It was rattling around in back of my mind for months. An impending problem would certainly arise. I could see it, the aftermath, the damage. But the problem itself refused to yield. Well, that is not quite fair. It yielded perfectly to the pedestrian rubber band...
It is Christmas eve 2024, a snowy cold day here in south eastern Pennsylvania. I’m sitting in a comfortable chair with a pipeful of Germain’s Plum Cake Mixture (it is at least 10 years old and tastes like Christmas in…
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…
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…
It is a summer afternoon in the late 70s. I’m kneeling on the wooden floor of an attic helping my grandfather extend the plywood floor across more of the ceiling joists in order to gain some additional storage space. We…
It’s the morning of Christmas Eve 2018, and as I sit down to enjoy a bowl of Haunted Bookshop with some fresh brewed coffee, it occurs to me that it has been too long since I wrote anything for you.…
In my last post, I laid out the challenge of testing a set of 4 different filters in my new Savinelli 311 KS. I first smoked the pipe for several weeks using the Savinelli adapter that basically replaces the filter…
My first pipe was a Dr Grabow which took 6 mm paper filters. After the first box (I think it came with the pipe) I never bought another filter. Initially this was simply a matter of convenience. I could not…
In the novel “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” the late Robert M. Pirsig writes about the protagonist experiencing a string of bad results from a motorcycle repair shop that caused more damage than was originally evident. He noticed…
I had someone ask me about a particular product being sold to aid in pipe restoration. I won’t mention the actual product here because I have never used it. But I suspect that it is a type of microcrystalline wax.…