Middle Earth Ranger Forum

Some grand pipes by artist Sidrit Vaqari....he has many Tolkien inspired.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smoprJHGOwo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U54GIUfR6Ck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tmDPuN7J9E


How many rangers out there enjoy a good pipe no and then? and what sort of tobacco do you prefer.? I have a Macqueen Ranger wood pipe .... http://macqueenpipes.com/ranger.aspx ....and prefer Mac barren's royal 7 seas.

I'm a regular puffer. You can always count on me to have my trusty Peterson Donegal Rocky close to hand. I'm a non aromatic flake tobaccoo kinda guy by and large. Orlik Dark Strong Kentuky stands as my regular favorite. Also I've made made several Aragorn style tavern pipes.

I'm not regular, one or two smokes a year.

My preferred pipe is a gouda style clay pipe. (not my picture)




Preferred tobacco is Pete's blend from the local shop.

I enjoy a good bowl every once in a while. I live in CT so there is a lot of high quality local tobacco around me. Two of my favorites are Proper English (which is Smokey and spicy like a BBQ sauce) and Golden Dansk (which is lighter and sweet). Sometimes I like to mix the two together, for they compliment and balance each other out quite well. As for what I smoke in, I made my own ranger style pipe from black cherry and then ebonized it. I'm quite proud of it and it's one of my most prized possessions.

I smoke relatively irregularly, however, I normally buy all of my tobaccania from smokingpipes.com, which has a great selection of both pipes and tobacco for a relatively low cost. I prefer the Dunhill blends, largely Nightcap and Early Morning Pipe, as well Peterson Sunset Breeze, if I'm in the mood for a more aromatic tobacco. One of these days I'll take pictures of my pipes for you all to see, but my current favorite is theMissouri Meerschaum Dwarf Cobbit. It's dirt cheep and smokes fairly well.

I have an italian briar churchwarden and a meerchaum that's a sabertooth. I have a variety of blends I use, mostly the CAO flavors, like the Eileen's Dream and such as that. the local shop has some blends, but I don't get into town enough to shop there, so I just order everything online and I've been quite pleased with that. mostly I use the churchwarden, it just fits me better and is more my style, I suppose.

I recently got into pipe making a few months back and now I smoke once or twice a week just when sitting outside.
My favorite tobacco so far is just some simple Sir Walter Raleigh Aromatic from a drug store it's good stuff!

Wow, those are works of art, especially the third one

Wow! Very cool, Derrek!

For my part, I had never smoked in my life previous to taking up pirate and ranger reenactment activities. I can't stand the smell of cigarettes, but I've always found pipe smoke to be somewhat enjoyable. Since starting getting involved in pirate activities in the early 2000's I've started amassing a small pipe collection (mostly 18th Century clay tavern pipes) despite not being a smoker, but naturally that led to me finally giving it a try. I still don't smoke on anything like a regular basis (for which I'm glad, because I generally find it a distasteful habit, and the health risks give me a great deal of pause), but at events and on long treks I do enjoy lighting up and puffing a bit, if for no other reason than creating a more immersive atmosphere for myself (pun intended?). I even managed to briefly learn how to blow smoke rings, though the next time I tried I had completely lost the hang of it, haha.

I suppose you could say I enjoy the pipe-smoking aesthetic more than the actual act of smoking, haha.

I definitely agree Manveruon, Mine is sort of a practice for public events if you will. I have a distaste for cigarettes but some aromatic pipe tobacco is decently enjoyable just not an everyday thing. I'm more into the creation than the practice.

While we are on the subject of pipes I was looking for period ways to light a pipe. I have a Hudson Bay Tobacco Tin like the one seen below but haven't really tried the lens yet.
Other than that i could think of a candle wick or just a stick caught on fire. Any other ideas?

To my mind, the most appropriate "period" way to light a pipe (keeping in mind that Middle-earth smashes a wide range of historical concepts together to create its unique setting) would be to light a small fire with flint and steel and then use a lit twig, taper, or candle to transfer the flame to the pipe. I imagine this is probably how it was done in the early days of pipe smoking, from the Renaissance through to the invention of friction matches (though I'm also sure there's someone aound here who knows a great deal more about this subject than I do, and can offer much better, more detailed information).
That being said, it is implied more than once that Hobbits, at the very least, have indeed developed friction matches. Clearly these are not widespread, as other cultures are repeatedly stated to use tinderboxes for fire-lighting, but it seems to me that friction matches very well could have made their way out of the shire as luxury items, along with the export of pipe tobacco. Still, given their rareness and likely their difficulty to manufacturer, even in the shire, it would make sense for other cultures to regard them as extreme luxuries, and thus not to use them on anything close to a regular basis.

Manveruon wrote:To my mind, the most appropriate "period" way to light a pipe (keeping in mind that Middle-earth smashes a wide range of historical concepts together to create its unique setting) would be to light a small fire with flint and steel and then use a lit twig, taper, or candle to transfer the flame to the pipe. I imagine this is probably how it was done in the early days of pipe smoking.

The efficient way to go about that is to skip the whole "fire-lighting" step. JBook touched on this in an Edge of the Wild issue last year (Winter edition, I believe), but all you have to do is get a spark on your charred material with your flint & steel and toss the glowing ember in the top of your pipe. Put your flint over the mouth of the pipe to keep things from flying away, and then puff in and out rapidly on the pipe to get the ember glowing hot, lighting the top of your packed leaf. Works great.

I love it thanks for the information Greg!