Whistling Dixie - Massmanufacturing vs Custom

[David M]

Was reading the thread about Al's new clay pipe and used the below quote as a starting point for this issue and as I started to write more and more, decided to throw it into its own thread.

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Originally Posted by dmkerr

It......Whistles a bit but smokes cool and dry.

The word whistled made me perk up a bit since I am experiencing some heavy symphonic style whistling in my Stanwell. This guy goes off singing and singing and singing. I feel like he is calling out all the birds and the bees to come join me in my back-yard for a big party.

I am not drawing too tight. Was at first but not now. Very mellow and slight as ever pulls and still, a full on Symphony!

Read up a bit on it and found this on Random's site.

"If the pipe whistles it indicates sharp edges around the draft-hole, or less probably it indicates a sharp edge at the stummel/tenon intersection. Sharp edges around the draft-hole may lose their sharpness over time as the sharp edges are burned away, or the pipe may forever remain a whistler unless you have it fixed. Sharp edges at the stummel/tenon intersection (at the very pipemost end of the stem) indicate an airflow problem that will probably cause excessive condensation leading to a wet smoke; again, you may have problems until you have the pipe fixed. "

Number one - I am starting to glance and grasp the minor details and differences between so-so pipes and pipes that are likely not so...so-so.

I will head to my B&M today and see what they say. I assume it can try to be fixed so why not try. But still, I get the feeling now that I am holding a mass-manufactured product created in a mass manufacturing environment. Stanwell makes 100,000 pipes a year and it makes sense that they 'churn out' as many pipes as possible and that this process (with only 26 employees - and likely more than half of them are back-office personnel leaving 13 or so only for pipe making) gives way to not so much attention to detail. I guess its obvious that we get what we pay for and from that sense, hey, we may be getting a bargain right! It has its positives I mean. At least we have a pipe to smoke & we didn't spend an arm and a leg.

Another interesting thing is his view on Cake & Cleaning.
Very much going against the grain of what seems to be 'common knowledge'.

Cake he says...
"If a pipe needs significant breaking in, cake is probably a necessity. If a pipe's tobacco chamber shows numerous, or large, surface pits, cake is probably a very good idea since the carbon will help protect the wood and prevent possible burnout. A high quality pipe should need neither breakin nor cake, in my opinion."

and on Cleaning he offers...
"Clean your pipe when it needs it. There are those who feel that a pipe should be thoroughly cleaned after every smoke, and those who feel otherwise. Overcleaning a pipe can prevent it from absorbing tobacco juices and retaining a melange of flavors. Undercleaning a pipe can cause a buildup of gunk that restricts airflow and reduces the effectiveness of the pipe as a smoking instrument. The "right" amount of cleaning is probably somewhere in between, but is definitely a matter of personal taste."

Just interesting to hear a varying opinion on the subject. I would assume that this is also tied into the general type of pipe experience someone has. If they have a Dunhill and a Stanwell - those two experiences likely have their different effects on opinion.

A lot of this is personal taste and personal opinion.
I would guess though that at the end of the day, since so much of our buying habits are dictated by the common flow, the popular opinion, the beginner route to take - with all these factors affecting us and our decisions and our perceptions of what we should be doing at any particular stage of a learning experience, well...it would be good to always step back a bit and try and take a gander at the full spectrum and see what its like on the other side of the opinion wagon. I would advocate that anybody spending a lot of money on sub-$100 pipes, say if they buy 10 pipes under $100 a year. Maybe they should take $300 of those dollars and focus those funds on buying 1 Custom pipe just to make sure they get the full range of experience in sucking wood.

Link to Random's page
http://www.ren-prod-inc.com/random_p...tion=1L55A40N4

Edit:
Removed all this crazy code all over the place making it hard to read.

[dmkerr]

On cleaning... clean a pipe when it needs it.

Couldn't agree more. The pipe will tell you when it needs cleaning and it is in no way subtle about it. You'll know. The pipe will start to taste more and more like sh*t and then it's time to clean it.

When I'm done smoking a bowl, I stick a pipe cleaner through the mouthpiece and shank and into the heel of the pipe, and I leave it there until I'm ready to smoke the pipe again. Then I pull the pipe cleaner out. It has soaked up the leftover moisture from the previous bowl and my pipe is clean enough to smoke at that point. If it isn't, I'll know when I light it.

There's no reason to thoroughly clean a pipe after a set number of smokes, in my humble opinion. But people do tend to go with what works for them. When it's time to clean it, out comes the Everclear and the heavy bristle pipe cleaners. But honestly, I probably do that once a year. I have 52 pipes and I smoke about 8 oz of tobacco a month, so you can use that as a guage for your own consumption.

[dj1340]

I think a lot of the ideas are left over from days gone by. People just "did it" because that was the way it was always done. Maybe the tobacco was really bad back in the day and you had to clean your pipes like that, who knows.
New times, new ideas.

[DubintheDam]

I agree, there is such a thing as over cleaning....sadly not appreciated these days. Run a pipe cleaner through after each smoke...that's enough.

[Mad Hatter]

On Stanwell from another site:

My comments were: A few years ago I was on a stanwell kick, I bought a 146, a 217, a Rook and three 126s. All had the same problem. The airways came nowhere near aligning. In the worst cases while the mortise was drilled the perfect depth, problem was that when the tenon was inserted it blocked more than half of the airway where it was supposed to exit the shank to enter the stem. Hot, wet, sloppy, wouldn't stay lit and me being a newbie to pipe engineering and construction blamed myself. Having learned a bit in the last few years I've long since drilled the mortise deeper and countersunk the hole in the tenon. They smoke better now than ever before but still need to be coddled along during a smoke. Some days I get them out but normally they just sit in the rack as a reminder why I'll never buy another bent Stanwell.

Another member, a retailer I believe, posted:

Unfortunately, lower end Stanwells are pretty much mass production items. In several lower end models (I have a guess you might have a Vario) your tobacconist can't even specify what shape he wants. They are sold as "assorted shapes only", meaning you specify the finish and they throw you whatever shape comes up on the wheel be it a poker or a horn. This is a lot like the "basket pipe" concept. So no, you aren't talking about the flagship of the Stanwell line. You will pay well over $300 for a top grade Stanwell, while their economy models sell for around $80. I have an idea airway alignment isn't high on their list of quality control priorities.

That being said, I own two of these pipes and they are both good smokers. Personally, being able to pass a pipe cleaner all the way through is important, as I like to do this between each bowl. I have had pretty good luck in the past using a few successively larger drill bits to whittle a kind of ramp where the airway enters the bowl to make a smoother transition for a pipe cleaner. It will also improve the draw and overall smoking qualities of the pipe.

The "pipe cleaner test" is widely considered as a mark of craftsmanship among high-end pipe makers (Rad Davis, Trevor Talbert, etc.). But most of us don't smoke these, and it is great to have places like this learn how to tweak or customize our pipes to smoke at their very best.

[Mad Hatter]

Originally Posted by dmkerr

On cleaning... clean a pipe when it needs it.

Couldn't agree more. The pipe will tell you when it needs cleaning and it is in no way subtle about it. You'll know. The pipe will start to taste more and more like sh*t and then it's time to clean it.

When I'm done smoking a bowl, I stick a pipe cleaner through the mouthpiece and shank and into the heel of the pipe, and I leave it there until I'm ready to smoke the pipe again. Then I pull the pipe cleaner out. It has soaked up the leftover moisture from the previous bowl and my pipe is clean enough to smoke at that point. If it isn't, I'll know when I light it.

There's no reason to thoroughly clean a pipe after a set number of smokes, in my humble opinion. But people do tend to go with what works for them. When it's time to clean it, out comes the Everclear and the heavy bristle pipe cleaners. But honestly, I probably do that once a year. I have 52 pipes and I smoke about 8 oz of tobacco a month, so you can use that as a guage for your own consumption.

And I agree with Dan on this. The only thing I do differently is remove the pipe cleaner a few hours or a few days after smoking the pipe. Only if I forget does the cleaner stay in until the next smoke.

[RJpuffs]

Originally Posted by Mad Hatter

And I agree with Dan on this. The only thing I do differently is remove the pipe cleaner a few hours or a few days after smoking the pipe. Only if I forget does the cleaner stay in until the next smoke.

Removing the fluffy after some time will allow air to flow through, allowing the bowl to dry out (faster). And it won't give that rank stank of stale pipe drool