Airways by brand

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bigpond

Lifer
Oct 14, 2014
2,019
13
Last night I had just finished a project in the workshop and decided to clean a few pipes I keep there. I had my drill bits at hand and decided to measure and compare the airways within the stem.
Here's what I found:
Comoy's 3 piece C era, a Peterson and Sav 320 made in the last 2 years feature a 3mm airway

My recent Mimmo pipe is drilled to 2.5mm
I was surprised to see the similarity in the first three. Just curious about your results with "main stream" pipe airways.

 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
I wish I had the knowledge and knowhow to measure pipe airways, but all I can do is report on my impressions. I find my Petersons quite open, varying a little from the B11 brandy which is slightly closed to the Kapet author which is wide open. My Ropp, a French pipe, is one of my most restricted, which I think gives an interesting take on blends' flavors, very focused. Savs tend to hit it just right, not closed so you would notice, but just enough so the flavor is concentrated (with the no-filter adapter or the balsa filter). Stanwells strike me as a little more open than Savs, just a bit. My favorite carver, J. Perry, seems to do both approaches, some pipes quite open, and others a little more restricted -- but his pipes in my stable tend toward open. Sorry to be so sketchy. The engineers and technicians among members can be proud of their precision! None of this qualitative guesswork for them.

 

bigpond

Lifer
Oct 14, 2014
2,019
13
It simple really, MSO. If you have a standard drill bit kit all you need to do is insert bit's in to the stem until you find one that fits.

 

clickklick

Lifer
May 5, 2014
1,700
212
Are you measuring at the bit end? Because alot of stems start larger at the tenon and taper down before they fan out at the bit. 2.5mm seems tiny to start at the tenon end!

 

bigpond

Lifer
Oct 14, 2014
2,019
13
Yep. Tenon side in the stem. Irregular geometries at the bit end are difficult for me to measure. The pipe with the 2.5 airway meets a 4mm airway in the shank. Weird, I thought. Anyway, the difference in draught between them is minor and I may not have noticed at all without measuring. It's 0.5mm, after all. That pipe is also the best smoker of the lot. The briar is really outstanding.
In any event. I assumed the Mimmo would be drilled to 4mm...and now that I think about it...I asked SP at the time of sale to compare it with another pipe that I knew had a 4mm airway (they had no way to measure) and the rep couldn't see a difference. Just remembered that now.
I just ordered a pipe with the above airway to compare.

 
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