White Spot (Dunhill)Pipe sizes

In my experience the group sizes Dunhill uses is more of a guide and not an exact science. I have seen pipes that were stamped as a group 4 be more in line with a 5 and vice a versa. I don't believe Dunhill uses different sizes for different countries. The length of the pipe has nothing to do with the group number from what I have seen over the years.

Group sizes are more categories than specifics. I have three 1985 4103s, and they’re all slightly different, yet they are very close to each other for the most part.

There have been very informative and impassioned threads on Dunhill group numbers in the past. I just read through a couple of them recently in a vain effort to understand what the group sizes are all about, so I'll try to summarize the conclusions reached by forum members in order to spare others the tedious and traumatic experience of reading through all that: As already noted, the Dunhill group sizes are not objective, empirically observable, or based on real units of measurement, and they did not originally (i.e. "in house") refer to the chamber size, but rather to the size of the chunk of briar from which the stummel was turned. Accordingly, they are somewhat arbitrary and have nothing to do with country of manufacture. The volume of chambers in pipes from the same group can vary widely, even if they were made in the same year and in the same factory. Some forum members find the group numbers a useful shorthand when talking about the size of a bowl, but many others (more?) find them useless, annoying and not a little elitist. The latter accuse the former of using group numbers in casual conversation as a way of reminding their interlocutors that they are, indeed, the very, very, very proud owners of Dunhill pipes. Cue heated debate and objections from the Dunhill cognoscenti. ::
Personally, I have no dog in this fight, though my sympathies are mostly with those who find Dunhill group sizes annoyingly arbitrary and of little practical utility.

I recently had forum member and pipe restoration artist Anthony Cook (Piffyr) restore a Dunhill SK for me (absolutely fantastic work, BTW) and we had this discussion. My pipe was marked as group 4 but the chamber size was actually quite small. The pipe wasn't huge by any stretch, but it certainly wasn't a petite little thing either. It was a rather burly and swooping design with a substantial stummel so the rather tiny chamber was even more obvious.
We wondered if the group sizing might refer to the length or size of the pipe overall rather than the chamber size, or ... yeah, whatever other random designation that Dunhill craftsmen might have dreamt up on the spur of the moment. It could well be the size of the briar blank, or it could be the ring the dart hit while the boys were having tea and deciding how to stamp the pipe.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth of random speculation and does nothing whatsoever to actually answer the question. So there.
In the end it really doesn't matter to me at all what the group size actually means, but it is fun to follow the discussions. I would positively laugh my ass off if it turned out that it was all just a lark and relates to nothing whatsoever. What a joke that would be. A century of convincing people that the designation was actually real. "Oy, Nigel, be a lad and fetch the muffler grease, won't ye?" :rofl:

I would say that the group number is similar to the year and aided in repairs and stem replacement more than a size grouping.

Group 4 pipes had fewer restrictions on technology, design and the number of blends required for homologation to compete — less than other pipes. Weight was kept as low as possible, high-tech materials were permitted, and there were no restrictions on boost, resulting in the power output.
Oops, I think that was group B
:rofl:

The size numbers are more indicative of price than size when you compare different styles.

My first online retailer was Iwan Ries where all the pipes' were given Dunhill Group sizes, so learned entirely by experience. I never saw any actual specifications for dimensions of the various group sizes, but I ended up with a pretty good idea which size I was looking at. Since, I have learned that you can get a long slow smoke out of a small pipe with flake/coin/plug/rope, and a quick smoke with a big pipe with fast burning dry leaf and/or filling the bowl only partway. Small pipes are in Groups 1 to 3, medium mostly fall in 4, and large in 5, 6, and beyond.