What's New?

12/8/02

Another long-overdue update, featuring a batch of new tampers.  There are about a half-dozen Cruisers in various materials, plus a few Back Room items and the usual McMurphy insanity.

To help identify specific pieces for sale, I've added item numbers to the Cruiser, Back Room, and McMurphy pages.

9/17/02

Wow, it's been way too long since the last update!  The Columbus show was terrific ... met a lot of great people, had a terrific time, and even sold some stuff.  Definitely a "must attend" event for next year.

There's not too much in this update ... mostly a cleanup of the site to reflect pieces that have been sold.

The big news, though, is a new JAGWAL model: the Cruiser.  The Cruiser is a pocket-sized tamp with an internal pick ... overall length is about 3-1/2", making it easy to carry.  I made a few Cruisers before the Columbus show and sold all but one; I'm presently working on a few for the Richmond show. 

After Richmond, I'll add a "Cruiser" page with current inventory.  At present, the best place to get a look at the Cruiser is the Gallery page, where you can see several of the ones I've made so far.  And if you want to know why it's called the Cruiser, take a look at the Products page.

7/31/02

Just a couple pieces added to the Back Room.  The Estate Pipes pages are new (though many more pipes have yet to be listed).  I also added the "Events" page to list the shows I'll be attending.  Now I gotta stop fooling with this Web site and get a few new pieces done before Columbus!

6/17/02

Where to start?  I've added two new pages: the McMurphy page for one-of-a-kind items and the Back Room page for markdowns and closeouts.  As you probably noticed, I updated the picture on the home page to show several of the new pieces I've finished recently.

On both of the new pages, and the Big Daddy page, I've added a number of new pieces.  The new woods I've used include koa, black acacia, striped maple, birdseye maple burl, manzanita burl and spalted box elder.  A few of the newer pieces feature trim made from polished black buffalo horn, which is a material I've had sitting around for a while but had never used.  I think it's a nice contrast to lighter woods such as the black acacia.

I've started using the Taig milling attachment to mill the 1/8" and 3/16" pipe tools.  Once I've refined my technique a bit, I'll add a section on milling to the "Inside the Shop" section pages.

Finally, I've shortened the "standard" length of a Big Daddy tamper to roughly 4-5/8", in response to some customer inquiries.  I still have a few of the longer, "original" Big Daddies in various woods.

6/8/02

I've added a "Links" page, where I'll be putting links to pages of interest.

I've also finished the first cut of a series of pages entitled "Inside the Shop," describing some of the tools and processes I use.

5/24/02

I made a few small changes to the site: I toned down the background grid a little and added some buttons to make navigation a bit easier.

The big news is that I have also added PayPal payment buttons to the product pages.  I can accept credit card payments through PayPal, as well as payments from PayPal account balances.

I'm using the PayPal shopping cart ... please e-mail me if you experience any problems.

5/19/02

What's new?  Well, this site just came up.  So at the moment, I guess, everything is new.  But there are a few items of particular interest:

Product News

Many of the Big Daddy tampers pictured have 1/8" straight picks.  Lately I've also been making "pipe tools" cut from either 1/8" or 3/16" rod.  These have a flat section at the end and look a little more like the tip of a pipe nail.  My personal preference is for the 3/16" tool, but many people prefer the 1/8" tool because it will fit down the shank of most pipes.

I have a couple new woods in the shop that I've just started working with ... Curly Koa and Black Acacia.  Koa is a native Hawaiian hardwood that is used for musical instruments and decorative inlays.  It's becoming a bit difficult to get nice koa wood, but this batch looks promising.

Black acacia is a dark, dramatically grained hardwood that turns well and should produce some nice tampers.  I recently bought a batch from a pen turner in California and hope to turn a couple test pieces fairly soon.

I also have a batch of manzanita burl on the way.  We'll see what that looks like when it arrives.  And, I have some nicely striped Japanese Maple that was, unfortunately, a little too green to work with when it arrived.  It seems to be drying out (finally!) and I expect to take a stab at that in the not-too-distant future.

Finally, I'll be adding a section (eventually) for estate pipes.  I'm not a pipe dealer, by any means, but like many collectors I'm always intending to thin the herd a little bit.

Of course, the hold-up on all this has been getting the first cut of this @#$%&*! Web site done.  Which leads me to ...

Web Site News

Once the dust settles I'll be making some changes and additions to the Web site.  I'd like to add PayPal buttons to streamline the ordering process, assuming I can decipher my hosting company's instructions for doing this.

In addition, I'm still tinkering with photography, and hope to start producing better images of the tampers.

Also, I want to put up a form for orders and inquiries -- I'll list the woods I have available, the tamper models, and the pick/tool options.  That way, you can just fill out the form and let me know what you're interested in.

Copyright © 2002 JAGWAL, all rights reserved

Last modified: 12/08/02