It was a pleasure meeting new carver Charles Cole at the show.
In this picture, I'm drawing a cutaway of some spoon bits.
Now the primary reason I attended the Reno show was to enjoy the company of my good friends and fellow pipemakers, Jeff Gracik, Steve Morrisette, and Brad Pohlmann. Brad rolled out the red carpet for us at his ranch in southern Oregon, and we all gladly accepted. We left Sparks on Sunday morning and embarked on a beautiful journey north to casa Pohlmann. The scenic highlight of this trip was beautiful snow capped mount Shasta, captured in all its resplendent glory by Steve, who among other things is a professional photographer. I'll post some photos here when I receive them. No rush, Steve!
Upon our arrival we were greeted warmly by a menagerie of creatures ranging from horses to hens, Corgy's, a colossal canine the size of my own "best friend," and the most beautiful and delicate creature of all, Brad's daughter Brittney. I've been following Brittney in pictures since she was a wee lass, and seeing her for the first time as an accomplished and confident young woman was really a treat.
From here, we moved to the shop where the first order of business was some reorganization. We applied some Lean Systems implementation to Brad's already spacious and well-equipped shop to improve the flow of work and maximize productivity. The result was that all four of us could be working productively at the same time, in the same space, without a great deal of overlap.
The four of us in repose (From left to right, Jeff, Brad, Todd, and Steve)
We decided to focus our attention on two shapes, the billiard and the blowfish. The former is, at turns, both the simplest and most difficult shape to execute, and a requisite for any papemaker wishing to claim the title. The latter has become the new "benchmark" for a carver who wants to show mastery of shape creativity, etc. Unfortunately, it's also the most often butchered shape there is. It was for this reason that we set our sights on the two aforementioned shapes. The four of us are all at various points along the learning curve, and it was a great privilege to instruct and to learn from one another. Jeff and I, who work similarly, were able to impart a number of time-saving techniques to Brad and Steve, while all of us were able to learn from Brad's masterful employment of precision tooling. Steve, who is an up-and-comer in the world of high grade pipemaking, brought a fresh approach to the process that we "hardened veterans" always benefit from.
Offering Brad a shaping tutorial on the blowfish.
The few days that we spent toiling away in the shop were productive ones. We turned out a number of pieces, both individually and collaboratively. Jeff and I managed to complete 90% of a blowfish set which will be available in the coming week. I free-handed a long shanked lovat primarily to demonstrate the process, while Jeff shaped a wispy little featherweight billiard on the lathe.
Our collective three day output.
The highlight of our productive efforts, however, is this smooth blowfish which was created collaboratively. I did most of the shaping with Steve, while Brad and Jeff worked on the engineering--the alignment, drilling, countersink, etc. We each took our turn with the stem, and the final polishing was done, if I remember correctly, by Steve. The pipe turned out beautifully and bears all four of our stamps. It is going to be available for purchase later this week, and once photographed properly, it can be viewed on each of our sites.
The collective blowfish
All in all, this was a tremendous few days. It reminded me why I love doing this so much and offered a rare opportunity to share something so often done in solitude.
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