Abe Herbaugh

Abe Herbaugh is among the American pipe makers who emerged in the late 2000s. Born in the state of Virginia and raised for most of his life in West Virginia, Herbaugh spent his early years at the workbench not on pipes but on electric guitars, where building and repairing instruments gave him a grounding in both woodworking and metal hardware fabrication.

The pipes he stamps with his own name come out of a small workshop where these two skills work side by side.

From Guitars to Pipes

Herbaugh's interest in wood began in his father's small workshop, and a craft workshop he attended after high school gave him the basic measuring and tooling instincts of repair work. For many years he built electric guitars and guitar hardware at Callaham Guitars. He first came to pipes as a smoker and collector; his first artisan pipe was a Rad Davis, and it was from there that his interest in American-school workmanship grew.

He began making his own pipes in 2009, in the workshop where his father built violins. He would later describe that first attempt — pairing a random block of briar with a ready-made mouthpiece — as a complete failure. In 2010 he attended a pipe show for the first time as a maker; not long after, he left the guitar business to devote himself fully to pipes.