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I've always been intrigued by the bulldog shape but in my 20 years as a pipe smoker I've never owned one. Lately I've been seeing some amazing examples of this classic shape in the PM forum. I like a bulldog that is big around and hand filling yet short and squat. And most importantly to me is that the pipe posesses a huge slanted rim.
A couple weeks ago in a forum discussion the Italian pipe maker Brebbia came up. When curious about a brand I'm not familiar with I like to click over to Smokingpipes.com and browse their extensive selection of pipes. Smokingpipes.com really shines as an online vendor because of three things. Excellent photography, accurate specifications and of course top notch customer service.
I spied this Brebbia Serie X 624 bulldog and was immediately captivated by it's shape. Over the past couple weeks I returned to the site to admire the pipe with it's gentle bent shank of about 10 degrees and it's wide sloping rim accentuated by the double cut beading around the circumference of the bowl. Finally PAD got the better of me and I placed my order last Sunday.
I've recently become a fan of pressed flake style tobaccos. I like to prepare my flakes by spliting them with a pen-knife and loading them lengthwise into the bowl like putting sticks into a bucket. What I have noticed is that the tobacco burns slow and cool with the outer row of "sticks" closest to the wall of the bowl are the last to combust. Eventually I have to bend these flakes over with the tamper as my smoke progresses.
Because of the burn characteristics of flake tobacco I thought some Mac Baren Vanilla Cream Flakes would be ideal for the initial smoke of my new pipe. With flake the ember always seems to stay centered in the bowl away from the walls.
My son was using the computer so I grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper and spent an hour savoring the first bowl and wrote out my post. What I noticed is that the Brebbia 624 smoked great and felt awesome in my hand. Very nice!
