Wie man eine Pfeife macht | SWR Handwerkskunst

First of all, it's the wood that still fascinates me. When I get a new product from Italy or Greece, I'm so excited. It's like Christmas. I open the package and see what's inside. Pieces that I don't want. Often very beautiful pieces. I think, you can do this and that with them. And it's always the material that really appeals to me. And after so many years, it doesn't stop. And then of course, in my opinion, to make the most beautiful out of it. It's a bit like sculpting. You take away what you don't need and what's left is hopefully a nice pipe. This is bouillabaisse wood. A particularly beautiful, hard wood. It comes from the Mediterranean, called tree heath. It grows wildly there in the Machia. If we need something to make a pipe out of it, the tree should be 30, 40 years old. I have a small specimen here. It looks like this. A tree, more like a bush, and forms a bud as a water reservoir. Normally football-sized. It's very hot and dry around the Mediterranean. And is then excavated there. Packed on trucks and brought to the sawmill. To the so-called coupers. There are a few in Italy, in Greece. And they store the wood in the cellar. Keep it moist for about a quarter of a year. It needs the wood to come to rest. And then it's cut into pieces. Like this one here. The bud has a grain that goes from the middle to the outside like a sunbeam, so to speak. This produces 2 pipe forms. Once where the heads move up or out. I would like to make such an egg-shaped model. And the block is excellent for this. A nice, tight, dense grain. From the outside, pretty clean, few errors. I think it will work out well. The special thing about Cornelius Menz's pipes is that he works them completely freehand. From the block to the finished pipe. Freehand is the technical term. It starts with the drawing. No templates, no templates. With the pipes the way I do them, I work according to the grain of the wood. Basically, the grain already gives the shape a little. Often I have an idea and look for the right block. Or I just take a piece of nice wood, wet it, look at the grain and see what can be made of it. These are the so-called bird's eyes. You also know them from other woodcutters. What makes the pipes look particularly beautiful is when the grain is harmonious with the shape. When sawing, it is the first time that the block holds what it promises. A flaw in the grain and Cornelius Menz has to come up with something new. A mistake can definitely get you on a different path. That you deviate from the original shape, because I just want to grind it away. There are already good shapes. Often enough, however, the mistakes cannot be sanded away. The pipe is getting smaller and smaller and then becomes unusable. These freehand pipes, the way I do them, are mostly created on the grinding wheel. That I model a band saw into the rough shape, take away what I don't want, and hopefully find as few mistakes as possible. And almost complete the shape. And that's exactly what happens, which I can't stand well. I found a nice big mistake. That's a really deep incision, a very deep mistake. I tried to grind it away, but that's not possible. It will probably be at least a centimeter if I dig more into the groove here. And that forces me to start again from scratch. To look for a new piece of wood. Is that a bad moment for you? In the past, I invested a lot of money in materials and stuff. And when something like that happened, I got excited. I clamped the things in the big screwdriver until they burst and I peppered the surroundings. And now it's just like that, it's just part of it. It's rather unlikely that you won't find anything and can really work through it. It's also working with a piece of nature. And that's what makes the tension different. Will it be the way I imagined it or not? Or do I have to change it? Here the spring is really too big. That means for the pipe maker to start all over again. Find a new block, saw it in shape, grind it and hope that it works this time. Are you happy, Cornelius? Yes, it's even better than the first one. Really error-free, a little bigger. A nicer shape, clearly. That's going to be good. Now I'm drawing the lines I need to be able to drill them right on the lathe. I draw the middle axis around it. And then the lines that follow the holes. For the tobacco hole I need a line, for the mouthpiece I need a line and for the small hole with the 4 mm the so-called smoke channel where you smoke through. And they have to sit well. So it may be that I have to draw a few times that it's really right. At the lathe the pipe maker will now work his way step by step into the interior of the pipe. With a small drill he centers the points on the hollow and the head of the pipe where he will hollow out the wood with drills in different sizes and shapes. With wet hands the workpiece can be held better. First he drills the tobacco hole for the mouthpiece. Freehand. He always has to make sure to stay in the gap, not to tilt so that the end of the mouthpiece is not at an angle. The third drill is the spoon drill, which is slightly chronically sanded for the mouthpiece. It's relatively short and makes a slightly chronical hole in which the chronically shaped pin of the mouthpiece is also adjusted. You can imagine it like a pharmacy bottle with these ingrown glass plugs. A connection that holds well and can also be easily released. That's the idea behind it. There is an English term for army mount. In the past, the soldiers who smoked pipes broke the pipes or the mouthpieces. And then a pipe factory came up with the idea that if it can be easily released, then you can just take it apart and put it in your pocket and nothing will break. And that's a good solution to this day. The spoon hole is regularly spooned out by the drillers. For the smoke channel, it has to penetrate even deeper into the wood. You have to measure the length of the smoke channel drill. It's usually very long, if the pipe has a certain length. I have to concentrate well. I also have to bring the lathe to a high speed so that it cuts cleanly and drills. And then I drive along this smoke channel up to the middle of the head, so to speak. And then I drill with the same drill, with the 4 mm smoke channel drill, up where the tobacco hole is drilled, also in until the smoke channel and hit the small pre-drilling of the tobacco hole. It just takes a little practice and experience in which direction I have to press and pull when drilling so that there is a straight drilling. But that's just a matter of feeling, it's hard to explain. This is real craftsmanship. Drilling, freehand. The two smoke channels must not miss each other, must hit exactly on top of each other. into the lathe and then turn it off. Then I also have a pipe and nothing can go wrong because the machine and the drilling lead. And there is a lot of practice in freehand drilling. Because I also make asymmetric pipes, things that could be clamped, I have to keep in hand. So I'm pretty free from design or work. Of course, I'm bound to the conditions of the drilling so that I have enough wood around everywhere and it doesn't get too tight or too thin. These are the limiting factors, but I'm very free that way. The holes are clean. I stayed in the escape. The smoke channel is nicely centered in the bottom of the tobacco chamber. There is no mistake in the tobacco hole either. It's a really nice block, through and through. Great. You can taste good work. Yes, of course. A good drilling is the prerequisite that the pipe can work well at all. Of course, there is also who smokes the pipe. That also matters a lot. Someone who is trained in pipe smoking can also smoke a pipe that is not so well drilled. But of course not every pipe works equally well. I have customers who have been smoking for a long time and smoke a lot and know their way around well. They sometimes tell me that one of their pipes is great and the other is not so good. And I can't really say why. Because in my opinion, they are all very well done. But there is always such a small remainder that I can't really determine. Cornelius Menz grew up in Reutlingen. And he stayed. Lives here with his family and set up his workshop in the commercial area of ​​the Swabian city. Here he works on new models and on how he can make them even more beautiful and perfect. A pipe is also supposed to be a visual pleasure. In the next step, he fits a brass ring around the pinhole of the mouthpiece. Not only for decoration, so that it looks nicer, but also because the ring of the drilling gives more support. The craftsman does not like to give what is in strangers' hands. He even makes the mouthpiece himself. The special thing is that it's actually like wood is a natural material. You take sulfur and rubber and vulcanize it with each other. It's softer than acrylic, which looks similar, but is really plastic or plastic that has a much harder bite. It keeps the shine longer than ebonite, but that's the nicer material, clearly. Clarinet mouthpieces and saxophone mouthpieces are also made out of it. At the lathe, he roughly mills the future mouthpiece. This will become the pin, which connects the mouthpiece to the pipe head. Now I drill from the other side with a 3 mm drill up to about 1.5 cm in front of the other end. This is basically the smoke channel in the mouthpiece through which I then suck in the smoke. Cornelius Menz has a business secret. What we are not allowed to shoot is how he gets the conical shape of the pin. The pin, which will later fit perfectly into the grooves of the pipe head. The army mount. Cornelius grinds the mouthpiece more and more finely. First on the disc. In a finished case, it is important that it has as small a bite as possible, yet the air can flow really well and freely. Then the front of the pipe can still be so beautiful. Without a good mouthpiece, it doesn't work. Carving. Under time pressure, nothing works when building a pipe. Everything takes its time. It looks as if he could do it all very easily. I can do it well now. It was a long learning curve until I succeeded. It's always a hard work, but it's part of it. In the end, I'm always happy when it works out. Sometimes I sleep too deep, and then the smoke channel comes through. When polishing, I notice that there is not enough material. It compresses at the top, and then I have to redo the mouthpiece. I hope I don't have to do that this time. That means you build the best mouthpieces in the world. I really put a lot of effort into it, because I know it myself. I also smoke pipes myself. I have my own, but also pipes from others. I like to smoke the pipes that hold well in the mouth and that pull well. That's why I have to make an effort. I don't think they're the best in the world, but they're not bad. Fine work. It's now waiting for the pipe head. For Cornelius Menz, that means grinding, grinding, grinding. First at least two hours on the grinder, then another four hours of hand grinding. The care and precision of his work also have their price. His customers will pay around 2,000 euros for such a pipe later. The really important thing is now coming. A lot of fine work by hand with sandpaper tubes. I then make the final shape with it. Many small radii and swings. I can only do that by hand. That is almost more important than the work on the grinder. For example, a nice swing is created here. And this undercut from the head is even. If I look here, the length of the foam is also correct. And, well, what can I say? To really work the shape to the end, that it is harmonious, that all the lines run as I imagine them and the curves are correct. I actually wanted to become an artist, like my parents, like my dad. After high school I wanted to study art. But I didn't really dare. I thought it was a relatively breadless affair. Then I got more or less into textile design. I still found it a bit twisted. Drawing and painting a lot. And smoking has always fascinated me. Even as a child, when I saw my great-grandfather smoking a pipe. That was always something great. We also stole cigars together with my brothers and smoked half on the field. Smoking was always there. And I liked to carve. My dad showed me that a bit. Then I started smoking a pipe myself. And on my 30th birthday I wished for a pre-made block. The tobacco hole is already in it, a mouthpiece on it. That was the combination of smoking, modeling and carving. That didn't let me go from the beginning. And I just wanted to be really good at it. It was just a nice hobby. I had some pipes ready and I thought there are too many to smoke myself. So I put them on the Internet. I thought maybe someone would buy them. And then a collector from Ulm got in touch. He invited me to a pipe smoker meeting. Which took place in Ulm shortly afterwards. I went there, excited. I think I had 12 pipes with me. I sold 8 or so of them. I was very proud. I got a lot of orders from people. They were my first customers. And then there were more and more. And then I started to make textiles in the morning and I carved pipes in the afternoon. And then I realized I had to make a decision. And then I decided to become a pipe smoker. It was the right decision. His customers are not only from Germany. They are from all over the world. A collector from Ulm contacted me about a smoker in Sweden. He was very well connected with the collectors and customers. And that's how my pipes spread all over the world. And now Europe, America, China, Vietnam. The grinding of the brier wood is said to be even better. That's why the pipe smoker bites it with pigments dissolved in water. The bite does not smell. And the smoker will not taste it later. One layer is often not enough. The structure of the wood is a bit different. The bird's eyes do not accept it quite as well as this straight grinding. I have to go over it a bit more often. And I notice a few more layers bring a little more contrast. And then the color tone that I wanted. Maybe one more layer and then it looks really good. When the bite has missed the right color tone on the wood, Cornelius Menz has to oil the pipe. With so-called hard dry oil. A mixture of linseed oil and boiled resin. The wood needs several layers. And has to dry again and again in between. I've been working on a pipe like this for a long time. Then I'm busy for hours. And I have to put them away in between to get a clear view again. And after a short break, I perceive it differently and then see much more easily what bothers me and how I can make it even more beautiful. I think my customers see that it is finished and that we still do it with a lot of joy. I always have the feeling that you were next to the people. The most beautiful pipes are really made. That I don't think too much, but just work. And in the end the pipe is finished without actually noticing that I made it. I think many people who create something are creative. That you are just a little bit off and work for yourself and actually feel or know what you are doing. And then it's done and then it's usually good. The mouthpiece is supposed to be mirror-blank. The polishing discs are getting softer and finer. The discs first polish the ebonite and then the wood to high gloss. Polishing looks easy, but it's a bit difficult that it's really uniform everywhere. And above all, that you don't polish the bites away. That can happen when you press too hard. But it went well. Yes, it shines the way it should shine. No defects, no mistakes in the grinding. A tiny, tiny spot. I can tolerate that. It turned out nice. I also like the coloration. Is it always a special moment or is it just routine? No, no. It's often like this, I choose a block and find the pipe in it or have an idea. I take the block, work on it and I'm already polishing from the inside. That's the final step. That's what I enjoy the most. It's always a little surprise. I like to do that. I think you can see that. I just like it when it's beautiful. And that's certainly more than just a smoke object. You can hold it in your hand for a long time and maybe not even shine when reading. And then it's a hand smoker. That's a stupid word, I don't like that. But it has something of it. And if you care for it well, you have it for a long time. The way it's made, you can smoke it for decades. It's an active coal. It's a very fine powder. With a little chamomile flour. It's mixed with water glass. And then there's a paste that dries up almost black. I like it better when the pipe is black inside. It's a bit of a glow hammer. If you smoke the pipe without paste, the wood burns a little. And I think it bites when you smoke it for the first few times. Because the wood is charred. And that's how it tastes better. Cornelius Menz worked on this pipe for a week. In the truest sense of the word, he imprinted his stamp on it. Now it's ready. I'll stuff it with my favorite tobacco. It's nice and light and tastes spicy and sweet. I'm looking forward to it. The art of pipe smoking is to be patient. And to pull slowly. Then the smoke is cool and pleasant. It tastes better, above all. It also smells good for the environment. And for me too, depending on what tobacco I smoke. That's part of it. It combines a lot of pleasure. Taste, smell, see. It turned out nice.