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Thanks, Trever, for kicking me on the butt :shock: :lol: I've previously done some rough calculations on time spent per pipe, but really need to get organised and take accurate readings of the different steps. Although I'm not fulltime, I still have to make money on every pipe. Without any idea on ...

You can't hand drill with a spade bit. At least, not that I know of, unless there is some magic juju involved, because a spade will just dig into the chamber sides and yank out of your hand, most likely. I'm confused by this talk about lathes being too fast, though, because both my wood lathe and my...

I tweeted the arrival of mine today.

https://twitter.com/TalbertPipes/status ... 1983473664

Going to try them out tomorrow as soon as I get this current site update posted.

The way to make people want to smoke your pipes is to develop a reputation for excellence in your work. This means excellence all around, not just the smokablity of your pipes. This takes a lot of hard work and several years to accomplish, and there are no short cuts. You just have to keep at it. R...

Since I'm in a rare mode of posting helpful stuff, here is something else - A comicbook-style step-by-step photo pictorial of how we built one of our buffing stations. I've been using this fulltime for three years now and it works great. http://talbertpipes.blogspot.com/2009/09/building-buffing-sta...

That was my original thought. But it seemed 10 buffs for each compound was too many! Then I realized some were actually disks. You keep refering to "we" , how many people work in your shop? Just my wife and myself. However, I have found that we must keep at least 3 copies of everything to...

Pretty interesting. I almost enjoy looking At people's shops more than their pipes. What do you use the other 38 buffing wheels for? I swap them in and out depending on the specific need (Big and wide, soft, fluffy, firm, compound type, etc). Hell, I've got five different wheels just dedicated to b...

Ahh, I found it - a photo tour of our workshop. For those who are interested in such stuff.

http://talbertpipes.blogspot.com/2009/1 ... ng-up.html

Since I'm in a rare mode of posting helpful stuff, here is something else - A comicbook-style step-by-step photo pictorial of how we built one of our buffing stations. I've been using this fulltime for three years now and it works great. http://talbertpipes.blogspot.com/2009/09/building-buffing-stat...

It's funny, because I'm currently trying to apply these same systems to the web comic I am writing & drawing. It seems like it takes me forever, so I've started time-comparing the working times of all-digital, half-digital, and hand-drawn with digital compositing. I'm hoping I can figure out whi...

Sasquatch wrote:Trever, it sounds like you get more than your fair share of total fuckin' retard customers. Now, as a service to the rest of us, I say "Good man." but really, it strikes me as kind of odd.

I've been doing this fulltime for 15 years. Just be patient. The stories accumulate.

One attitude you will sometimes run into among buyers is the, "Well, you sell these at wholesale so you're clearly overpricing them for direct sales - I'll pay you half that price." Completely missing the fact that photographing the pipes, assembling and tweaking the pics, putting the web ...

Don't look at me, man, I'm very nearly a socialist according to the definitions of some really stupid people. On the plus side, stressing how boring the article is will keep new pipemakers from reading it, so they will be that much more likely to end up living in the streets giving handjobs for crac...

Hey, I wrote this incredibly boring pipe blog post for anyone getting into pipemaking as a business. There are no pretty pictures (Well, there's one at the end) and it's all about time costing and money. It's horrifically boring. But it might help save your business someday. Read it if you don't wan...

Casting entails taking wads of your cash and burning it, both in the form of initial failed experiments and in the end cost of the useable stock you will eventually produce. That said, I love doing it and have enjoyed making some custom cast rod for my own pipes, because it's nice to have colors an...

I'm just curious as to which side comicbook Trever was on during Secret Wars.... I was too old for comics by then, alas. Though I did bobble back in as the medium grew up a bit. Currently rereading Dave McKean's "Cages" at the moment, as it happens. It's good practice for the web comic id...

Cool, thanks Trever! I think there was a discussion about this some time ago where you described the procedure; it's nice to have a pictorial guide. I also enjoyed comicbook Trever guiding us through the process. Now that I have the handy templates in Photoshop, comicbook Trever wil probably be mak...

If I'd have had to rely on old school sales methods - local B+Ms or supply contracts with larger vendors.... hell I wouldn't have ever got off the ground. True story - Back in the 90's, when I thought I'd try my hand at selling a pipe or two, I took my first three sellable ones to a local B&M a...

FWIW, I posted an article on our pipe blog covering my impressions of the usefulness of the various social networks for marketing, from the specific perspective of an artisan pipe shop: http://talbertpipes.blogspot.com/2012/02/social-networks-exploration.html Basically it's an overview of Facebook, ...

I just posted a photo-essay on our blog about how to make a stem with an airhole that does NOT sit at the center of the tenon bottom, for whoever might be interested. I developed this trick some years back to handle pipe shapes where the angles were such that it was literally impossible to make the ...