Totally Rad- Part II

Now that the Chicago Show is behind us what follows is part II of my interview with pipe maker Rad Davis.  This time I varied things a little with a number of different questions.  Remember, your follow-up questions are welcome and can be submitted through comments below or via email at mingkahuna@aol.com.  

ME: Rad, I heard you had a fantastic Chicago show.  That’s no surprise to anyone. Heaven knows that I could have sold five times over those two blast Chicago pipes that I posted with the last blog piece, Part I of this interview!  I know that many of us use the Chicago show as a time to take a good look around and plan for the following year. Is that true with you?

RAD: Not necessarily.  If there is a lot of buzz about some fantastic new shape, then of course, I’ll try to get a look at it to see what all the fuss is about, but it will usually turn out to be something beyond what I am able to do at the time.  As far as taking a good look around, the few spare moments that I do have away from my table give me very little time to take much of anything in, and I’m usually socializing more than looking anyway, even though I’m really trying to look.  I don’t really plan for anything as far as what I’ll be doing for the next year other than I know I’m going to be making pipes.

ME:  What kinds of directions or goals have you set for yourself that you’d be willing to discuss? 

RAD: As far as shapes go, I have no direction other than making what I like to make and trying new shapes as the inspiration hits me.  My goal is to always improve my work.  I’m always working on sharper definition at the bowl/shank join and fit and finish and refining shapes.  I think the biggest improvement over the last year for me has been the fit between shank and stem.  After making over 1,000 pipes, I have finally gotten it where it’s almost seamless.  It still could get better, though.  Another thing is I have gotten much better at getting the drilling where I want it very consistently with the smoke hole dead center and on the bottom.  I still get it a bit off to the side sometimes when drilling a long shank, but for the most part, I have been able to get the drilling dead on.  At a certain point in pipemaking, improvements become all about small details, and those small details can really make a difference in how a pipe looks and feels in the hand and mouth.  I learn something with almost every pipe I make.

ME:  What really caught your eye at the show and what new directions or trends, if any, do you see?

RAD: As I said, I don’t really have a lot of time to scope out the show.  I man my table by myself, and any time away from it is short.  As far as trends go, I don’t really pay much attention.

ME: For a typical day that you will be working in the shop, share with us, in as much detail as you are willing and able, a day in the life of pipe maker Rad Davis.

RAD: I’m usually in the shop by 9 AM Monday thru Friday, and I work until 5pm. If I have a custom order, I’ll work on that.  If not, I’ll look for a block with nice grain and sit down and decide what I want to do with it.  I’ll draw a shape on the block, cut it out on the bandsaw, drill it, and cut a piece of rod for the stem.  I drill the rod, cut a tenon to fit it to the pipe and start shaping away.  I try to get a pipe finished before lunch, but this doesn’t always happen.  After lunch, I’m back at it again to try and get a second pipe made, but this doesn’t always happen either.  I average about 1 1/2 pipes per day.  I absolutely love making pipes.  It’s fun, challenging, there’s always something new to try, and I feel very fortunate to be able to make a living doing it.  There’s nothing better than being able to make a living at doing something you love to do.  It’s like you’re not really “working” at all.

(Be sure to check back  here for Part III!)

  

Totally Rad (Part I of IV)

(two Rad Davis pipes headed to Chicago.  Look at that blast!)

If the name Rad Davis means nothing to you chances are you haven’t spent much time around the artisan pipe world in the past two years.  To date, the quick rise of Rad Davis in the world of pipes is pretty much unprecedented.

I have to say that it was really a unique experience watching Rad progress from his earliest days under the tutelage of Mark Tinsky.  His earliest work showed a certain flare that suggested good things to come.  With every new batch of pipes there were key improvements that were exactly what I was thinking needed to be done.  I would think to myself something like “Okay, now he needs to inset the tenons” and “bing”, it was there with the next batch.  With every group of pipes Rad kicked it up a notch adding features like handcut stems,  flush mounted stems, Cumberland, and all sorts of features typically only associated with pipes with much higher price tags.  As this was going on there were many of us cheering at these advancements amazed at how he knew exactly what needed to be done and could do them so well so quickly.   At the same time Rad was working with shapes, many with a pronounced Danish flare, and came upon what I consider to be his signature shape, the wide squash tomato, a shape that I think of as a “Rajah.”  Rad hasn’t been afraid to experiment with shapes and his efforts have really paid off.  His work is identifiably his own, from across the room as we like to say.

Not only has Rad excelled as a man of shapes, but he has done so much with finishes and stem materials.  His blasts are simply incredible, a skill that he picked up seemingly overnight.  There’s nothing quite like one of his blonde blasts with a Cumberland stem, often the green variety.  Being an admitted
Cumberland freak his common use of this stem material only makes his pipes more desirable to me.  Rad’s pipes continue to be one of the very best values in the artisan pipe world today.  I love his work.

I could go on and on about this kind man and his fine work, but the idea behind this piece is to let Rad do the talking.  This will be a four part interview consisting of four questions and follow-ups.  You are also welcome to submit a follow-up for Rad, but I will submit the question to Rad before posting it.  Any reader follow-ups for part one will have to wait to be answered until Rad gets back from the Chicago show.

So, let the interview begin!

Me:  What did you bring to pipe making that has shaped, or otherwise defined the kind of pipe maker that you are and the pipes that you make?

Rad: I don’t know that I brought anything *with* me to pipe making, since I had no idea that I would be a pipe maker, and I didn’t become one on purpose.  In the summer of 2003, I watched Mark make a pipe for me in his shop, and thought the process looked very cool, so I told him I”d like to try making one sometime.  He said he had some kits that he couldn’t sell for one reason or another (flaws in the bowl, etc.) and that I was welcome to play with them.  I did and was immediately hooked on the whole process.  I think I made close to 3 dozen pipes that summer in Mark’s shop when I had days off from guiding fly fishermen.  When they actually started to sell on line at $50-100 each, it was the beginning of the end for me.  I couldn’t believe that I could do this and actually make money at it. If anything defines the kind of pipe maker I am it is that I think about making pipes all the time.  When I’m not in the shop, I’m thinking about what I’m going to be doing the next time I’m there.  I get ideas for new shapes or techniques or variations or how to make things better over the weekend and try them on Monday.  My wife calls it an obssession, and maybe it is.  I make pipes because I can’t help it.  I’m always wanting to try new stuff, and I can’t wait to do it.  It’s the most fun I’ve ever had at a “job”.  

Follow-up:

Me: Did you bring any particular skills or attitudes with your from your life before pipe making that either helped you or hindered you?  Is there anywhere from your life experiences that you look  to as inspiration for your artistry?  The same question but as to your attitudes and philosophy as an artisan. 

Rad: One skill, and I learned this when I started tying flies, is that I found out I was pretty good with my hands.  Up until I started tying flies, I had no idea!  I can’t draw at all, in fact many times when making a pipe, the longest process for me is getting the shape drawn on the block so it looks right to me.  I do have an eye for what looks right, I just have a hard time executing it with a pencil.  Shaping a briar block into a pipe comes fairly easy to me for some reason.  I have no idea why. 

Another thing I have found out is that I’m much more of a perfectionist than I thought I was.  I keep finding myself wanting to make things better, with regard to quality. My inspiration doesn’t really come from life experiences.  A lot of times it comes from seeing other pipe shapes and doing a lot of “what ifs” in my head.  I was inspired once by the shower head in my bathroom.  It’s one of those that you can remove from the bracket and hold in your hand.  If you turn it over, it looks like a long graceful pipe with a flattened bowl.  I’ll see certain things that just look like they might be tweaked into a nice pipe shape.  It can come from anywhere, but it always seems to be visual rather than based on something that happened in my life.

Me:  That’s it for Part I.  Part II will be a second question that I will put to Rad upon his return from the Chicago show.  If you’re going to be at the show be sure to stop by and see Rad.  If you are looking for one of his pipes I’d recommend getting to him as early as possible. While I won’t be at the show I can assure you that I will be back in Atlanta smoking a blonde blast squash tomato (Rajah) with green Cumberland stem.  I’ll snap a photo of this amazing pipe for Part II.

Again, your own follow-up questions are welcome.

 

He Who Waits

As I went through my newly found box of pipes (see October 26^th  entry) there was one that I had to set aside out of stubbornness if nothing else.  The pipe that you see above is an incredible piece of craftsmanship.  I don’t know if there is another pipe maker that can equal the crisp panels of a Poul Ilsted pipe.  And those of you who know his work will recognize this pipe as one of his signature shapes, and an absolutely gorgeous example it is.  The grain looks as if it was painted on, and the rosewood (or tulip wood) stem band is absolutely stunning.  His pipes go for a pretty penny, and this pipe today would be out of my price range.  A pipe like this should be right up there in one’s collection as to desirability.  So why, up to know, has this pipe been such an utter disappointment?  (if like happy endings, stick around)

A bit of background is in order.  I bought this pipe from a good friend five or so years ago.  He needed the cash for another pipe that he had fallen in love with, so he sold this one to me at a darn good price, maybe $225, which is a steal.  The pipe smoked fine, not great, but fine, so I was happy.  Then, a few years later I was in a similar situation as my friend, raising funds for a pipe that I had to have so I sold the pipe to a friend, basically for what I had paid.  Unfortunately the pipe was back to me within a month.  I was told that the pipe was leaking tobacco juice from between the stem and shank.  I was amazed as the pipe had never done that for me.  The pipe had been fine, but I took the pipe back, as was the right thing to do.

The first thing that I tried to do was to get the pipe to do the leaking thing.  I tried but the pipe didn’t even produce a drop of juice.  Unfortunately the one thing that I did notice was that the pipe was smoking like crap.  It was smoking hot with an absolutely acrid flavor.  As I hadn’t smoked the pipe for a good while before selling it that might have been the case when I shipped it, but I really can’t know.  My friend is very knowledgeable, and extremely honest, so I know that he had done nothing to the pipe.  I was perplexed, to say the least.

There was one thing that I did figure out  and that was due to the way that the pipe was drilled there was a sort of shallow ditch running the length of the mortise roof that cut a slight recess into the face of the mortise/shank.  However slight, it was probably responsible for an imperfect seal between tenon and mortise allowing a bit of juice to escape.  With my smoking style that had never happened.  That’s not really all that unusual as individual smoking style can make a pipe a loser for one guy and a winner for the next.  My smoking style was well matched to the pipe.  Well, for the most part, anyway

The problem still remained that the pipe tasted like crap.  Everything that I put into it, from my staples like Haddo’s to Cumberland to Semois all tasted like crap.  I tried the alcohol/salt treatment three times with no change.  The pipe was worthless to me, and this surprised me greatly.  Everyone that I had ever talked to had found Ilsteds to be fabulous pipes with my experience being the aberration.  I was tempted to buy another one (I sure couldn’t sell the one that I had to fund the acquisition) but it didn’t seem right to me in that I already had one.  I considered giving the pipe away so that someone else might give it a try, but I didn’t want them to have the same disappointment that I had experienced.  Besides, the pipe is just so darn pretty.  It has sat since unsmoked.

So, fast forward over three years to yesterday.  As I unwrapped the pipe I had this inkling of a premonition that the pipe would smoke well.  I don’t know how I knew this, but I did.  Last night I filled it up with Brindle Flake, the tobacco that I have been smoking a lot of lately, and fired her up.  Sure enough, the pipe smoked like a dream.  Initially there was just the faintest edge of the old acrid flavor, but as the flake kicked in it was soon gone.  The one thing that I have noticed is that the pipe’s airway seems very wide open, in fact almost too wide open, so I’m wondering if somewhere along the life of this pipe (my friend who sold it to me wasn’t the first owner) the pipe was opened up, a technique that has gotten to be popular, and in my opinion way overused. I suspect an amateur hand (not my friend) caused that shallow ditch in the mortise roof.  But in any event, it matters not as I now have my Ilsted back smoking like champ with the only tobacco that I will put in it.  I have no firm idea of what the story was with all of the issues, but I seem to have found the right balance for the pipe, a ritual that I will follow for as long as I own it.

This all goes to show about what they say about he who waits.

Roots

Hop in your Wayback Machine and set the dial for early March of 1998.  Set the coordinates for my family room back on Sunnywood Drive in Solon,Ohio on a gloomy March afternoon.  You’d find my seven year old daughter watching the tube while I sat on the couch lightly sanding the first pipe that I had carved.  On the television is one of my favorite moves, Flash Gordon.  Max Von Sydow is being deliciously evil as Ming the Merciless, all to the music of Queen.  I’m home that afternoon because my wife is out of town and my daughter is home sick from school.  Some time later the pipe that I am sanding is stamped: “MK 1/98”.  The pipe is the one that you see above.  It is called “Kahuna.”

Fast forward to here and now.  Going through some boxes the other day I found Kahuna.  I picked the pipe up expecting to dread what I would see, and to my surprise I wasn’t at all  terrified.  In fact, I thought that I liked the pipe even more than the day that I carved it eight and a half years ago.  Sure, it was only a kit pipe, but it was carved from a clunky block with a Dremel without the benefit of a flexshaft or a bandsaw .  Kahuna took me hours upon hours, and was sanded so meticulously that it was like glass without the benefit of buffing.  You’ve probably noticed the lack of a button on the stem, but the pipe was made for me and I’m not a clencher, so it was gone. Admittedly it is a stout pipe, and I might chalk that up to an amateur’s tendency to end carving prematurely so as to get while the getting is good, but the shape is just right for the pipe, and I must say again that this pipe does not horrify me as I might have expected.

So, here is the pipe, Kahuna, that led to the next one called “Ming”, that led to twenty or so more, that led to a lunch hour fantasy that ultimately came to be known, in another incarnation, as Ming-Kahuna.

It’s funny how one thing can lead to another.

Getting to it.

12:05 PM-  Following my 10/18 post “Ruh Roh!” I have decided that today is the day to find my missing box of pipes, or not.  Not knowing if they are lost is very difficult to live with, and if they are gone I may as well get to “mourning” my loss and getting on with the pipes that I have left.  So, here I go.  I’ll let you know how it all comes out.

1:27 PM:  There were probably 40 boxes of various sizes, from smaller to huge, stacked three and four high and sometimes three deep, to unstuck, move, and open.  I found plenty of other stuff that I had been looking for, but things were starting to look pretty bleak.  Then I lifted box number 38, with just two boxes left, and there written on top of the box below was the word “pipes”.  Then it dawned on me, this was the very first box that I had packed for the move, and, not being in the swing of things yet I had marked “pipe” on top of the box rather than on the sides as I did with all later boxes.  So, for all intensive purposes the box was unmarked.

I lifted the box (I would have hugged it if I could have) and took it out into the media room to see what was inside.  The first pipe out was a Hedegaard, an incredible disk blowfish, a rare numbered piece, with straight grain and bird’s eye so perfect I would put it up against any pipe on the planet.  Then, pipe after pipe, many of the best pipes in my collection, were laid out on the sectional.  It was like discovering them all over again.  While I had contemplated their loss over the past weeks I had tried to recall what was missing, but before me was more of my best pipes than I had even dreamed of.  As I unwrapped each one I wanted to load it up and smoke it, but that will have to wait. 

To say that I’m thrilled would be the understatement of the century.

Now if I could just find Genesis, the first KazeTamp carved…d’oh!

Ruh roh!

I have a confession to make.  I have been smoking the same dozen or so pipes since I moved to Atlanta a year and a half ago. And while that alone is all fine and good, and will be the topic of another blog post, it has directly led to a situation that may well end very, very badly.

Before the move down South from Cleveland as I was packing my collection I culled some pipes so that I would have something to smoke upon my arrival.  As it happened, in my new house I didn’t have the wall of shelves that I had in my last house to display my collection, so they stayed packed in boxes while the selected pipes remained in service.  I have not yet had the shelves built to house the collection in optimal conditions, so they remained out of sight and mostly out of mind in their shipping boxes.  That is until recently.

Before the CORPS show in Richmond my bud Jeff Folloder stayed at my house for a few days.  One evening in my workshop Jeff spied my boxes of packed pipes and started to go through them, laying them out on the floor.  As there was a Safferling that I wanted to take with me to Richmond, I kept my eye on what he was doing as I carved, occasionally asking him to put aside a certain pipe.  Finally all of the pipes were laid out, but not the Safferling that I was looking for. In fact, I came to realize that several pipes were not there.  And among that several pipes were many of my favorites, most valuable, and ones with the most sentimental value.  Among them were pipes such as the first pipe that my daughter ever picked out for me and gave to me for my birthday (she was probably three), and, the Eltang all briar ukulele that I will smoke on her wedding day.  As I looked onto the shelf where the boxes had been store, now empty, my stomach sank.

Even though I had much yet to do, putting a final buff on the show tamps, I had to search for the box of pipes.  I went through box after box, all to no avail.  There are many, many boxes in the storage room,  so I may not have looked in all,  but as I was the one who packed the pipes and marked the box, I should have seen it if it was there.  To say that I was a bit panicked would be a grand understatement.  While the dollar value of the pipes in that box is great, well into the thousands, it isn’t about that at all.

So, with having to leave for Richmond the following day I pulled a Scarlet O’Hara and decided to put it out of my mind and worry about it another day.  Believe me, that has been no easy task,  and it has gotten to the point where I am frightened to find out if the pipes are indeed lost.  I did go as far as to look in our spare bedrooms to see if the box was mistakenly place there, but the pipes remain missing.

So now here I am, frightened that many of my most special pipes are gone forever, and too chicken to find out if that is indeed the case. At least with not knowing I can hold onto hope that it will all end well.  But I know that I must answer this question by going through the house and garage box by box,  and I am just now working up the courage to do so.

One way or the other I’ll let you know how this all ends up.