, except... I always remind myself at the start of the workday that I am, ultimately, making a functional object, not a

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-47584697953337539192016-04-06T23:35:00.000-04:002016-04-06T23:35:23.214-04:00

And how is that for an imposing and pretentious-sounding article title?  It isn't quite as esoteric as it might sound, though - Really, all I've been doing is gradually, over the years, assembling a visual "alphabet" per se, of the lines and curves and forms that I love in pipe design.  One can find pipe shape charts everywhere, but what I am after is more elemental, more of a

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-28839947857418937352016-03-26T23:57:00.000-04:002016-03-26T23:57:17.980-04:00

A while back, I accidentally dropped one of my favorite pipes on our hardwood floor.  This is not a thing that I normally do, and I was annoyed with myself.  Further, the stem snapped neatly off, with the tenon breaking in the middle.  It left me with half a tenon stuck down at the bottom of the mortise. Here's a little extraction trick, possible when your pipe's shank is thick

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-51944291874078701502016-01-28T17:28:00.000-05:002016-01-28T17:31:50.213-05:00

This is going to be a long post, but I'll try to keep the words to a minimum and let the photos do most of the talking.  Basically, this is how I make a freehand, and when I say "freehand", I mean a pipe with no advance planning as far as style goes.  The internal drilling is carefully plotted and it has a straight airhole connecting to a centered bowl chamber bottom, but as far as the

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-46366011262925864742016-01-06T20:52:00.003-05:002016-01-06T20:54:40.981-05:00

Whoah.  I just discovered to my surprise that I haven't written a pipe blog article since February of 2015, when I introduced the Morta Collectors.  I haven't exactly been active with this blog for a few years now, but that's quite a gap between posting, even for me.  By way of explanation, I'll just say that our year of 2015 went downhill sharply after that last post... My

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-41822407667258342752015-02-04T22:10:00.000-05:002015-02-04T22:10:53.244-05:00

Two blog posts in two weeks!  Will wonders never cease...  But I had two things worth saying, a rare event in itself.  I'm back this time to introduce (or re-introduce) the Ligne Bretagne Morta Collector: I had a great time working on all those Ligne Bretagne Dukes and Dons recently.  It's a fun shape, very elegant and stylish, and offering a lot of creative freedom in

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-30828538094966270982015-01-31T17:34:00.000-05:002015-01-31T17:35:30.808-05:00

It's possible this may be too technical (AKA "boring") to write on, but what the hell... I thought I would make a quick post on the process behind the creation of the new Ligne Bretagne Duke & Don shapes.  I've been wanting to do something like this for some time now, as a wholly alternate shape style for the Ligne Bretagnes.  When you're working with partially pre-fraized stummels,

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-64410156738334455562014-10-09T23:08:00.001-04:002014-10-09T23:11:07.715-04:00

Social Marketing.  It's a buzzword (Buzzphrase?) that everyone talks about, who sells online.  It can also be one of the most fucking annoying things ever, when people do it poorly.  I have been effectively doing social marketing online for my own business successfully now for 16 years, and what I write here is drawn from that.  I do not claim to be an expert, and I have no

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-8941036705229970812014-08-14T19:37:00.000-04:002014-08-14T19:37:51.369-04:00

Well, I made two more of my "kaiju and pipes" web comics, so that makes four now.  And they're still fun, so I guess that means this is a hobby now, too.  In recognition of that, I went and created a dedicated site for the strip on a web comics site, where it can enjoy the conveniences of a built-in framework tailor-made for comics with archives, chaptering, "Next/Previous/First" links,

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-45731282324328226362014-07-20T00:44:00.000-04:002014-07-20T00:44:21.828-04:00

I had so much fun doing the first one that clearly I should do more.  It's kind of cathartic, really.  Thankfully most customers are not like Baragon, but when you encounter one, they always make an impression...

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-24008280005344021112014-07-17T17:27:00.000-04:002014-07-17T17:27:11.354-04:00

OK, I had a little time to kill and was feeling quite silly...

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-89364375750068195942013-11-05T16:40:00.000-05:002013-11-05T16:45:32.667-05:00

I got a new pipe for myself! (This is probably rarer for makers than collectors, LOL...) I'd been meaning to make myself a new one for a long time, and with the Christmas season coming up I decided to make myself a personal Christmas pipe, drilled to fit Savinelli 7mm balsa filters to mellow out some of the aromatic tobacs I end up smoking during the holidays to pacify the family at gatherings.

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-79078294845789349642013-10-20T21:58:00.000-04:002013-10-20T22:05:32.001-04:00

Making one-of-a-kind pipes is not like designing repeatable shapes, where the design time is spread over many iterations and paid back piecemeal.  With a one-of-a-kind, the design cost is a direct part of the total cost, and sometimes it can be a large chunk of the total creation time.  I thought it might be interesting to write a post chronicling my entire experience of designing the

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-28632876362797855092013-10-12T21:31:00.002-04:002013-10-12T21:35:46.181-04:00

Here's a little pop psychology help - Some thoughts on motivation and mood, if you will.  It's October here, and that means it's time to make Talbert Halloween Pipes.  This is a high stress, high concentration task that requires a lot of focus and confidence and a good clear pipeline to the creative part of the brain.  I've done creative work for long enough that I can usually

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-68413066633854426342013-04-25T17:27:00.000-04:002013-04-25T17:27:36.879-04:00

Keyboard wars!  Yes, I know this has nothing to do with pipes, but one of the reasons I haven't been updating the pipe blog as much in recent times is because I've written just about everything I can think of to write.  I try to avoid rambling on about the same things over and over again so as a result, the blog has gotten quieter.  However, this may not last, as I'm

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-88328066575468252212013-04-01T15:12:00.001-04:002013-04-01T15:12:40.117-04:00

I do a lot of very varied work in pipes - It helps keep me sane and enthused about what I'm doing, which can get a bit repetitive when you've been doing it this many years.  The divergent ways that I will approach a project are as fundamentally different as the projects themselves, and I thought I'd write a little on the subject.  For starters, the first question I ask myself is, "Is

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17653383.post-17928855178769611952013-01-16T23:04:00.001-05:002013-01-16T23:04:28.939-05:00

I thought I'd try something different - A little slice of first person life here... In the workshop, I read over the year old commission order again.  “A smooth green billiard, canted exactly 3 degrees forward, with a shank no longer than 2””  I sigh, leaning back in the chair and staring at the block I’ve picked out.  It’s a beautiful piece, a tall slice of plateau

TreverThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652943318376670283noreply@blogger.com4