Pipe

Pipe. 1- A liquid measure, used chiefly in the wine trade, and varying with the wine for which it is used - e.g. a pipe of port generally contains 138 gallons, that of sherry 130 gallons. 2. A tube used for the passage of gases, liquids, etc., and made of all kinds of material. Pipes of lead or clay and other plastic material are made by passing the clay or molten lead through a cylinder the interior of which is occupied by a solid mandril. The old method of making iron piping was to bend a plate of the metal and solder the edges together; but the process now generally followed is to cast a cylinder of iron around a steel mandril with a projecting point with conical end. This mandril end is passed through a hole in a steel post, and is grasped by machinery which draws the cylinder through the hole, thus spreading the metal equally on the outside while the mandril preserves the internal diameter. Tobacco pipes are generally made in two pieces: a rolled cylinder through which wire is thrust, and a lump of clay which is welded to the stem and shaped outwardly by a mould, the interior of the bowl being shaped by the introduction of an oiled stopper. Care having been taken that the hole through the stem penetrates to the bowl, the stem is bent to the required curve, the pipe is trimmed and finished off, and then baked, eight or nine hours sufficing to turn out 50 gross of pipes. Tobacco pipes vary in material from the homely corn-cob of the southern States to the highly-finished meerschaum for which Vienna is chiefly renowned, or the bejewelled, hookah and narghile of the East, A kind of cherry-wood grown near Vienna and the mock-orange of Hungary are in great request for pipe-stems; while the "briar-root" pipe (made from the root of a heath, bruyira) is universally known, as are the scented pipes which are known as myallwood.