In woodworking, the chisel edge is the most fundamental of sharp edges. Planes are just chisels held in a jig, and saws are just long rows of tiny chisels. So understanding chisels is fairly important. I own a lot of chisels, and have spent the better part of 20 years obsessing over what type of … Continue reading Are Cheap Chisels Worth the Effort?
It is the morning of Christmas eve 2023 and I am in my workshop-cum-office enjoying a warm cup of coffee and Haunted bookshop in my Boswell Bing’s Favorite. It is a cool 41 degrees F and the outside world is still wet from some rain that passed through late last night. Hardly an idyllic Christmas … Continue reading Happy Holidays 2023
I had been wanting a French wheel for my shop for sometime, and just never got around to either making or buying one. The concept is simple, a slightly (more or less) domed sanding disk with padding that allows the sanding of complex shapes. I’ve seen mention of these tools on pipe making forms and … Continue reading Making a Set of French Wheels
Christmas eve 2022. I normally try to write this annual post in the morning when the day is new and bursting with possibility. But today got off to a very slow start (more on that later). I’m enjoying a bowl of haunted bookshop in a Briar Spirit bent dublin, and a DuClaw brewing company Sweet … Continue reading Happy Holidays 2022
It is the morning of Christmas Eve 2021, and I am sitting in my basement-cum-office with a hot cup of black coffee and a bowl of Haunted bookshop in my Savinelli 622. I re-stemmed this pipe, and it is actually the only one of my stems that I own (but more on that later). As … Continue reading Happy Holidays 2021
I had a challenging repair come through the shop that I thought might be worth documenting and possibly would be of some interest. The pipe is an Orlik Calabash and the cap and shank extension on the pipe appear to be ceramic, although it could be highly polished meerschaum. I’m far from an expert on … Continue reading Un-Snapping a Shank on an Orlik Calabash
It is the morning of Christmas Eve 2020, and once again there is hot coffee, a pipe, and time for shared reflections. This year I am smoking some vintage (2005) #10 Downing Street in my Briar Spirit bent Dublin (at least I call it a bent Dublin). I’m finding that aged Latakia takes me back … Continue reading Happy Holidays 2020
Well, I am not doing a great job keeping this blog up to date. We have had all the same struggles that the rest of the world has experienced during this lovely year, and it has left little time for reflection. And that is what this blog is really all about for me. Reflection on … Continue reading Banding a Cracked Shank
It is early in the morning of Christmas Eve 2019, my favorite time of day. The quiet is conducive to thought, and to work. As I set down to work on writing this, my third holiday greetings blog post, I realized that I had not done very much blog writing this year, and thought it … Continue reading Happy Holidays 2019
A retort is a fairly simple device used to clean and sanitize the interior of a briar pipe. Most pipe smokers are familiar with the concept. Some sort of glass container is used to boil alcohol and a tube transfers the hot vapor to the interior of the pipe via the stem. There are a … Continue reading Rethinking the Retort
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