West: Difference between revisions

I met with Tim West on a cold November afternoon during his lunch hour at his suburban home in Northwest Columbus. He live there with his wife, Carly, an RN on the orthopedic ward at Riverside Hospital, and three school-age children, a fourth child is grown and out for the house. The re-Christmas season is a busty time for Tim, and he was engaged in shipping pipes to the 35 retail outlets that carry them. Tim and I settled onto a living room couch, and I set up my tape recorder on a coffee table. But I had to be careful to keep my mind on the interview and off the dozens and dozens of large and extremely tempting pipes (I wanted to hold and fondle all the) that were spread across the floor and piled up on tables and chairs.

Tim's father, who died in 1960 when Tim was 10, was a carpenter who built and sold custom homes. The family lived in each new house until the next one wasy built and the last one sold. So Tim's childhood was spent living a nomadic existence in a succession of brand-new houses around Franklin County. Buy he learned from his father a good sense of tools and woodworking by accompanying him to job sites and building things out of scrap wood.

Time works about 40 hours a week making pipes and doing repairs for various shops around the country. Recently his father-in-law, Jim Seman, has begun working with Tim, who says that Jim "is turning into a good pipemaker." Time's free time sis spent with family. He also like cooking and does most of the cooking around the house.

Today, Tim averages about 1,500 pipes a year. They tend to be medium large to big, with either a Lucite or vulcanite (hard rubber) stem. He does no sandblasting, but he does do needlepoint carving on some of the pipes. He continues to use the finest Grecian briar that he can obtain, although he notes that some good looking briar is staring to come out of Morocco that he might like to try some day. He fully air dries the wood for one year in his garage before using it. He employs no oil or other kids of curing processes.

A Time Wes pipe will come in one of three alcohol-based aniline stains--a natural, a walnut and a dark or black walnut--with a Carnauba waz finish. He will use the Dunhill or European Red stain, but not often. "I guess I'm  very influenced by GBDs and Charatans from my ealy days. Their naturals were their virgin quality--their flawless or nearly flawless grained pipes. So I teind to go with the natural color on pipes that are flawless. Maybe I shouldn't be saying this, because everybody will be thinking that my walnut pipes and my dark walnut pipes are the ones with the flaws. That's not necessarily true, but I don't think it's a secret either that pipemakers stain their pipes for a reason. They tend to stain because they're covering up or masking imperfections on the surface. Briar wood is not perfect. If it was, there wouldn't be the mystique about it there is. If every single briar pipe had the same grain, it would be like a piece of furniture. But since it's not and since it does have imperfections, that leads to perfect pipes. So what I consider to be a good-grained pipe tends to be a natural, virgin quality.

However, as Time notes, "It's not like I make a pipe an never make it again, and every pipe I ever make is always different. I work from Time West shape charts, and I have poplar shapes I've created that retailers are buying from me every time they order. And I've got standard freehand shapes that I'll make over and over and over again. So half of my business may be from models I've made before and am making again, but then the other half are just new designs, new creations, whatever the shaper/sander creates." And, time adds, "Freehands across the country are coming back; they are most definitely coming back."