Excellent clay pipe from Dawnmist!

Hello pipers!

I received my brand new "Hello Beastie" clay pipe from Heather at Dawnmist Studio just now and thought I'd share this piece of art with you!
Not only does it look and feel great, the two bowls I've smoked in it so far have been excellent! The bowl naturally gets hotter than on a briar (though not as hot as my other clay pipe, the walls are thicker on this) and gives a surprisingly cool smoke, my other clay pipe smokes good but this is several notches above that! It also brought out the flavours in Mixture 965, which is what I've smoked in it so far, splendidly. I haven't been a big fan of the blend before but this made me appreciate it much more and I can't help but drool at what it might do to some of my favourite blends! The only downside is that the bowl is quite small.
This is what Heather says about the pipe on the Dawnmist website:

My new design is a special pipe based on original 17th Century pieces but with a modern twist! Originals are thought to show a mariner being chased by a crocodile, however with my version I have shaped the bowl to look like a certain "mutual friend" pirate character facing another of the great sea creatures... the Kracken! I hope you will enjoy smoking this witty design.

Stem length 8 inches (21cm). The smoking chamber size is approx 35mm deep and 15mm diameter on the inside at the rim. The surface is all hand burnished on the stem and part bowl. This pipe can be smoked. The mouth end is NOT glazed.

Click to expand...

Here are some pictures taken by me:












And finally one of a very satisfied piper:


Has anyone else got a Dawnmist clay pipe, and if so, how do you like it?

Just wanted to add that Heather was very enjoyable doing business with, I inquired about all sorts of things by mail regarding how to clean it, firing temperatures and so on and she gave me exhaustive and good answers all around. 5/5 stars for pipe, price and service.

lordnoble: yes it does, I think I lost some skin the first time I put it in my mouth, haha! I drool a lot when I clench so it's perfect though Jokes aside, just adding some saliva and it seems to be just fine, doesn't stick particularly much after that.

clanobucklin: A clay pipe will last until you break it. It does break much more easily than a briar so you'll have to be a bit careful. If you give it a good drop it will most likely break. If you bend it with enough force it will also break. Naturally you can't carry it around in your pocket (most are too long for it anyway) or chances are you'll break it. Just make sure to hold it by the bowl when you pack it and try not to walk into walls with too much force and it'll be fine, really, it doesn't break for nothing. It's fired clay and should be treated as such
Regarding cleaning it's actually much easier than with a briar. You can pretty much reset it to the state it was in when new simply by re-firing it. A kiln would be optimal, of course, but the self-cleaning routine in a regular oven is said to work good. I personally put my other clay pipe in the oven at 300 degrees Celsius after extensive smoking and it got all the tars and stuff out of the pores in the clay, but unfortunately my oven seems to have imparted a slight flavour to it that I hope will go away with smoking. I think Heather cited a guy saying 400 degrees Celsius is recommended but I can't attest to that personally, 300 seems to have worked for me though it took several hours to get it all nice and white, the hotter the faster and better I suppose. Regarding just regular after-smoke cleaning not much needs to be done, really. Clay is much more absorbent than briar (and especially stem materials like lucite and ebonite) which not only results in a drier smoke but actually removes much of the need for using pipe cleaners in the stem after smoking, which is good since some clays won't readily take pipe cleaners all the way through (though I've been able to fit them in mine, but it's a very snug fit and I have to be careful not to use too much force). Now-a-days I just bend a pipe cleaner and make sure to get out the ashes from the bowl so as to not build anything resembling a cake.
They're cheap so there's no good reason not to try, an experience that can't hurt, and who knows, you might come to love them.

This one has a relatively small bowl so it's definitely much shorter than with a regular-sized briar, but I haven't timed it yet. Since it smokes so cool I've noticed I tend to smoke faster as well, not as much hot air to warn me that I need to slow down, haha. I'll try to time the next bowl I smoke!

I only got 10-15 minutes with this pipe, though I'm not a slow smoker it's definitely a short smoke

antipodesman: I was actually looking for heat-shrink tubing before I smoked the first bowl but I don't seem to have brought any with me from home to my apartment.

Never even seen shrink wrap in small scale I think, if I'm not mistaking it for something else I think I've only seen it used in big machines to wrap large items o_O