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Written By Puff.com Member Natedogg
When I first got in to pipes, my father-in-law gave me a Meer and I started with Captain Black. After joining Puff.com and seeing that a Meer wasn’t exactly something I should be smoking daily, and decided I should have more than one pipe, and I decided I needed a Briar.
After searching the net, I found plenty of pipes for $50 or more, and found some sub-$25 pipes. I kept reading on the Puff.com forums and most people prefer Savs, Petersons, etc. and I just couldn’t afford it. The only other option I saw was Cob pipes, and they just aren’t my style (even though they smoke well). I went to a local B&M and picked up an H.I.S. straight for $25 and had at it. Not having smoked any other pipes other than the Meer it smoked fine. The hole wasn’t centered, and neither was the stem hole, but it still bugged me as to why most people preferred $50 plus pipes. Why were they so much more expensive? How can they smoke any better than my H.I.S.? I forgot about pipes for a couple of months but in December, I quit cigarettes and started the pipe full time. This is when I got my Savinelli 602 from the same B&M.
I broke it in the right way and got a nice cake going in it. It honestly didn’t smoke any different than my H.I.S. I see a few fills in it, and the holes weren’t drilled perfectly either. So what gives?
Fast forward a couple of months, and I purchased 6 manufacturers second’s pipes for about $18 each. They weren’t perfect either, but I can say that a couple of them have fewer fills than my Sav. What I did notice was the finish wasn’t the best on Earth as a couple of them bubbled after 2 bowls of lightly packed LTF. Also a couple of them burn really hot, so it’s probably flawed Briar. Besides the finish issues and the hot burners, they still smoke tobacco just fine. A hot burner can still be smoked by holding the stem, and that hot burner to this day is still going without any burn-out on the sides of the bowl.
