PIPE MAKING.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2083, 27 October 1880, Page 2

PIPE MAKING.

Mr George M'Phee, who with hia son recently arrived in the colony, and has been engaged experimenting on claya found near Stirling and Papanui [for the purpose of ascertaining their suitability for the manufacture of tobacco pipes, has shown us (“ Daily Times”) some excellent samples of short pipes of various patterns which ho has been able to produce. Although not sufficiently burned, these samples are quite sufficient to establish the fact that good pipes can be made from the Stirling clay. Pure white can be produced, and the pipes can be made of such a temper as will be at once appreciated by smokers. Imported pipes, being necessarily burned hard for the purposes of carriage, do not absorb the tobacco oil as will pipes specially made on the spot by experienced makers, Mr M'Phee has brought out from Edinburgh moulds and plant to enable him to produce a great variety of patterns about 150 in all—and hia son being a mouldmaker, any pattern that is desired can be produced. He also brings out two men and a boy to assist him in starting his industry, and be will establish himeelf at once in Dunedin, bringing the clay up by rail from Stirling, and eventually employing, as he hopes, twenty or thirty hands. We may mention that Mr McPhee, sen., is an old soldier, and lost his arm in the attack on the quarries before Sebastopol on the 7th Juno, 1855. His regiment was the 57th (“ Old Die-hards”), which took part in the Hew Zealand wars, though at that time Mr McPhee had been invalided, and still retains his pension from a grateful country of a shilling a day.