I didn’t post anything since january, and being honest, I have been so busy but not on pipes. Being father of a cute baby is a tough job 🙂

During the last months I have been learning how to make my own mouthpieces from rods. The pipe makers Dirk Claessen and Rafa Martin have been helping me a lot with this and other aspects of pipe making. I think I will be in debt with them for a long time for sure! Some pictures from when I visited them some months ago:

Rafa Martín:

Dirk Claessen:

So I have many pipes in progress right now and also more mouthpieces unfinished (some of them ruined, I must admit). But during these months I kept working and learning.

I finished my 18 pipe so I’m kind of adult right now 🙂 Also, it has been one year since I started learning how to make pipes and now I can make a complete pipe without using premade parts.

When people asked me about buying one of my pipes I always said that they were not good enough yet to sell and also I was not comfortable about selling them before making my own mouthpieces.

There’s still a lot to learn and to improve. I still think that my pipes are not as good as I would like, but I think I crossed the line and I can announce it:

My pipes are for sale from now.

I will post the two ready for sale in the next two posts.

I finished my first rhodesian shape. It’s my 16th pipe.

I want to keep for myself for two reasons. First one, to test the chamber. I want to be sure that the bottom of the chamber is not too thin and the best way to do it is… smoking it several times. Do it yourself! 🙂

The second reason is an horrible hole in the shank. It’s only aestethical, but still is a defect of the pipe. I really need to buy sandblasting equipment. Any advice about wich compressor should I buy would be very welcome.

This pipe has a very small chamber. I wanted a light pipe for some moments that I just want to smoke a short time. Most of my pipes have big capacity.

Hope you like it. I enjoyed doing it a lot and I didn’t have any rhodesian in my collection as smoker so I’m happy with it.

This is the part of imperfections in the shank. Pity. 

Joan is smoking today: Dirk Claessen + Esoterica Tobacciana Penzance.

Better photos of this reloaded old horn I did from a predrilled kit.

The story of this pipe:

It was my fifth pipe, two months ago and I didn’t had a driller and drills to do a pipe from 0 at that time.

It was an exercise to me, because the kit was oriented to do a long straight pipe, like a canadian, but the beautiful grain was claiming for a horn. I did my best to do it possible.

Tired of this kind of situations, I bought a vertical driller the next day after finishing it and I never used kits again.

A member of a pipe forum asked to me to buy this pipe. Then I decided to change the stem and do a new one. I also sanded and stained the pipe again.

The previous version of the pipe was looking like this:

Joan is smoking today Chacom Sport + Dunhill A21000

My wife and her mother have been working hard to design and sew some bags for the pipes I make.

They are made from rough burlap but in the inside, there’s an inner layer of soft cotton fabric that caress the pipe. There’s a small tab with a catalan flag, because my pipes are very proud of where they come from. Maybe we do some changes on the design, but this is more or less how they will look:

 

The photo shows three pipes almost ready for delivering. Only the mark with the logo is missing. I oredered the tool to mark them, but it didn’t arrived yet. Hope it will arrive soon.

The apple nosewarmer will travel to Malta, the billiard will travel to Barcelona and the egg will be smoked in Bolivia.

Joan is smoking this night: Chacom Sport + Cornell & Diehl Mississippi Mud

This is my 15th pipe and 3 months since I made my first pipe. It is a magic number.

I made a pipe for myself. Usually I don’t keep for me the pipes I make. I only kept one of them.

Now I decided to do a small and very light pipe with low capacity for smoking it when i just want to smoke short time or I want to try more than one tobacco. So there’s no needing for a high capacity pipe.

I stained it to resemble a fire to play with the broken/burnt looking top.

Hope you like it. Comments and advices are very welcome.

Size: 12cm x 4,5 cm. 11mm shank diameter. 16gr.

Joan is smoking today Tsuge Kaga + Nat Sherman 314 City Island Dawn.

 

The billiard is finished. Hope the owner will be happy with it.

I need to start thinking in some sandblasting equipment.

Let’s see if this is not the last pipe of the year! 🙂

Joan is smoking: Tsuge Kaga + Escudo.