It all started in April, 1959 in Hollywood, California. My parents took me home from the hospital during a heatwave in our old '58 Chevy. As far back as I can remember, there were always a couple of racks of pipes on the end table next to the couch and at night my Dad would spark one up. I can remember him sitting in his chair so peacefully puffing nice and slow. This was his time to unwind from a hard day's work and the magnificent aroma of his "Cherry Blend" would fill the apartment. He didn't know it (or he did and didn't mind), but when he was at work I liked to take the pipes off the rack and look at them and once in a while would pretend to smoke them. I always liked the look, smell and taste of the pipes. My Mom has a picture somewhere of me when I was about 18 months old standing on a chair with one of the pipes in my mouth. If we find it, I will put it on the site. It is funny. In 1963, we moved to a real house in the valley when my Dad got a job out here. At the time, Canoga Park was still a small town in the west end. Now it is the "Big City". Well it wasn't long before I was out in the garage carving wood into what I thought were pipes. What a mess I made of both the wood and my Dad's tools. Yikes!!! When I was 12,  I thought I had it all figured out so I got to it. Hoping to make my Dad proud, it was made out of a carved up pine 2X4 (I know, I know, wrong) and looking back the draw hole was way too big. I gave it to him for his birthday. Being the man he was, he said it was great and put it on the rack next to his favorite pipe. He didn't say it was made incorrectly, but instead gave me a history lesson on how pipes were and are made and the materials used. The next year I made myself one and a real one for him out of Maple. The hard part was finding stems. I didn't know you could buy one from the smoke shop so I used a hardwood dowel and shaped it like a vulcanite stem. Only one regret, there weren't any pipemakers locally so I never got to apprentice with one. Many of the pipemakers today have had the opportunity to learn from a master. I had to wing it. I stopped my attempts at pipe making until I was in my 20's. At that time, in the 1980's, little pipes were all the rage and were selling really well. Hmmmm, wonder why. So I thought I would get back into it again. Seemed easy enough since people would buy them and lose (or toss) 'em out the car window and would have to buy another one. A good business at the time, but my interest was with real tobacco pipes and so I progressed. Working with several kinds of hardwoods and the occasional block of actual Briar, finding a supplier of vulcanite stem blanks and a desire to make every piece perfect, I was on my way. I made pipes for a few years, but ended up being so busy with the day to day ordeals I put it on the back burner until 5 years ago. At first working outside when the weather was good (which is almost always here), I finally built a small shop in my apartment about a year ago. I have pictures of my 5X7 foot shop on the picture page. It is amazing how much work can be done in a tiny area. Making pipes, restoring old estate pipes and interest in "new old" stock (old pipes never smoked) keeps me busy now. Since I finally figured out that making pipes is what I really love to do, one day I will move my tools to a larger facility. Well that is the story and thank you for reading it. Please look at all the pages in this site. You will find pictures of some of my designs and I will be constantly updating the photos as new art is produced.