Books:

Discovered! 505
Odd Enterprises

Hidden Dollars

How to Make
Money at Home

Small Business
of Your Own

You Can Own
a Business

Clenched tightly between his teeth was a pipe fashioned of native Biddeford clay. The tobacco he puffed on contentedly was a pungent Canadian leaf, and its odor permeated the room.

"Few things in life give me more pleasure than a good clay pipe," says Gagne. "That's why I started making them." What this 72-year-old Franco-American originally started as a hobby, has now blossomed into a profitable business.

Gagne has smoked clay pipes for more than fifty years, and stubbornly refuses to draw on anything else. A war-created shortage of domestic and imported clay pipes bothered him considerably. Clay pipes break easily, and smokers like to replace them frequently because they get discolored and dirty from the nicotine which they absorb from the tobacco.

PRICES FOR clays have jumped to almost three times pre-war levels. They now cost from 10 cents to a quarter apiece. Before the war, the price was a nickel or less. About eighteen months ago, Gagne decided that he was paying too much for his pipes.

This launched the retired salesman on his profitable hobby.

"Why not make my own clay pipes? I asked myself," recalls Gagne with a chuckle. "I didn't realize how much trouble I was going to have before I found out how to do a good job.

And he did have trouble. Commercial clay pipe manufacturers refused to divulge their trade secrets. Gagne estimates that he made more than 5,000 pipes before he learned the jealously guarded secret of their manufacture. Experimentation was the only way left open to him.

Before he embarked on his self-imposed task of learning how to make clay pipes, Gagne never had worked with clay. He didn't know the first thing about it, and his questions were myriad. Gagne then turned to the only possible source of accurate information—schools. He wrote letters to many engineering colleges seeking answers to his questions.

Most of his help came from Prof. F.H. Norton, ceramics department head at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A lengthy correspondence followed between Gagne and Norton, who was able to answer most of Gagne's questions and thus save valuable time spent experimenting. Even with this help, however, a year passed before Gagne was able to turn out a satisfactory clay pipe.

THE PROCESS of manufacturing clay pipes is deceivingly simple, yet it can be successfully performed only after much practice. The secret of the manufacture lies in the fact that no machine yet invented has been able to produce a pipe comparable to one made by hand. Clay pipe manufacture is essentially a craftsman's work which requires deftness, judgment and speed.

Gagne uses three kinds of clay in making his pipes: a dark clay found in Biddeford; so-called China clay imported from England, and a white clay imported from Holland. Although commercial clay pipe manufacturers prefer foreign clays, Gagne favors native clay.

Clay purchased from importers for about $5 per 100-pound sack comes in powder form and must be mixed with water before use. The proper ratio of water and clay can be determined only by experimentation. When the mixture becomes soft, pliable and works easily in the hands, it is ready for use.

An important tool in pipe manufacture is the mold. This can be made of metal or wood, but should be made by a skilled pattern maker to insure accuracy, Gagne says. His mold was fashioned of aluminum by a Biddeford artisan.

AFTER GAGNE has mixed the clay, he is ready to make a pipe. Two chunks of clay are set aside. One is rolled on the tabletop until it is about four inches long and a quarter-inch in diameter. A wire is rammed into it, and the clay rolled around the wire. The clay piece then becomes the pipe stem.

The second piece of clay, shaped like a pullet egg with a flat end, becomes the bowl. Both pieces are put into the mold, which they fit roughly, and the mold is closed. Gagne uses two C-clamps to apply pressure to the mold.

A tapered round stick, similar to a section of a broom handle, is inserted into the bowl opening in the mold and rotated slowly to form the bowl. After the bowl has been cleared to the desired depth, the pipe is removed from the mold.

"Here is where I learned a lesson," smiles Gagne. "I must have made hundreds of pipes, and yet each one stuck to the mold. When I opened the mold, the pipe fell apart."

A letter to Professor Norton brought the solution to the problem. The ceramics expert told Gagne to put a thin film of banana oil on the mold as a liner. Gagne did this, and his sticking troubles were eliminated.

THERE IS much more to making a good clay pipe than just getting a whole pipe from the mold, however. When they are formed, the pipes still are moist. They must be dried and this process often is lengthy.

"Pipes must be dried naturally in the open air," Gagne explains. "This means they must sit in a warm, but not hot, place for ten to fifteen days in the summer. The drying time increases to thirty-five to forty days in the winter because of the increased humidity in the air."

After they have dried thoroughly, the clay pipes are quite brittle and must be handled gingerly. To harden them, they are placed in a furnace at a temperature of about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

No ordinary coal, oil or gas stove will maintain such a high temperature. When he began experimenting, Gagne learned that kilns could be purchased, but the price was too high for him. Instead, he made his own furnace. He obtained 400 fire bricks and used them to build a four-foot square kiln in the cellar of his home. He found that charcoal produced the most even heat, and now uses this as fuel. "Whenever I want to use the furnace, I have to light it at about 6 o'clock in the morning," Gagne explains. "Then at about noon I put the pipes in, but the kiln doesn't reach 2,000 degrees until about 7 o'clock at night."

The entire hardening process, from lighting the kiln to removal of the pipes, takes almost seventy-two hours. This is necessary, Gagne says, because the pipes must be heated and cooled slowly to prevent damage.

ONCE HE had acquired the knack of making good clay pipes, Gagne thought he might be able to sell them. Skeptical friends and neighbors laughed. One morning, to prove to himself that he had lost none of his sales skill, Gagne visited several Biddeford tobacco shops. Inside of two hours he had orders for more than thirty-six dozen pipes.

Currently, Gagne sends his pipes to all parts of the nation. Special emphasis is put on shipping pipes to towns and cities with a large French or Irish population. These two national groups are especially partial to clay pipes, Gagne has observed.

Some of Gagne's pipes are shipped to Montreal and other French centers in Canada, but this business is not too lucrative. A forty per cent import duty levied by Canadian customs forces the retail pipe price to exorbitant levels, he says.

GAGNE'S ROUGH fingers recently caressed one of his clays lovingly as he eased back in his rocker and told an entertaining bit of clay pipe history.

The first known clay pipes in Maine were made by Indians along the Kennebec River. They took clay from the river bottom and roughly fashioned bowls which were set in the sun to dry. Straight branches were used as stems.

"The Indians would seal one end of the branch, and put worms in the other end, before it, too, was sealed," Gagne related. "The worms fed on the inside of the branch, drilling it through. This sometimes took as long as three or four weeks."

A French trading vessel sailed up the Kennebec early in 1602 and showed the Indians a trick or two in stem drilling. French sailors heated pieces of wire cherry red and then burned a hole through the stem in a matter of seconds.

"The Indians were much impressed, and beaver skins went fast as they were exchanged for bits of wire," Gagne related.

"The clay pipe of that day differed very little from the clays of today," Gagne said. "Clays have taken a back seat in recent years, but there still is a demand for them."