Engineering

[glpease]

Ferndown, Dunhill, Ashton. Three respected English pipemakers. But what's with the tiny draftholes? The lack of a chamfered tenon; as I understand it that is the place where flow is most compromised. No funneled tenons?

Money?

Mike, I've owned quite a few Dunhills, and don't recall ever having one with what I'd consider a tiny draught hole. Most run very close to the "modern standard" of 4mm (5/32"), which is more than adequate. Further, I've never had a Dunhill that gurgled, or exhibited any other problem associated with airway construction. If the tenon is drilled properly, there's no need for funneling, though it is certainly helpful when the stem's airway is more constricted than that through the shank.

But, more importantly, this whole "wide-open draught" thing has really gotten out of hand. I've had many pipes with airways that would be considered "too narrow" by today's standards, which are approaching being large enough to offer spare parking for the family wagon, that despite this "shortcoming" have functioned perfectly well and tasted superb. And, I've had more than a few of the big-name "big-bore" pipes that have delivered smoke that tastes like little more than hot-air.

Further irony: I will never hold Castello pipes up for being paragons of "engineering," yet they smoke wonderfully. Interesting, no?

 

[Wet Dottle]

Further irony: I will never hold Castello pipes up for being paragons of "engineering," yet they smoke wonderfully. Interesting, no?

I could add Ashtons to that list.

 

[alfredo_buscatti]

mea culpa

 

[Sasquatch]

I compared the engineering of a Dunhill 120, a Castello 65, a Sav autograph, and a high grade Pete. The Castello's engineering was the best by a long shot I thought.

 

[glpease]

I compared the engineering of a Dunhill 120, a Castello 65, a Sav autograph, and a high grade Pete. The Castello's engineering was the best by a long shot I thought.

One point don't make no line, though. I've had Castellos that were very well constructed, and others that I had to spend hours on to make bearable. It's all in the stems. Modern pieces seem to be better, overall, than the older ones.

 

[Sasquatch]

Yeah I have no idea what the "average" Castello is built like. Really what I learned is that if you spend 300 bucks on a Peterson it's a better pipe than Dunhill or Castello. irat:

 

[glpease]

Yeah I have no idea what the "average" Castello is built like. Really what I learned is that if you spend 300 bucks on a Peterson it's a better pipe than Dunhill or Castello. irat:

After close to 150 years, and a few million pipes under their belts, I guess they've learned a thing or two.

 

[Anonymous]

At least in Yakspace, "That isn't [universally and invariably] TRUE because everything's relative" comes across as a canned answer to a live problem. As a default setting it can be worse than annoying because it hijacks a promising discussion from empirical observation (always a promising beginning) to epistomology, where promising insights go to die undeserved, premature deaths.

Technically, true. Germane ? Meh . . .

Where the Theory of General Relativity meets the realm of actual experience, there are "wrong" engineering strategies that can produce superlative results, and "correct" designs that [in specific cases] do not, for whatever reason, scale the heights.

Before I snapped the tenon ( :clown: ) and had it re-stemmed, a cheapo Peterson 150 here was an incredibly flavorful pipe. The constriction at the P-lip resulted in a lot of airway condensation (that funneling the tenon probably would have reduced if not eliminated). But the flavor of FVF in that pipe was off the intensity chart -- that one really did go to eleven ! Now, with a "better" airway, the flavor's still good, but diffused in comparison.

Another example : an A/R Caminetto with an absurdly bad airway. The shank's drilled @ 5 mm and the stem funnels from 4 down to around 2.5, with that final constriction running a full inch (!) Paradoxically, it works brilliantly with Union Square smoked at tin moisture. The constriction in the stem acts like a governor on an engine. You can't goose the draw and get any more through it, so you don't. Take what it gives you and you won't need a cleaner 'til you're finished. It shouldn't work, but it does.

Casting around for an analogy, I think it's a lot like music. There are spots along the tempo continuum where everything locks in and grooves. And there are tempos between those spots where everything's awkward. (If you're preparing to be the concertmaster of an orchestra, you practice the famous solos at every possible tempo. Because bad conductors seem to find & dictate those purgatorial tempos by a kind of fatal instinct, meaning you'd best be prepared to deliver the goods when they do).

It would be almost surprising if the optimum flow rate through a pipe (consequently, taste) could not almost be determinable in advance as a ratio of the inside diameter of the bowl (consequently, tobacco surface area) to airway diameter, the same way as the intervals of the musical scale are expressable as simple ratios.

Were experience to demonstrate this to be the case, it would explain (albeit circularly) that the "incorrect" sweet spots (plural) were, in fact, "lawful," and the "misses" were explainable the same way a beginning trumpet player's are. Even -- perhaps -- that the tempo/airway diameter analogy is less imbicilic than epistomologists shooting from the hip would assume.

Or, maybe not.

FWIW

:face:

 

[Anonymous]

And length would enter the equation as well. Obviously. Nose-warmers and Canadians are very different creatures.

Disclaimer : This is NOT "an attack" on [assume grave tone of voice] "the Scientific method." It is one of an ongoing series of attempts to point out that the infatuation with it we have inherited from "the [self-styled] Enlightenment" is not warranted. There are just too many problems to which it's not only inapplicable, but irrelevant.

Consider before you laugh : people were making steel centuries before there was any such thing as "the science of metallurgy." They figured the whole business of it out -- from ore to to (char-)coal/limestone/ore in a blast furnace to turning the resulting puddle iron into actual steel -- by the seat of their pants. They didn't need no steenkin' periodic table.

:face:
HEY GUYS -- ANYBODY NOTICE THAT MENDELIEV'S PERIODIC TABLE IS A RE-STATEMENT OF THE SAME ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLE ? THE ONE THE WISE GUYS CAST OVERBOARD AS A USELESS ENCUMBRANCE.

 

[sisyphus]

pipes are analog technology, like loudspeakers. It's very difficult to quantify what makes a great pipe, or loudspeaker. You can take into account all the soundwave physics and build your loudspeaker accordingly, but that 30 year old ProAc 2 way will likely sound better with Corelli, or that ancient Klipsch or Tannoy horn speaker will lift the roof with Meshuggah the way that a $10k+ loudspeaker would fall flat on.

There are general rules of thumb, but they can't be applied unilaterally. I would say that throwing more money at a pipe is likely to give you a better chance of ending up with a superior pipe. I also know that my single favorite pipe is a Loewe estate I paid $15 for, and I have several estate Comoy's I bought for $50 or less that smoke as well or better than my $500 Dunhills.

I do believe in buying a pipe instead of a brand, but finding makers you like that consistently provide pipes with superior smoking qualities is not a bad approach. I've taken it, and there are four marques I seriously collect, and none of the four have ever let me down. Yet. So I keep buying them.

 

[Kyle Weiss]

All I've gathered so far are really keen metaphors about pipes. :lol:

Pipes are such seemingly simple things, yet here we are...

...all I know is, on a physics standpoint, smoke is lazy, lightweight and the closer to the point of combustion, the more moisture it homogeneously contains. Too much space (draught hole, etc) it has to fill it somehow before it continues. Too little space is relative (and in a practical sense, obvious when random bits obstruct it). The more direct, smooth and unobstructed the smoke (Chamber A) to mouth (Endpoint B) the better. In that, length is a matter of patience, I suppose. *shrug* Since tobacco and the smoke itself isn't perfectly clean, eventually build-up, errant pieces of leaf, and ash are probably going to muck things up (I've had a wayward piece of tobacco flutter in the airway causing the worst moisture problems ever in my "best" pipes...)

Everything else in the equation is various flavor or piloting skills. The "what/who's better" thing seems odd to me.

Sas, you still takin' on "bad pipes" for fixing as a testament to your ideas? That was a while ago, but I wonder what came of it all.

 

[Anonymous]

All I've gathered so far are really keen metaphors about pipes. :lol:

Is what distinguishes a highly valued pipe from a nine-to-fiver not in the realm of metaphor ?

People erect belief systems around pipes to the point where the actual pipes themselves are iconic.

There's gonna be a brand new Sasquatch flake pipe come in the mail in a couple or three weeks here. And boy is that pipe ever gonna arrive with some serious Mojo. Todd Bannard. Hand-custom made. Ideal proportions & deign. Killer beautiful Italian briar . . . All that stuff rolls up like a cigar into a pretty heady smoke. Especially when it'll be the only New new pipe since way before the years stopped beginning with 19. Take your place here in the A-Team rack, Mr, Bannard, between the Castello and the A/R Caminetto.

The Lane-era Charatan Special, the birth year Peterson, the Haymarket-era Loewe &c. &c. &c. &c. are all cases of metaphorical identity. And they all live up to it. They aren't just pipes. The metaphor lives in them.

Pipe ($150) + White Spot ($450) = Dunhill ($600).

That's metaphor. :lol:

Or not (?)

:face:

 

[Anonymous]

And the ones that aren't metaphors tell stories.

This one's the amazingly nice-grained Clean that went out as a basket pipe because it was a Dublin that had a flaw on the rim so somebody re-shaped the top, making it an Acorn, which wasn't on the shape chart. Their loss, my score. $2.95 back in Birmingham . . . ( begin revery).

This old one would have been a Comoy Grand Slam but the little fills made it a Drury Lane.

This is the one I got the day that . . .

This one ______ bombed me with for Christmas one year . . .

Metaphors or Stories. Take your pick.

Imagination : Don't leave home without it. 8)

:face:

 

[Sasquatch]

Sas, you still takin' on "bad pipes" for fixing as a testament to your ideas? That was a while ago, but I wonder what came of it all.

I took a hopelessly poorly built pipe and made it better within the realms available. It was a tiny, tiny pipe, and I couldn't do all the tricks I like, but I did get the thing to smoke better, apparently.

 

[Dutch]

As I've stated before, pipe engineering doesn't have to be complicated.....

 

[Kyle Weiss]

Metaphors or Stories. Take your pick.

Imagination : Don't leave home without it. 8)

As you had to have noticed in the last year or so, my mind takes on a sort of ambidexterity that either amuses, enrages or confuses: stark logic and wild imagination. :lol: Yes, Yak-kettle, Weiss-pot is also black.

Simple answers. :cheers:

Sas, you still takin' on "bad pipes" for fixing as a testament to your ideas? That was a while ago, but I wonder what came of it all.

I took a hopelessly poorly built pipe and made it better within the realms available. It was a tiny, tiny pipe, and I couldn't do all the tricks I like, but I did get the thing to smoke better, apparently.

I have a cheaper Nording freehand I'd throw out there for consideration, provided you're bored enough. Every trick I've either learned or developed has failed. Smoking slow or fast fails. I'd sell it, but it means something to me, as it was my first new pipe (meaning, that I proudly bought, not estate, not given to me). I'd give it away, but no bastard deserves a briar whose only goal in life is to bubble like a fishtank and deliver hot steam rather than smoke. Thing is, I've eyeballed it plenty, and can't see where it's going wrong. Tenon chamfering, airway-smoothing, none of it worked.

*shrug*

One proud first purchase in ignorance, a lifetime of :scratch:

:lol:

 

[Zeno Marx]

I don't prefer a wide open draft hole

Me, either. Some of these draft holes are the size of McDonald's straws. It feels awkward and reduces flavor for me.

EDIT: going back to read the 2nd page, I see Mr.Pease said it better. It really can be like nothing more than hot air, and in doing so, it roars through tobacco like the stuff is $.04/LB. I don't get the purpose and praise in such performance.

 

[Anonymous]

I do believe in buying a pipe instead of a brand, but finding makers you like that consistently provide pipes with superior smoking qualities is not a bad approach. I've taken it, and there are four marques I seriously collect, and none of the four have ever let me down. Yet. So I keep buying them.

It is possible to broaden the search base and conclude that (if not THE, at least) a key variable in that is the age of the pipe -- that well-seasoned, 50-year-old briar has reached (or, will with careful use) its peak with respect to the flavor it provides. IOW, that while a family-era Sasieni 4-Dot can be one fine-tasting pipe indeed, so can a Bewlay or a "seconds line" or similar age & background.

At that point it becomes (or, can become) a bang-per-buck issue.

:face:

 

[SpeedyPete]

I want a very special pipe made for me. I've been asking around but to no avail.

What I want is a DOHC, 16 valve pipe with free flow exhaust. This seems to be the easy part and there are guys willing to try and make one. The problem lies with the highlifting door handles I also want included. The engineering of said handles seems to be impossible.

I will just have to accept that this will remain a dream until my dying day. ale:

 

[Kyle Weiss]

Funnybusiness aside, an aftermarket port-and-polishing concept of an engine ain't all that far-fetched. Strangely, though, it's kind of backwards, since all we're interested in is the exhaust providing us with the flavor/nicotine horsepower, and reducing the moisture while increasing good flavor.

...some people prefer in-line fours, others like a V-12. :twisted: