rogermugs,
Just to give you a little background about our company, we're a small family-owned business with my brother and I as co-owners doing most of the manufacturing, marketing, and shipping. While MM turns out pipes each year by the tens of thousands, we're happy to turn them out by the hundreds. The heirloom Indian corn variety that we use for our cobs has been grown in our region of Virginia since the 1870s and has been DNA tested back to the "Bloody Butcher" variety that was first grown in Virginia back in the 1840s. Our goal is not to try and copycat MM, but to provide our own unique line of cob pipes based on the traditional bamboo/reed stem corn cob pipes as manufactured in the latter half of the 19th Century and the early 20th Century. We base our designs on vintage corn cob pipes in our personal collection, many of which date to around the turn of the century.
Re: burn-outs, while we are a relatively new company, we just haven't seen burn-outs as a problem with our cobs. Like any pipe manufacturer, we expect to receive the occasional complaint regarding a manufacturing defect and that's why we do guarantee our pipes and offer to replace any pipe that a customer may receive that is found to be defective in any way. To date, with several hundred pipes shipped out, we have only received two complaints from customers claiming to have received a defective pipe. In one instance a customer claimed to have a burn-out and we immediately sent him a replacement pipe which seemed to satisfy the customer. In the other instance, a customer claimed to have had a burn-out and we resolved the issue with the customer by refunding his money. To date, they are the only complaints that I've received. Our goal is to provide a quality cob pipe with good customer service, so customer satisfaction is a top priority with us. We do randomly test our pipes and have attempted to stress them in an attempt to try and induce a burn-out (burning dry tobacco, puffing on them excessively, smoking them outside under windy conditions, etc.), but to date we've been unable to do so. That's not to say that a burn-out can't ever happen, but it doesn't appear to be a very common issue with our pipes.
One other note about our pipes regarding our stems, we occasionally get asked as to how we fasten our stems to our pipe bowls. The answer is that we do not use any glue or adhesive as vintage reed/bamboo stem pipes were not glued to the cob. Instead, like the vintage cobs, we taper the end of our bamboo stem and the stem is then inserted and twisted clockwise until we get a tight, secure fit. Once in a while a customer will contact us that a stem apparently worked loose during shipment. If that occurs, simply re-inserting the stem and twisting it clockwise should re-secure it in place. If not, then as mentioned above, we'll be happy to replace the pipe if the customer has any problem with it.
Anyway, hope this info has helped.
Sincerely,
Bob Savage (virginiacob)
Old Dominion Pipe Co.
