"Smaug the Briar" | Hand-carved briar pipe

Smaug the Briar! Ah, pull up a chair... for this tale of fire and briar! Once upon a podcast, @mattfradd stirred up childhood memories evoking grand gatherings where tobacco pipes were as common as the tales told. No smoke does I puff, yet the scent of tobacco lingered like a spell from childhood. Enter stage left: a humble Bones pipe from @morganpipes, not much to look at, but oh, the potential! For me it was less a pipe and more a canvas. Then, as if from the pages of Tolkien's tomes (a nod to the old pipe-smoking professor himself), a spark ignited and inspiration took wing.  Smaug, that magnificent dragon of lore, would be my muse. With tools more suited to a hobbit's workshop than an elves magical forge, a rotary tool here, an X-Acto blade there… I embarked on my maiden voyage into the realms of wood carving.  I carved each scale with the care of a dwarf crafting in the halls of Erebor, the briar wood yielding to my vision. A dash of rustic stain to give life to the scales, and a