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Here we go... all polished up.

That's the part I just don't get. They "upgraded" - they are a reasonable sized company, and whatever system they implemented is about 1992 for technical quality. No debugging obviously, and the retrograde troubleshooting of a 3 month disaster has been... patchy, although they have tried for...

P@C is for people who want to save 40 cents per tin and who don't mind being short-shipped/back-ordered/etc. They eventually come through (usually) and often have promos/coupons/giveaways. For me, I'd rather just deal with an operation that didn't have its collective head up its collective...

I'm not sure if it's the American association of "bigger = better" or what, but you're right, pots proper are under-appreciated. I was recently commissioned to build a GBD 9437 style pot, and to me that's a very beautiful pipe, I jumped at the chance.

People keep buyin' em, so Peterson keeps makin' em. That's the basic equation. Yes, that looks like a cheap Chinese plastic knock-off. Sad. Peterson's QC is atrocious these days, even the nicer pipes (POY that kind of thing) are not finished well. Drilling is erratic, stem work...

Uhh, it's okay I'd say. That pipe has had the bejesus buffed out of it for sure, and the button will be a bit worn down for that. Looks all right though. I don't see any dark marks, hot spot/burnout type stuff on the bowl, but that rim is charred to hell and back, I'll bet that thing looked...

There's nothing worse than mailing a pipe into a vacuum, I agree.

There obviously IS a market for re-badged Italian pipes. Chris Morgan's "Bones" pipes are the beginning point of this. This guy was accused basically of buying someone's factory seconds, and marketing them under his own brand. There's nothing wrong with doing this. The issue was, he was not...

This guy got in shit on facebook representing himself as a pipe maker. He's buying from one of the small factories over there, I can't remember which one right now, Mastro de Paja or such. It's just another re-badged Italian midgrade. This is not a bad thing, but how they are marketed...

I'm establishing a new paradigm. :clown:

" the new expectations + old price structure finishes driving the remaining handful of pipe repairmen out of business" Yes.    Yeeeesss!   Muhahahaha  and people will be forced to buy new handmade pipes at fairly reasonable prices!    I've been setting up your fall for 10 years Georgie boy!

PS nice post George. One of the other things I'll mention here is the preponderance of "Can you fix this for 11 dollars please?" sorts of pipe repairs there are. It's a big jump when someone sends in a real nice piece and wants real good work (and will pay for it). One advantage of being...

The other side of this is that a guy can do 20,000 repairs just perfect, and 1 little screw up, and it's "Ohh my god this guy's a fucktard!" all over Facebook, right? The picture I posted is one of 2 pipes my friend got back. This was not the Dunhill, I was wrong. The Dunhill was a...

I have gone back to my friend for details so that I don't mis-represent this, and I have no intention of reporting every last word spoken between 2 other adults, I'll fill in as I can though here, and as accurately as possible. I don't have a hate on for Norwood's, I wish there were more good...

My friend was dissapointed to say the least.  And the response from Norwood's shop was not real positive (EDIT: this is my memory of the situation from... 6 months or a year ago, my friend thinks he in fact did not contact them).  So, onward and upward.   Now, maybe they had a bad day, it...

This is a Dunhill a friend of mine had re-stemmed by Norwood's recently. I think the pipe community is full of people who are too nice to make a fuss. Anyway, sending this out as finished product is imho unacceptable.

Exactly. I would guess I spend 10 minutes after the basic funnel is cut. Get the draw right, smooth everything out, sand and polish. I din't put you in my list Todd cuz I haven't seen the ass-end of your pipes in person. :D

"Well known" is not the same as "top name". Top name American carvers make top-class, and I mean top class stems. Not gonna name names here on the "a hole with a kinda slot thingy is good enough" but if you look at stems by Herbaugh, Alden, Piersel, Cryder, Gracik, Pohlman, Weaver etc you'll...

DGT = Delayed Gratification Technique. Yes, some tobaccos or at least some smokers seem to do well lighting a bowl just a bit, then leaving it for hours or days, then returning to smoke it. I figure if you want dry tobacco... dry your tobacco before you load. So it's not something I...

Or maybe carved is opposed to using a dremel - think Radice's "underwood" finish vs peterson's Kapets.