Category: J. Mouton Pipes

Jay was born and raised in Gueydan, Louisiana. Of his 44 years he has only lived one year elsewhere, and that was only 45 minutes away. He grew up hunting and fishing the bayous and marshes. His mother was an elementary school secretary and his father a carpenter. His dad was well known for being one of the best duck hunters in the area and was in a couple books for guiding people and making duck calls. Jay was always with him, and when he turned 14 he started working for him after school and during the summer breaks. Jay’s father was an amazing craftsman. Jay started learning to make duck calls at around 17 years old. This is when his lathe experience started, making calls from bamboo and many hardwoods. The reeds for the calls were hand cut from Ace Hard rubber combs. It’s basically vulcanite, which played a roll later in pipe making.

So fast forward to pipe making. Jay bought his first pipe in early 2016. He knew nothing, “I didn’t have the nostalgic story of grandpa or dad who smoked a pipe”. He just always loved the way it looked and decided to give it a try. Shortly after that he discovered the YTPC (YouTube Pipe Channel) while trying to learn how to smoke. It didn’t take long to meet some wonderful people and start his own channel. A gentleman by the name of Todd Elmore offered to send Jay some tobaccos to try. Well at the time he didn’t have anything good send back, but he knew wood working, so he made him a tamper from gunstock grade walnut. Todd was pretty impressed and suggested Jay should make pipes. Mouton began making tampers for few friends and shortly after started selling them.

The tampers bought Mouton a new lathe (the old one that made calls was broken). On June 11, 2018 Jay made his first pipe. He gifted that pipe to a gentleman named James Baker. He sold the second one, kept the third, and it just took off from there. Within a few months he was taking commissions. He thought, “this might be something here”, so he dove in. He began watching Jared Coles, Grant Batson, and J. Alan videos. He studied every carver he could find. Trying to learn how the best in the world set themselves apart. He’s still doing this almost 5 years later, picking a carver, then finding out everything he can about their pipes. (credit pipedia)