Hello,
Smoking some Casey Jones/ PS Vanilla Cavendish blend in my E-bay Custombilt Ooom-Paul pipe. Ranger, The Custombilts are a very good pipe. I have always enjoyed everyone of the 8 pipes I own.If you like a larger pipe with thick walls like I do their perfect. From the little I know Tracy mincer started making these pipes in the late 40`s.He had stores here in NY as well as a catalog business. His business had taken off in the 50`s. and he had many different pipe companies making pipes for him,one of the big ones back in the day was Wally Frank, I also read somewhere that he had European companies making pipes for him-I have never seen one.Sadly, Mr.MINCER was not good with money and was always in financial trouble and sold the company. He made a few other pipes, one was the doodler an air cooled pipe,It looked odd but It worked ! I had one many years ago.He also made a line called my nibbs?
Anyway, From my experience the EUGENE RICH era pipes where the best. I just love having a nice big carved pipe in my hand, I have a couple of OOM-Pauls that are getting harder to find, a few straight billiards and the rest are full bent pipes Honestly, These pipes are a steal on E-bay,but I am noticing there prices are going up.I would advise you to try a large full bent one,you can probably score a decent one for about 100$ Sorry for the long post but as you can tell I love these old pipes!