This morning my MacArthurs arrived. After a thorough inspection (sitting there with a stupid grin and giggling like a school girl) I folded a few flakes of FVF in half, stuffed them in my Natural finish model and left it until evening.
This is exciting for two separate and unrelated reasons.
1. I got to try a new, very unique pipe.
2. I finally had a good bow of Full Virginia Flake.
The MacArthur Cob is an impressive pipe. Big, long, and plenty of room to tinker.
One of the first things I did was fit a pipe cleaner in the stem to act as a filter (I hate getting bits of tobacco in my mouth). A regular B.J. Long with an inch and a half cut off fits just right. You could put one in straight, but I prefer to give them a gentle coil by wrapping it three or four times around a thin rod (3/32" rod, and that's wrapped perpendicular with the rod, not horizontally opposed). Just remember that you need some good tweezers to get them out.
With a coiled pipe cleaner it gives a bit of friction with the stem so as not to fall into either end and plug the airway completely, and it keeps the airway more open while providing lots of turbulence at the same time, ensuring good contact between the air and the cleaner along its full length.
With both the pipe cleaner, and considering it has such a large airway in general, I sincerely doubt this thing will ever gurgle.
The second thing was to un-bend the bent stem on my Polished model a bit. By default it's a little too bent, fortunately It doesn't take long under the heat gun to make them pliable so it was an easy job. Now the bit is level with the pipe, rather than having a downward slant.
I think I'm going to like the bent, polished model more. First it looks and feels gorgeous, and because it keeps the pipe lower and more comfortable to hold. These are fairly large so while clenching is possible it's like hanging a weight off your jaw.
The biggest problem I can see right now is that finding something to clean out the dottle can be tricky. I had plenty of bush around so a twig did the trick, but normally I like to use a match. That won't even get me halfway down the bowl here.
Also, stuffing a MacArthur full of flake is probably a bad idea.
I'm sure that sounds obvious, but the distinction is that flake tobacco is very dense. With the flakes folded in half it only reached a little over halfway down, and that was right on my limit. Any more would surely do me in.
As I experienced packing a mason jar a few weeks ago, a dry, loose cut tobacco can easily fill twice the space unless you put a lot of effort into forcing it down.
A nice, light, loose cut aromatic should be able to fill the bowl without going overboard, and might even benefit from having a higher volume in the same chamber.
As for the bowl of FVF, at first I was sure I got my tobacco mixed up and grabbed St. James Flake instead. For pretty much the entire bowl I was convinced it was SJF and only after getting back to my cellar could I confirm that yes, it was Full Virginia Flake. Sweet, sweet Virginia. It seems that time has finally has done its job. In this case it was just five months.
I'm confident the difference is real because SJF was only my fourth ever tobacco, immediately pleasant to my tastebuds back in March, and there was no mistaking the two back then.
This is exciting for two separate and unrelated reasons.
1. I got to try a new, very unique pipe.
2. I finally had a good bow of Full Virginia Flake.
The MacArthur Cob is an impressive pipe. Big, long, and plenty of room to tinker.
One of the first things I did was fit a pipe cleaner in the stem to act as a filter (I hate getting bits of tobacco in my mouth). A regular B.J. Long with an inch and a half cut off fits just right. You could put one in straight, but I prefer to give them a gentle coil by wrapping it three or four times around a thin rod (3/32" rod, and that's wrapped perpendicular with the rod, not horizontally opposed). Just remember that you need some good tweezers to get them out.
With a coiled pipe cleaner it gives a bit of friction with the stem so as not to fall into either end and plug the airway completely, and it keeps the airway more open while providing lots of turbulence at the same time, ensuring good contact between the air and the cleaner along its full length.
With both the pipe cleaner, and considering it has such a large airway in general, I sincerely doubt this thing will ever gurgle.
The second thing was to un-bend the bent stem on my Polished model a bit. By default it's a little too bent, fortunately It doesn't take long under the heat gun to make them pliable so it was an easy job. Now the bit is level with the pipe, rather than having a downward slant.
I think I'm going to like the bent, polished model more. First it looks and feels gorgeous, and because it keeps the pipe lower and more comfortable to hold. These are fairly large so while clenching is possible it's like hanging a weight off your jaw.
The biggest problem I can see right now is that finding something to clean out the dottle can be tricky. I had plenty of bush around so a twig did the trick, but normally I like to use a match. That won't even get me halfway down the bowl here.
Also, stuffing a MacArthur full of flake is probably a bad idea.
I'm sure that sounds obvious, but the distinction is that flake tobacco is very dense. With the flakes folded in half it only reached a little over halfway down, and that was right on my limit. Any more would surely do me in.
As I experienced packing a mason jar a few weeks ago, a dry, loose cut tobacco can easily fill twice the space unless you put a lot of effort into forcing it down.
A nice, light, loose cut aromatic should be able to fill the bowl without going overboard, and might even benefit from having a higher volume in the same chamber.
As for the bowl of FVF, at first I was sure I got my tobacco mixed up and grabbed St. James Flake instead. For pretty much the entire bowl I was convinced it was SJF and only after getting back to my cellar could I confirm that yes, it was Full Virginia Flake. Sweet, sweet Virginia. It seems that time has finally has done its job. In this case it was just five months.
I'm confident the difference is real because SJF was only my fourth ever tobacco, immediately pleasant to my tastebuds back in March, and there was no mistaking the two back then.