Cooke, James T.: Difference between revisions

Vermont native James T. “J. T.” Cooke, (b. 1949) has been called “the Bo Nordh of the blast,” “the supreme master” and “the Tessla of Sandblasting.” 1  In 2022, he was awarded Doctor of Pipes by the Chicago Pipe Collectors Club, the equivalent of Hollywood’s Oscar for Lifetime Achievement Oscar. 2  He has made two pipes of the year for Pipes & Tobaccos magazine, one in 1999 (in a run of 250) and a second (in a run of 50) in 2008. In 2005, he made an edition of 25 straight dublins for the NASPC club pipe. 3  His pipes are renowned for offering a tactile and visual experience unlike any others in the world.  His work is in such continuous demand that commissioned pipes have sometimes taken three to four years, resulting in a robust estate market where his pipes routinely sell for more than newly commissioned ones.  

It goes without saying that pipe smokers are initially attracted visually to the pipes they choose to smoke. Far more important but either ignored or underestimated is a pipe’s engineering, on what’s going on inside the pipe. When J. T. parted from Briar Workshop upon their relocation to Florida to make his own pipes, he was, writes Chuck Stanion, “entranced by the possibilities of improved internal engineering and the reduction of smoke turbulence within a pipe.” 15  

The opportunity to work for Barry Levin of Levin Pipes International gave J. T. the opportunity he needed for an intensive period of hands-on study. As Stanion writes of the thousands of pipes Cooke refurbished for Levin,

[T]he mortise and tenon joint is carefully constructed, with the chamfered tenon reaching to the bottom of the mortise, where the smoke hole is slightly recessed to accept a tight fit with the tenon to reduce the collection of any residue or moisture. The smoke hole from the heel of the bowl all the way to the lip button maintains the same circumference, even with very flat bits, so there is no reduction in airflow that might cause condensation. 17

=== Curing===  

“Cooke’s curing method,” writes Chuck Stanion, “takes up to two weeks and reduces the weight of the briar from 4-9 percent, depending on the individual block, and his method cures primarily the smoke channel and tobacco chamber, providing flavorful briar that absorbs moisture, so it’s important to keep a J.T. Cooke pipe clean for that carefully developed system to do its job of providing a dry and effortless smoke.” 18 The curing process can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, depending on the block of briar, and is done after the lathe work has been done and chamber bored but before the sandblasting. Cooke’s propriety process is done in two stages by first forcing the resins and tannins to expand and second apply a special solution to dissolve the resins and tannins. 19  As J. T. explains to David M:

I know guys like to age their briar. Some say for 2 or 3 years. I learned in my experiments with Barry [Levin] that there is a lot of stuff in briar, even the best briar . . . .  So what I learned is that after I turn the pipes on the lathe, I put a dummy stem on them and I run them through a curing process, remove what residual tar and oils and sap is still in the wood, I leach that stuff out and then I dry the wood. Most cutters do an admirable job, because it’s a competitive industry like anything else, they do a great job of cleaning the wood as best they can. But they are cleaning 50 or 100 blocks at a time. And there is no way they can get all the stuff out. Plus, they are trying to get some stuff out of a big hunk of wood. I am trying to get the sap out of the turned pipe so it is a smaller process. The difference in a pre-cured block of wood and a post-cured block of wood is that I can drop the weight between the two between 6 and 9%. When I started actually weighing and charting the whole thing, I knew I was getting stuff out but it blew my mind that there was so much stuff in even the best block of wood. And it’s important because you want the block to be able to breathe. If you have a dry block that still has sap in it and over the years, the sap polymerizes. Once that happens, there is no way to get rid of it and it sets up like epoxy in the pores. The pipe will be heavy, not particularly absorbent. 20

=== Blasting ===

Cooke writes, “Five stage blasting began around 1999. It’s never a hard and fast rule; it all depends on what the briar needs.” 21 In “Down this Blasted Path,” the short essay Cooke provides on his website, he details the stages:

1. The first stage shows me the over-all grain pattern and how the growth rings are oriented. This is where most (not all) pipe labels stop.

== Bibliography ==

“Spotlight on JT Cooke,” Uptown’s Smoke Shop Spring 2008, pp. 22-25.

Stanion, Chuck. J.T. Cooke Sandblasted Canadian (2008). Product Description, 004-009-13142, Smokingpipes.com.  

—. Email to Mark Irwin on J. T. Cooke’s briar curing process. Tuesday, May 26, 2020.  

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== References ==

2 Chuck Stanion, “Doctors and Masters of Pipes: A Timeline,” https://www.smokingpipes.com/smokingpipesblog/single.cfm/post/doctors-and-masters-pipes-timeline?utm_source=Smokingpipes.com&utm_campaign=18848e7cd7-Sun_Jun_12_2022_DailyReader&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0e8b6a473f-18848e7cd7-209228005 , accessed June 12, 2022.

3 http://www.naspc.org/Pipe%20of%20the%20Year.htm, accessed 6/10/22.

5 “Tesla.”

6 “In A Class All His Own.”

8 “Road Less Traveled.”

12 “In A Class All His Own”; the operation took place January 2nd, 2000, per Cooke in an email to Mark Irwin, June 25, 2022.

14 Email to Mark Irwin, June 24, 2022.

32 Stanion, “Tesla.”

34 Rich Esserman, email to Doctor of Pipes, March 19, 2022.

36 Stanion, “Master Blaster.”