I finally scored an Ashton, after patiently looking around for a good deal and one i liked for the past 6 months or so. I have always been very impressed with the late legend Bill Taylor's (even though this is a Jimmy Craig carved pipe) oil curing process and how he described it sounded like it would make one hell of a burner. I have also researched and heard from countless others how great of pipes they are, as is reflected on Ebay under the completed listings. They don't often go unnoticed on auction and usually fetch somewhere in the ballpark of what they are worth. I threw a bid out on this one though from a lesser know seller who is not really all that established in the Ebay pipe watchers realm. That is precisely where i look to find good deals, where others aren't looking. Anyways, my bid ended up being the highest and i won it. A few days later i finally had a gorgeous XXX Pebble Grain Ashton with a hell of a nice blast. It is very light weight for its size (about 6"x 1 7/8", 3/4 chamber diameter x 1 5/8" depth) due to the oil curing process and has a white and very light tannish yellow swirl acrylic stem, which i love and think contrasts with the finish/stain perfectly. I brought it over to Jeremy's (sailorjeremy on here) place last night to smoke a couple bowls and he cleaned it up very nicely with his buffer and tripoli/carnuba application. Looks brand new. I lit up some Stonehaven and it smoked like a champ, just as i had hoped. I will definitely be adding more Ashton's to the collection in the future.
Some pics after Jeremy made 'er shine (thanks buddy!):
Some pics after Jeremy made 'er shine (thanks buddy!):