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| Latest
News:
Talbert Pipes has relocated to Brittany, France! For information and amusement about our progress, please visit my Travelogue. (Updated 12-13-02)
• December 22nd Two new morta sandblasts have been added, one of which is positively freakish in its blasting job. I'll be curious to hear what people say about this one. Also, there's a sandblasted version of the 2002 Yule pipe shape in the Ligne Bretagne catalog. • December 19th, 2002 (part 2) I've just added a really neat piece to the sandblasts section - a nice dynamic design that was the explosive result of too much work on "commercial" shapes recently. It's called the Charles Dexter Ward, which ought to be a good clue. • December 19th, 2002 One new sandblast morta mini is posted in the Sandblasts catalog. Nice blast, too! • December 18th, 2002 One new morta mini has been added to the Smooths section of the morta catalog, and 2 new Ligne Bretagne sandblasts have been added to the LB blasts catalog. • December 17th, 2002 The opening pages of the Talbert Briar, Morta, and Ligne Bretagne website sections now have a basic description and FAQ in French - just click on the French flags! • December 15th, 2002 One gnarly sandblasted churchwarden has been added to the Sandblasts catalog page, but the bigger news is that the first Ligne Bretagne Collector-grade pipe is now posted and it's quite a beauty for lovers of very sharp, very precise blasts. • December 13th, 2002 Friday the 13th finds me suffering from a bout of nasty malady, and has delayed some of the updates I had hoped to get posted today. There are two new pipes - a briar and morta set of twin fat billiards - posted in the sandblasts sections of their respective catalogs. At the moment I will only sell them as a pair, but if several days pass and no buyer takes them this way, I will sell them individually. I would much prefer for them to remain together, however. There are several more updates to come as soon as I am able - more Ligne Bretagnes that Emily has finished plus a small morta or two, and the near future may even show a new Old Sea Captain. • December 9th, 2002 I've added 4 more freehand pipes to the Ligne Bretagne sandblasts and rusticated pages. Three of these are more Terrible Old Men and the fourth is a different freehand shape resembling an egg (or in this case, a lunar egg). Another bit of good news is that the first Talbert Briar sandblast has been posted to the Talbert Briar catalog. Unbelievably, this is our first handmade sandblast in Brittany and it was a lot of fun to get back to this art which I love so much. I felt a lot of pressure on this pipe, wondering if everyone was expecting something really spectacular after all this time, but decided to stay with a simple design that could be elaborated into something dynamic rather than try to throw in tons of extras details and decorative bits. The sandblasting alone took an entire afternoon and I hope it will be interesting enough to justify its place in our various pipe stables. This is the second from the highest grade of sandblast that we make, and this paticular piece is actually more expensive than most of the smooth briars we've had up thus far. More pipes are still to come! • December 6th, 2002 Another sandblast has been added to the Ligne Bretagne sandblasts catalog, and it's worth seeing! A little something to smoke as the sanity drains away... • December 5th, 2002 I've added more new sandblasts - there's another black Ligne Bretagne blast down at the bottom of the catalog listing, and I've posted the first three morta sandblasts to the morta catalog. More to come! • December 4th, 2002 Our sandblaster is finally wired and working, and we have found a good source for my preferred blasting media. Interestingly, the media we're using now is a bit finer than what we used in the US, so even the Ligne Bretagne pipes may show a slightly more detailed blast than Talberts of old, and the new Talbert Briars should be very nice. We also have access to media of much smaller grit and have some here to test with, but it's quite expensive and may not justify the cost - in any event, there will be a few extremely sharp blasts appearing here and there when we try different media. There are many updates in the near future - I've just posted a pile of Ligne Bretagne sandblasts, I will soon be posting pics of our finished retail shop operation with some notes on additional goodies we now sell, and we have several morta blasts here waiting to be photographed. Also, we're currently working on the first Ligne Bretagne Collector grade pipe just in time for Christmas. The site should be changing often every few days for the rest of December. • November 6th, 2002 Various bits of news. The Ligne Bretagne Yule pipes have arrived at Pipe & Pint, along with a selection of some other LB catalog pipes and even a morta for shop display. I've also just posted 4 new morta pipes to the Smooths section of the morta site. A couple of these were done by Emily - after doing a small mountain of Ligne Bretagne pipes already, she's starting to work on the smaller morta pipes. In other news, our sandblaster is still not working... no big surprise. The morning when the EDF fellow was supposed to arrive and do the wiring, I looked at Emily and said, "He will show up, piddle for a few minutes, announce that he needs to order parts, and vanish for another month". There are times when I wish I were not such an accurate fortune teller! He's supposed to return "sometime" this month but who knows when, or even if the work will be done at that time. I have given up on the hope of getting the sandblaster working in this lifetime and am simply focusing on morta pipes for some time to come, since morta runs much purer than briar and uncovering pits and flaws is not such a crippling problem. • October 26th, 2002 I've just posted 6 new pipes to the Smooths section of the Ligne Bretagne catalog. I've been working hard trying to replenish our stock here after shipping so much of it to Pipe & Pint. These 6 are all nice pieces, and the poker and the bulldog are especially nice pipes for the price. To my knowledge, 5 of the Yule pipes have already been reserved at Pipe & Pint, so if you want to get one it would be good to call Larry soon! • October 23rd, 2002 The Ligne Bretagne Yule pipes are done. The entire set, along with several of the Ligne Bretagne pipes in our stock, are shipping off today to Pipe & Pint in Greensboro, NC, USA for sale in their retail shop. Anyone interested in a Yule pipe should call Pipe & Pint at 336-218-8610 and ask for Larry. • October 19th, 2002, part two I've just made some additions to the "Life in France" section - there are new photos added to the "Places" section for the castle Ranrouet, and I've also added a page on "What's different in France" to the "Adventures" section. In other news here, we have finally gotten our credit card account working so we are now able to take CC orders from our international customers. Convenient buying has been an obstacle for our US collectors ever since we moved, and I hope this will help a lot. • October 19th, 2002 The Talbert Morta site is now open! It has pipes for sale, a tiny little gallery, and a fully outlined creation process and FAQ full of information about these unusual pipes. We've had other good news as well - the French power company has moved our date up for the wiring of our compressor, so it's now scheduled for November 5th instead of the 15th. I take back everything I said about EDF - they listened and understood our problem and have helped as best they could. Hopefully there may be a few sandblasts available before Christmas after all! • October 15th, 2002 Well, unfortunately we have been screwed by the French fonctionaires again - we have been in desperate need of 380 volt power here to get our sandblaster working for the past 2 months, and over a month ago we were told that someone would come from EDF (the French power company) today to do the work. However, what we got today was a surveyor who walked around and looked at the wiring and announced that yes, we do need 380 volt and he would have to call in a service request. Argh! This country is a nightmare of having to see 15 people to get one thing done. We told him we needed the power hookup "yesterday" as it is a terrible drain on our income (At the moment we can only produce smooth pipes, which means that every pipe that's worked and needs blasting must be set aside in a basket for such, thus wasting the time it took to get it TO the stage where we found that it was a blast candidate....meaning we're only getting 1 sellable pipe out of every 4-5 that we work on now and thus only 1/5 of the hourly income). This afternoon he called back to tell us we had an appointment on NOVEMBER 15TH for the wiring to be connected. This is "yesterday"... I do not cease to be amazed at the attitudes of French bank officials, government types, and workers for virtually all of the big companies that everyone must surely have huge piles of cash just to sit around on while waiting calmly for them to take 2 months to stamp one paper. Thus, we get to spend another entire month working on 1/5 income unable to produce our most profitable products, with no response from EDF other than a shrug. Considering how tightly things have been stretched for the past several months due to these same sorts of bungling, I honestly do not know what our survival chances are as a business now. This is very dire news. • October 13th, 2002 The Ligne Bretagne opening page has been updated with photos of the actual Yule pipes for this year. We're midway through them now and they should be arriving at Pipe & Pint sometime in November. • October 10th, 2002 The little bamboo-shanked Frivole from the Talbert Briar section is back up for sale! • October 7th, 2002 2 new pipes are added to the Smooths section of the Ligne Bretagne catalog, and another page of shape descriptions with some previews of future designs. The Yule design has been chosen and is now being fine-tuned. We're working on them daily and hope to ship them to the US in November. They will be available exclusively in the retail shop of Pipe & Pint in Greensboro, NC (phone 336-218-8610 and ask for Larry). • September 30th, 2002 2 new pipes are added to the Smooths section of the Ligne Bretagne catalog. We're working on various test models for this year's Yule pipes and these were produced in the process. There should be a couple more to be added fairly soon. I would strongly urge anyone who has only experienced sweet Danish aromatics in a normal pipe (meaning; had their tongue burned to a stump) to try out one of our 9mm filter/system trap pipes as they make a remarkable change in the experience. I'm now able to enjoy blends with names like "Danish Truffle" in happiness and safety :) • September 28th, 2002 The Talbert Briar site section is up! This area has been redesigned to match the rest of the new site, and we have our first few pipes in the catalog. We only have smooth pipes to offer at the moment, as we still have a few weeks to wait before our sandblaster can be hooked up. It has been a long slow road to learn the new shop and find new ways of doing things with unfamiliar tools, all to try and create the same sort of finishing that previously took years to master in the old shop. These first few pipes are simple in design, since we didn't want to go overboard trying to make elaborate shapes during the learning process. I hope that now the work on the website is done, and future catalog updates will come faster and more regularly as we gradually get back into the swing of regular work. Thanks for visiting! • September 22nd, 2002 Some small updates to the "Life in France" section - see news there for details. Talbert Briar will be the next site section added, and it's coming soon. • September 14th, 2002 Over the past couple of weeks I've been getting a few surprises in the mail - books that I'd ordered, DVDs from home, etc. We got a real surprise recently when we had two Cthulhu's arrive on the same day, by some quirk of demented celestial alignment. Below is a pic of the pair together: • September 8th, 2002 I've added 4 new pipes to the Smooths section of the Ligne Bretagne catalog, plus several new shape descriptions. This will likely be the last LB catalog update for a bit, as I am turning my attentions full-time to finishing the Talbert Briar and Morta sites and also finishing the pipes to go on them. • September 1st, 2002 The first small update arrives in the form of a couple of new pipes added to the Ligne Bretagne catalog pages, the deletion of some of the sold pipes, and a new adventure in the France section. • August 28th, 2002 Website redesign! To compliment our move to Brittany and two new lines of pipes (Talbert Morta and Ligne Bretagne), we have given Talbert Pipes a new look. I hope you enjoy! More sections to follow as time permits. Special thanks to Aloosenation Ideas for the webdesign.
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