THE MAKING OF A CALABASH PIPE - PAGE 2 OF 8
WHY & HOW DID I MAKE IT

At first, I have to say that I never considered myself as a pipe maker, not even an amateur, because I didn't use to make pipes, and I had never made a normal wooden pipe [1]. The first pipe I made, 25 years ago, consisted of two pieces of bamboo, an wider as a bowl, and a thinner as a stem. Two years later, I made another pipe, a "churchwarden", using a branch of holly for the bowl and the shank, and a piece of bamboo for the stem. It's a primitive pipe, but I still have it, and smoke it from time to time.

The hollywood pipe

My last attempt was about two years ago, when I tried to make a corn cob pipe, but it ended small and funny, compared to the cheapest corn cob of the market.
So, why did I decide to make a pipe so complicated, as a gourd calabash ?
This year, I was I in a strong pipe-making mood again. I was also very interested in calabash pipes. As it's very difficult, or impossible, to find a real calabash in Greece, and I don't use to buy anything via internet [2], I had to travel to London, last summer, to aquire an estate one. It's an elegant, antique, real gourd calabash, made in London, in the year 1921. The pipe needed a lot of cleaning and restoring, and I did it myself. I even had to replace the cork gasket. After many hours of work, the pipe was in a great condition, and I new exactly how a calabash is made. As it smokes excelent, I wanted to smoke it frequently, but it's not the best thing to do with an antique pipe, and it's not very wise, to carry around a fragile calabash, in a back-pack !
So, I had a crazy idea: Instead of trying to make an ordinary looking pipe from a piece of briar, I decided to make a calabash ! Not a calabash-shaped wooden pipe, but a real african gourd calabash, with a detachable bowl, a silver cup, a wooden ferrule and a silver band, like they used to make them 100 years ago in England. Finding the materials, especialy the gourd, was a big problem, but as you'll see in the next pages, anything can be done, if you want it too much.

The top of the gourd The bottom of a spray can The cheap pipe

As you'll see, I made the calabash pipe using the handle of an african instrument, a cheap briar pipe, a tin spray can, an old electric fuse, a piece of cork, and a piece of an old radio antenna. All the materials were chosen, used and assembled in a way, that none, maybe not even a calabash specialist, can say that the pipe is a novelty or a fake. The total cost was only 8,70 euros, just the price of the briar pipe, because the african instrument, purchased for 12 euros, is still playable with another handle. All the other materials were existing, or free. It took about a month to finish it, most of the time was for thinking, planning, searching and experimenting.
Browse through the next pages, to see exactly how I made it.

[1] [2] It was December 2004, since then I have made some more pipes, and also bought some via internet.

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