Today's episode of All Pipes Considered is quite a special one. As we continue celebrating 160 years of Peterson, we are delighted to introduce a brand-new textured finish: the Cobble. Join myself, Sykes Wilford, Josh Burgess, and Glen Whelan as we discuss this new innovation, available now on-site.

[Andrew Wike]: Welcome back to another episode of All Pipes Considered. We're doing something a little bit different today. We're gonna be unveiling a brand-new textured finish from Peterson: the Cobble.

We're gonna be talking to a bunch of different people across the organization from our founder, Sykes Wilford, to our Vice President of Manufacturing, Josh Burgess, all the way to Managing Director of Peterson of Dublin, Glen Whelan, and we're gonna give you all the inside scoop on this new finish and what makes it super special. So let's take a look.

[Sykes Wilford]: We're here to talk about the origin story for the new Cobble finish.

[Joshua Burgess]: Textured pipes are something that we put a lot of energy into at the factory in recent years. We made serious improvements to rustication. We also rebuilt the sandblasting setup at Peterson in recent years to bring our sandblast up to artisanal standards. But in the midst of that, we talked about finding a new finish that would combine the best of both of those features. This is something that you and I, in particular, wanted to do for a long time.

[SW]: Yes, and I think it's worth noting that as we were working through the rebuilding of Peterson's sandblasting and finding a new voice for rustication in 2018, to 2020, we felt like there was room for another textured finish then, but we didn't know whether that was something we were doing with the sandblasting room, something we were doing in rustication, or something else entirely.

Our starting point was that there's something cool here to be done, but we didn't have a sense of what it was at that time. We were really focused on getting the nuts and bolts of those processes the way we wanted them for Peterson.

[JB]: Right, but we knew we wanted something really craggy, so that was the goal really in setting out to achieve this. We had a couple of ideas about how to pursue this and you were pretty integral in that process. You spent some time in the sandblasting booth when we started working on this finish, and I think you actually produced the first result that we liked, and then we worked to implement that in the factory, with help from the guys.

[SW]: Yes. We worked together — you, Glen, Jonathan, and the guys in the factory, and I — on this. I was experimenting. I don't have the technical expertise that the guys in the factory have, but I have this broad base of random conversations I've had with pipe makers over the last 25 years.

[JB]: And we've both seen a lot of old pipes.

[SW]: Yes. Part of where we were coming from is really wanting something that evoked early 20th century English sandblasting. Where you intellectually start with a project like this is not necessarily where you end up, but that was definitely something that was influencing our thinking.

I love textured finishes. I think they are really interesting. As wonderful as smooth pipes are, I think that how people have achieved different textures on pipes over the last 125, 150 years is an interesting topic. At Peterson, it's something I've focused a lot of my R&D attention to over the years.

After a number of failed experiments trying rustication and sandblasting styles that we're not gonna detail, because some of them are embarrassingly bad, neither our normal rustication nor our normal sandblasting yielded the results we liked.

[JB]: Right, and it required changing techniques in both the rustication station and in the sandblasting cabinet. We had to make modifications in how we normally do things, but the result came out exactly the way we wanted it to.

[SW]: I'm very pleased with the result.

[JB]: Cobble is a natural name for this too. You think about some of those Saturday treks through Dublin and walking on the cobblestone streets. Cobble also harkened to that finish that we wanted to achieve.

[SW]: Yes, we were struggling with the name there for a minute. Cobble was Glen's suggestion and we were all immediately in concurrence.

[Glen Whelan]: The idea for the Cobble series of pipes came from the similarities of this finish and the cobble-paved streets that are synonymous throughout Ireland.

The cobble streets share a uniformity and aesthetic, but it's only when you get up close to them that you see the uniqueness that has been carved through hundreds of years of history. This is the essence of what we're trying to achieve in the factory.

In the early stages of the production, the pipes will all share a uniformity, but it's only after they move to the sandblasting stage of production that we will see the uniqueness be unearthed and the grain structure appear on each pipe.

Using our iconic red-black stain allows us to further contrast the varying areas of grain structure on each and every bowl. Given that this is the 160th anniversary for Peterson, we felt it important to do something innovative that would represent the landmark moment for Peterson. I feel, with this finish, we've absolutely achieved this.

I can see future historical Peterson timelines marking this date as the year that the Cobble was first released. That is really important for us here to continue making moments for this factory's storied history.

[AW]: Alright, there you have it. That is an inside look into Peterson's brand-new Cobble finish.

Make sure to go check these out on-site now. There's lots of different shapes to choose from, practically the entire classic line. Really take a good look at all the pictures so you can see the impressive grain patterns that are coming out amidst this rusticated texture. I think that they're one of the most interesting finishes that Peterson has ever produced.

Thank you so much for watching, and thank you to everyone who contributed to the interview, and I can't wait to see you next time.