• This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.



    Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades

smoke pipe

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

old ugly

40 Cal.
Joined
May 7, 2009
Messages
725
Reaction score
548
Location
stink dog creek, Alberta
attempting to make a smoking pipe from homemade clay and fire it in the campfire. im going to make a few as im sure i will end up with breakage. we will see what happens.
IMG_3918.jpg
 
My son in law does pottery throwing.
I may have to try to make a couple with his clay just for fun. I’d kiln fire them but he doesn’t currently have it wired up.
 
I read something about these many years ago, but never tried to make one. I recall the Lenape Indians molded the stem of the pipe around a grass stem, which was left in place when the pipe was fired. The grass burned up and disintegrated, leaving a nice, open passage.

Let us know how these turn out!

Notchy Bob
 
I read something about these many years ago, but never tried to make one. I recall the Lenape Indians molded the stem of the pipe around a grass stem, which was left in place when the pipe was fired. The grass burned up and disintegrated, leaving a nice, open passage.

Let us know how these turn out!

Notchy Bob
I think Bill Ruger copied that with his lost wax investment casting process. Nothing new under the sun, right?
 
A good pressed Virginia tobacco in a clay pipe makes for a very pleasant smoke, whether around a camp fire or in your easy chair. The clay seems to deliver a clean, unaltered taste with just the tobacco flavor coming through.

Hope the project works out for you.

Jeff
 
I have some ball clay and would love to make my own traditional clay pipes.
Unfortunately, my lungs just can't take being around tobacco smoke.
I'd love to know how they compare to my old briarwood pipe.
 
Clay pipes with a clay stem if clamped in the teeth you get enough to bits of clay off to trigger a dirt taste with your smoke. It’s not like eating dirt but it the taste off raw veggies.
Reed stems taste like a meerschaum, no noticeable flavor. But as it gets just a little cake you get a woodsy flavor. I smoke an English blend and find it very tasty in clay.
Willow Bark, sweet grass, cedar bark and a bit of cedar ( juniper) leaf, prairie sage, and clover leaf dried and chopped fine, makes a nice kinninkinic for them what’s can’t take tobacco... but be like Bill and don’t inhale. Just a mouthfull of smoke rolled around and blown out.
I'm smoking right now as I write this and and can breath normally with a mouth full of smoke.
 
they are a bit ruff, not like the nice store bought ones. which are made in a mold.
im hoping to get out and fire these in the campfire next week. i am hoping to get at least one out of all these.
i broke one stem all ready..
this is new to me and im experimenting. i will let you know the results.


IMG_3921.JPG
 
Those look really good, old ugly ! You do good work! It seems to me that one broken stem out of four or five pipes is not bad. the pipes you have there look great!

I believe those molded clay pipes were important trade goods. They were certainly fragile, but it is my understanding that broken pieces of stem were often used as elongated beads, in much the same way that short hairpipes and cylindrical bone beads were used. I also recall reading... somewhere... about a pipe bowl being used as a powder measure. So, even broken trade pipes could be useful.

Clay pipes with a clay stem if clamped in the teeth you get enough to bits of clay off to trigger a dirt taste with your smoke. It’s not like eating dirt but it the taste off raw veggies.
Reed stems taste like a meerschaum, no noticeable flavor. But as it gets just a little cake you get a woodsy flavor. I smoke an English blend and find it very tasty in clay.
Willow Bark, sweet grass, cedar bark and a bit of cedar ( juniper) leaf, prairie sage, and clover leaf dried and chopped fine, makes a nice kinninkinic for them what’s can’t take tobacco... but be like Bill and don’t inhale. Just a mouthfull of smoke rolled around and blown out.
I'm smoking right now as I write this and and can breath normally with a mouth full of smoke.

Now, that's interesting. I gave up smoking in about 1972, or thereabouts, and I'll have to confess, I've never smoked a clay pipe. tenngun's observations regarding the effect of the stem on the flavor of the smoke is something I would not have thought about.

I want to show a picture:

Milton & Cheadle.jpg


This shows Lord Milton (second from left) and Dr. Walter Butler Cheadle (third from left), with their Assiniboine guide and his wife and son on their trip across Canada in 1862-1864.

Here is a detail shot from that image, enlarged:

Milton & Cheadle 2.jpg

This appears to show a clay pipe with a wooden stem added on. Maybe a repair, to make a pipe with a broken stem usable again? That seems most likely to me, but tenngun's comments suggest the wooden stem might have been added on just to make the smoke taste better!

Best regards,

Notchy Bob
 
i just rolled a coil of clay around a long skinny stick. once the pipe is formed pull the stick out.
I beleave back in the old days, they would use a pies of straw to make the hole to draw through, and it would burn up, on firing the clay pipe. not having to pull out a stick and risk breaking it. how does one pull a stick out of a fired pipe?
 
Those look really good, old ugly ! You do good work! It seems to me that one broken stem out of four or five pipes is not bad. the pipes you have there look great!

I believe those molded clay pipes were important trade goods. They were certainly fragile, but it is my understanding that broken pieces of stem were often used as elongated beads, in much the same way that short hairpipes and cylindrical bone beads were used. I also recall reading... somewhere... about a pipe bowl being used as a powder measure. So, even broken trade pipes could be useful.



Now, that's interesting. I gave up smoking in about 1972, or thereabouts, and I'll have to confess, I've never smoked a clay pipe. tenngun's observations regarding the effect of the stem on the flavor of the smoke is something I would not have thought about.

I want to show a picture:

View attachment 47744

This shows Lord Milton (second from left) and Dr. Walter Butler Cheadle (third from left), with their Assiniboine guide and his wife and son on their trip across Canada in 1862-1864.

Here is a detail shot from that image, enlarged:

View attachment 47745
This appears to show a clay pipe with a wooden stem added on. Maybe a repair, to make a pipe with a broken stem usable again? That seems most likely to me, but tenngun's comments suggest the wooden stem might have been added on just to make the smoke taste better!

Best regards,

Notchy Bob
that is great, thanks for posting it.
 
I beleave back in the old days, they would use a pies of straw to make the hole to draw through, and it would burn up, on firing the clay pipe. not having to pull out a stick and risk breaking it. how does one pull a stick out of a fired pipe?

i don,t think the stick can be left in the stem when the pipe is drying, the clay shrinks a lot, i am sure the stem would crack just while it is setting up.
the stick pulls out easy. just start with it dry.
as soon as i have formed the pipe and am not going to handle it any more thats when i pull the stick out.
i dont know about the straw idea.
one thing i found out. once you pull the stick out of the stem and the clay starts to dry the stem starts to bend for some reason. on most of them the stem started to bend sideways and once the clay starts to harden up you cant bend it back.
so after a short bit of time and the clay is just starting to set i supported the stem in the center and put a real light weigh on the end of the stem so it very slowly sags down forcing it to bend in the direction i want.
again this is all new to me, just experimenting. the true test is going to be in the firing.
 
Back
Top