Talbert Pipes- Poker Madness!

[Trever Talbert]

Evening, all!  I write with news of the latest site update.  I've just posted four new Ligne Bretagne Collectors and one regular LB, all pokers or poker/volcanos:

http://www.talbertpipes.pair.com/bretagne.shtml

Every so often I get these urges to do a bunch of shapes along one theme. Usually I do this with the standard line Ligne Bretagnes, but this time around I decided to do all Ligne Bretagne Collectors (with one standard shape thrown in for good measure). It also made an excellent opportunity to test out something new. We've been talking to our sandblasting media supplier about our work, and specifically about the recurring problem of old, hard briar - That is, a good bit of my briar block stock is 30 years old or more (Hell, I guess 40 now...Time flies...) and it's extremely hard to sandblast. I can get finely detailed surfaces but not particularly deep or craggy ones, and we talked over some different medias to use for the first pass of what would be a two-media solution. The result was that I came home with a trunk full of new media to try out, and the four new LB Collectors in this site update were the perfect subjects for my experimentation. 

In a nutshell, the process involves cleaning out the sandblaster, filling it with the very aggressive media recommended, doing the initial few stages of blasting on the recalcitrant stummels, then emptying the cabinet out and refilling it with finer media for several stages of final detailing. It's a complex process that adds a lot of time, and as a result, these Collectors are mostly higher in price than prior ones. It's a bit in the air as to whether I will continue using this technique on future Ligne Bretagnes, or confine it strictly to Talbert Briars, but regardless of what happens, I think this poker set made for an intriguing visual comparison test of old method vs new.

As always, thanks for your time and interest!
Happy Smoking,
Trever Talbert
www.talbertpipes.com