Dr. Grabow Tour - Sparta, NC

Meet up with Pipe Smoker's Den and Dr. Grabow Collectors forum members to tour the factory in Sparta, NC. Sparta is a quiet little town and next to the Allegheny Inn was a Laconia Ale Works. Great beers and on Thursday was open from 4pm to 9pm.

We met Rick Wooten, VP and General Manager of International Pipes & Accessories LLC at the Dr. Grabow factory. At the height of manufacturing they were producing over a million pipes a year. Now that a lot of drug stores stopped carrying smoking products their biggest customer is the Army PX.

Sparta is interesting location as no train tracks run through the town. The reason that location was selected is during WWII it was difficult to get European briar and they used mountain laurel for the wood, which is very abundant in the area.

They get all their blocks now from Italy and sort them to size. They don't get enough big blocks anymore to make the Dr. Grabow Big Pipes.

They have various machines to shape the pipes and work progresses down the line of machines.

They have metal templates of the shapes that are fitted in the frazing machines to carve the shape they need.

The shapes are fitted on the frazing machine and the metal disc you see would follow the template to cut the shape in the machine

Rest of the shaping process

Various shapes made by the factory

Stem work polishing and finishing as well as a machine that puts the white logo on the stem

Stamping machine

One of the marketing gimmicks was "Pre-smoked pipes" and they had a machine that would take a pipe, pack it and draw. The carousal of smoking . . .

Packaging