Age: 60
Location: North Idaho
Years a pipe smoker: 1
How you got into pipe making: Well, now that's a good question!
I started smoking pipes because I had my grandfathers old pipe which was given to me by my mother many years ago. It had been sitting in a box with some collectables waiting for the day I decided to take up the pipe.
That old pipe is a very nice BBB "London Dry" Rhodesian vintage 1930's. It was in need of a little TLC and I decided to send it off to Scott and Jessie at Blue Room Briars for a restoration. I also bought a few estate pipes from Scott. That was the beginning of it all.
I ended up getting some more pipes from various places and began to notice lots of little flaws in the crafting of the various pipes. Being a stickler for doing things right, I set out to see what it takes to make things right vs. what I was seeing.
I've also been into woodworking and generally tinkering for many years and have a very well equipped shop that is primarily a wood shop.
One thing led to another and I am now embarking on career in pipe making! I have been getting myself setup to build pipes as a full time endeavor. I am retired from an aviation career so I have a financial cushion in the form of a pension, but it is an amount that is not quite keeping up with the outflows. I have over the years made a number of things from my shop that I have sold, but shipping has always been an issue as those items were more in the category of furniture. Pipes offer a tremendous creative outlet as well as being very easy to ship to the customer, so this will be perfect for me!
I look forward to reading as many posts here as I can as I grow my knowledge base and perfect my technique.
I fortunately have a little background in photography and web design as well which will come in handy as I build a web presence.
So that's me in a nutshell, as far as this topic goes
.Other interesting facts: I really liked the idea of the long belt sanders in use by most of the European pipe crafters, so I built myself one!
