The Long Shanks

The long shanks is a grouping name used to bring four classic shapes — Canadian, Lumberman, Liverpool, and Lovat — together under a single heading. All four preserve the Billiard body; what holds them together is that the shank is stretched well beyond the usual, with the mouthpiece (stem) shortened to compensate. The term doesn't come from any manufacturer's catalog — it was born from the community's own shape literature.

Source of the Term

The naming is credited to Bill Burney, author of the shape chart known as the ASP Pipe Shapes Chart, prepared within the alt.smokers.pipes newsgroup community. Burney describes the four shapes individually, but also states explicitly that the umbrella heading is his own coinage. What's at issue, then, isn't a historical production family distilled from catalogs, but a classification heading applied after the fact. Because the chart circulated freely online, it became one of the community's most consulted shape resources, and the group name spread along with it.