Got my pipe back from Norwood

[Sasquatch]

I have gone back to my friend for details so that I don't mis-represent this, and I have no intention of reporting every last word spoken between 2 other adults, I'll fill in as I can though here, and as accurately as possible. I don't have a hate on for Norwood's, I wish there were more good pipe repair places - it's a dying art.

But the point is, this guy sent in two pipes, both came back totally botched, totally unacceptable. Work like that can't leave the shop. If work like that DOES leave the shop, you gotta get on top of it with apologies, free swag, and a re-do. So I can't sit here and watch people ooh and aah over a shop that I've seen some pretty shitty work out of over the years. Every once in awhile, a piper comes to me and says "Sas, does this look okay?" and even sometimes "Sas, do you think you can fix this?" when someone else has worked on a pipe. I've seen some stuff that's made me shudder out of a few different "experts".

And look, this pipe repair thing is HARD. There's a reason hardly anybody does it. Hell, I broke a tenon on my own Radice a few months back, thought I'd quickly drill it out and do a delrin insert. Blew it right up, had to make a whole new stem. LOL. But then... I don't do pipe repair for a living either. Making 'em and fixing 'em isn't quite the same set of operations.

But bad work is bad work. Burnt ebonite is burnt. Dull tools are dull. Poor polishing is poor polishing. These things are easily quantified.

 

[Lonecoyote]

Sas, give Dan a call from Paul's Pipe Shop in Michigan. Paul is no longer with us but his son Dan is a good guy to deal with!! Take a look at his website, even has what he calls a pipe hospital, excellent repairs!!  This place has been in business forever and my grandfather always dealt with Paul. A nice place to visit, more pipes under one roof than you can imagine. Even a pipe museum on the premises.      www.paulspipeshop.com/

KEEP ON PUFFING!!!

 

[RDPipes]

Well, y'all got me feeling bad now that I boasted his work all these years, I had no idea that this kind of work was being put out through them. All I can say is I've never gotten a poor job done by Floyd out of the many pipes I had him do about 5 or more years ago. Please accept my deepest apology.

 

[LL]

Hi guys.

Sas gets it.  

I posted to another forum a while back about why there are so few pipe repairmen, and came up with the following.  Thought I'd cut & paste it here.

-------------------

In the pipe repair world, for reasons lost to history, the output of repair shops is viewed as a consumer commodity in the same way as tires, toasters, or cameras. When buying those items, the only difference is who sells them to you and for how much. The quality of the same make & model item is the same at all retail outlets.

In the artisan pipe making world the output of carvers is unique, though, and each piece is considered individually and priced accordingly.

While the second case is fitting and economically sustainable, the first is not.

There are several reasons why carvers outnumber repairmen by fifty (or more) to one in our hobby, among them being the equipment and inventory requirements. While a carver needs only what's required to create pipes that fulfill a chosen aesthetic, a full-service repairman needs the tools and materials to replicate the work of ALL carvers and brands, both new and old (some go back a century or more), and in every style.

Another reason is the stress of working on someone else's property. It is enormous. There are no "do-overs". Tossing a project into the fireplace when a fatal mistake is made is not an option.

But the main reason is the commodity pricing structure, especially when it comes to replacement stems. No matter the quality or price of the original pipe, there's an expectation that a new stem for it should cost a fixed, nominal amount.

What pipe repairmen do however, is not the same as being a retailer of tires, toasters, or cameras. They sell labor, not merchandise.

In fact, it's not even equivalent labor. Most pipe makers agree that the stem often takes as much time to shape---sometimes more---than the rest of the pipe. In addition, shaping a replacement stem after the stummel is complete and its shape cannot be further modified requires the stem to be made "in a vacuum" to fit that stummel exactly. That adds to the difficulty considerably, and takes additional time. Then, the labor/time demand is (often) increased still again by requiring the replacement to exactly match the original in external dimensions. (The original maker didn't have to follow any pattern or meet any particular set of dimensions... whatever simply "looked right" to them became the finished product.)  Such dimension matching is unforgiving and slow-going at the best of times.

For the record, and to be 100% clear, I am emphatically NOT criticizing or trying to minimize what "whole" pipe makers do in any way---being truly good at it is insanely difficult and requires having ALL of MANY uncommon skills rolled into a single person. I know any number of them personally, and respect what they do---and am occasionally in awe of what they do---more every day. That their work and business model is more linear and streamlined isn't something they are responsible for creating, it's simply how things are.

It's the combination of those three main things---high financial barrier to entry, the stress of working on other people's property, and the laborious nature of matching the work of others as opposed to creating it in the first place---that keeps people from entering the repair field (or staying with it for long when they do).

Entire articles have been written about this situation before by highly qualified people, btw. Here's a good one:

http://talbertpipes.blogspot.com/201...pe-repair.html

So, what's my point with all this? It is to take a swing at raising awareness, and thereby, eventually, make the specialty field of pipe repair more attractive to newcomers by encouraging them to adopt a tradesman model of business instead of a fixed-price commodity one. In short, price their work according to time spent instead of by simplified task categories. That's how it has always been for other tradesmen, from plumbers to machinists to welders. Try getting a fixed-price/categorical quote from one of those guys for clearing a blocked drain, machining an antique motorcycle engine part from billet, or repairing a cracked flange on an oil pipeline. Their pricing is, and has always been, based on labor and (when applicable) materials.

I think that such an approach would not only help to attract more repairmen, but, over the long term, would benefit their customers. First, since there would be more of them, turnaround times would improve. Second, because the quality of EVERYTHING in life varies, workmanship included, after a while skill would correspond with cost. Demand would make it so.

Why would that correspondence be a Good Thing when shopping? Consider the following sets of photos.  Four replacement stems are shown (each in top and side view), with their REDONE (by a different shop) replacement next to them.

How that situation came about was because somebody thought that since replacement stems cost essentially the same, he might as well go with the closest shop to possibly save on shipping time and postage.  Had that first shop not been able to "hide in the level pricing bushes," the customer might have been curious why shops charged different rates, done some digging, and been spared having to buy a second set of replacements before he was satisfied.

 

[Sasquatch]

The other side of this is that a guy can do 20,000 repairs just perfect, and 1 little screw up, and it's "Ohh my god this guy's a fucktard!" all over Facebook, right?

The picture I posted is one of 2 pipes my friend got back. This was not the Dunhill, I was wrong. The Dunhill was a military mount. And the stem that came back for it was totally horrible in a different way. He thinks he did not go back to Norwood about it, being basically disgusted with it. I remember the incident differently, I was certain that he had asked about the bulldog stem (I will edit my previous post to indicate this).

So it looks like this left the shop and went unreported. So going off the deep end about it is maybe not real fair to the repair shop in question. At the same time, you can't say "they never knew about it". It's obviously garbage material and there's no way anyone should have boxed that up and shipped it, so that's my official stance here - that shouldn't have been shipped out.

 

[Sasquatch]

PS nice post George.

One of the other things I'll mention here is the preponderance of "Can you fix this for 11 dollars please?" sorts of pipe repairs there are. It's a big jump when someone sends in a real nice piece and wants real good work (and will pay for it). One advantage of being a carver is that I set my target buying group, build what I want to build, and put it out there. The repairman is always working against the value of the pipe in real dollars, or the value of the pipe in terms of keepsake/memento. Do I spend a whole day and hand cut a stem for a 12 dollar Dr Grabow? Hell no. Not usually anyhow. Then of course there is the guy who DOES want that and will pay just crazy for it. So you never know as a repair guy what the hell you face, how well it will work, and you constantly run the risk of wrecking someone's prized possession. In other words: thanks but no thanks!

 

[AJ]

PS nice post George.  

One of the other things I'll mention here is the preponderance of "Can you fix this for 11 dollars please?" sorts of pipe repairs there are.   It's a big jump when someone sends in a real nice piece and wants real good work (and will pay for it).  One advantage of being a carver is that I set my target buying group, build what I want to build, and put it out there.   The repairman is always working against the value of the pipe in real dollars, or the value of the pipe in terms of keepsake/memento.   Do I spend a whole day and hand cut a stem for a 12 dollar Dr Grabow?  Hell no.   Not usually anyhow.  Then of course there is the guy who DOES want that and will pay just crazy for it.   So you never know as a repair guy what the hell you face, how well it will work, and you constantly run the risk of wrecking someone's prized possession.   In other words:  thanks but no thanks!  

Sanity and common sense has returned to the pipe world. About time! A great way to end one year and begin another. Thanks for posting. :cheers:

AJ

 

[LL]

In my previous post, I opened with this:

In the pipe repair world, for reasons lost to history, the output of repair shops is viewed as a consumer commodity in the same way as tires, toasters, or cameras.

After thinking about it (it was originally written a couple years ago), the reason actually seems pretty clear.

Pipes were considered consumables, never mind their stems.  An analogy would be soles for shoes, or tires for cars.  A temporary tool, object, or thing, which was composed of parts that didn't age equally.  In the first 2/3rds of the 20th century, a car might see three or four sets of tires before the car itself was discarded, and shoes were usually re-soled a couple times before the uppers wore out.

So it was with pipes.  So-called "estate" pipes simply didn't exist until the 1980's, and pipes---with the exception of a handful of higher grade Charatans & etc, cased sets, and presentation pieces---were never purchased with the intention of keeping them all that long.  Pipes were thought of simply as "tobacco access devices" by the vast majority of smokers.  Once they reached a certain point, they were thrown away and a new one bought.  Only if an old pipe was special enough that a smoker wanted to extend its life, or a new-ish one was damaged, was it repaired.  

And those repairs were made in the same spirit as the original pipe.  Any passably decent looking return to functionality was considered a "good fix."  And arranging a fix was no more difficult than taking the pipe to any walk-in tobacco shop, of which there were many.  (If they didn't have a repairman in the back, they sent batches of pipes a couple times a week to another shop nearby that did.)

No one expected such repairs to be "invisibly good" because they understood that pipes were factory made, and repairs could only be done by hand.  And while such fine handwork was POSSIBLE, pipes were inexpensive, so there was no demand for it.

Fast forward to the Internet, Scandinavian Quality Standards, Artisan masterpieces, and hardcore collectors of so-called "estate" pipes in addition to contemporary art pieces.  Those smokers---today's smokers---DON'T think of pipes as consumables, and have high technical and artistic expectations for repair work.  But, being consumers, they are delighted that pipe repair's cost structure was previously based on mass-produced inexpensive pipes and "you can't see it if you squint" craftsmanship.

Delighted until the new expectations + old price structure finishes driving the remaining handful of pipe repairmen out of business, anyway.  :lol:

 

[Sasquatch]

" the new expectations + old price structure finishes driving the remaining handful of pipe repairmen out of business"

Yes.    Yeeeesss!   Muhahahaha  and people will be forced to buy new handmade pipes at fairly reasonable prices!    I've been setting up your fall for 10 years Georgie boy!

 

[LL]

How many times do you have to hear it, Sas?  Pipes that are shaped like a hockey stick and treated to make every tobacco taste like Molson have little appeal outside Canadia.  :lol:

 

[Sasquatch]

I'm establishing a new paradigm. :clown: