pipemakersforum.com

I found all of these photos of the ropp pipes factory, now a museum.. the website is entirely in French but there is an impressive gallery detailing the custom lathes and tooling. this is what got me interested in pipe making. if anyone can tell me more about ropp's success I would be very interested good information seems difficult to find.

http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/inve ... index.html

http://www.culture.gouv.fr/documentatio ... PP-001.htm

Yeah, that web site is more about the factory, its architecture, its significance to French culture. Didn't see much about their product. Someone's documented what you want to know but I'm afraid you're going to have to actually visit the town and spend at least a week developing leads and building trust. Somebody's got to do it.

if anyone can tell me more about ropp's success I would be very interested

Not sure exactly what you're asking, but I think their business model was pretty much "Make millions of half decent pipes out of cherry wood and sell them at very low prices".

were they cheap pipes? from what I can tell they were in business for over 100 years, every reference I have found about ropp pipes is quite positive. I think this company goes back far enough to when briar was only beginning to become popular. If you look a few pages into the gallery there are photos of all the various pipe styles they made, not just the standard cherry shape, and some very beefy looking belt driven lathes, buffing machines, sanders and machinery that I would think contributed to modern pipe making.

I think it might be hard to find out anything due to one simple fact, they all died using this wicked looking thing. I don't see a safety inspection sticker on it... where could it be?

Many years ago we sold a lot of Ropp cherry wood pipes. In the last few years I sold a bunch of briar pipes that were quite nice with that brand on them. They were exactly the same pipes as are available with the Chacom label. Quite often a company will use two or more labels if they want to sell them and they already have a agreement that gives a company exclusive rights for distribution. Call it some thing else and no agreements are broken.

Skip wrote:Many years ago we sold a lot of Ropp cherry wood pipes. In the last few years I sold a bunch of briar pipes that were quite nice with that brand on them. They were exactly the same pipes as are available with the Chacom label. Quite often a company will use two or more labels if they want to sell them and they already have a agreement that gives a company exclusive rights for distribution. Call it some thing else and no agreements are broken.

found this on pipedia explains the ropp chacom connection

Even though cherrywood pipes were the mainstay of Ropp until the company finally closed down in September 1991. The company was taken over by Cuty-Fort Entreprises (Chacom, Jeantet, Vuillard, Jean Lacroix...) in 1994.
Some "seconds" by Ropp: Golden Burl, Grande Morez, Nantua and Versailles.

here are some photos I thought were cool from the ropp museum. the method of shaping the inside and outside of the bowl seemed interesting, and the moulds for the stems are something I've never seen before

a fascinating site

highlights the great differences between hand made, commercial and mass produced pipes.

andrew i think that those frazing machines pre-date eu health and safety and in any case the french have always gone their own way

regards
dave

Having been raised in a wood shop in a third-going-to-second-world country, I only got familiar with "safety issues" by reading about it in the interwebs. Of course, with high aspirations to become a first-world country in the next 30 years or so, nowadays is quite common to hear about it.

Not that there are many shops left, of course.