Had an opportunity to tweak one of my MM cobs today after getting a little inspiration from some cob smokers here on the forum. I was at a BM that a friend of mine owns about a week and a half ago making a pipe and tobacco purchase along with some cleaning/maint. supplies and as I was readying to get checked out my friend walks back to where he displays his estate and basket pipes, grabs one and walks over and shoves it in my coat pocket. He explained that they had bought out an estate and with the contents were a dozen or so of these strange looking and rather small freehand like looking pipes and that he had no clue about how good they smoked or even who made them. He knows I'm kinda rough on pipes and he suggested it may be a good knock around piece to keep along with my cobs. Long story short the pipe has a tight draw, is not drilled very well and it just smokes horrible, hot and wet, no matter how hard I tried to make a go of it. Feeling bad that this pipe may not work out I pulled the bit out and started thinking that the tenon looked to be about the same diameter as the inside dia. of the tenon on my MM Washington cob so I went and checked it out, perfect. I cut the tenon off a stem that fit onto an old Eaton MM that has served me for many years and is about played out and I took that piece, inserted the vulcanite stem from the gifted briar and fitted it into my Washington MM and got a perfect fit. Now I have a classy looking cob that still smokes like a champ and I don't feel as bad about the poor smoking gift since I was able to at least re-purpose the bit. I'm sorry for lacking photos but I'm new and don't know how to post them from my phone.
