Can you make a cheap pipe good?

[Coreios]

I bought an extremely cheap Chinese pipe from Amazon when I first started my pipe journey ($15 on sale for $8). Now I have better pipes. I put my Forever stem on this cheap pipe and too me it smokes a lot better. Perhaps my technique has improved. The stems have a completely different air hole maybe it is the stem. What do you guys think? Can a cheap pipe be made smokeable and enjoyable with a high quality stem?

 

[mso489]

It's certainly worth a try, and sometimes you can have outrageous luck about stems fitting orphan stummels. However, a Chinese low-priced pipe would not be my choice as a starting place for even satisfactory improvements. If this one works, great. But pipes can last a lifetime, so I don't really want anything that I don't want to look at for a lifetime, and the cheapie Chinese pipes might fit that category. I'm a fan of good low cost pipes, but that might be over the line. But if it works for you, who cares what I think about it?

 

[Chasing Embers]

Can you make a cheap pipe good?


Sure can. Put tobacco in it and smoke it. Unless the drilling is terrible or the airway is closed off, the biggest difference between a bad smoker and a good smoker is the person smoking it.

 

[chopper]

Three Road Town pipes I bought through the U.S. all broke.
I'd not ever buy another Chinese pipe as most are garbage.

If yours smokes well then you lucked out. Enjoy it while you can [not that I'd trust it, I'd be waiting for it to self-destruct at any moment ]

 

[huntertrw]

In a word, yes...sometimes. A few years back, I purchased a handsome estate Chacom Carat (the Carat is one of their seconds) Dublin with a honey-colored acrylic saddle-bit stem. I checked, and found that the draft-hole in the bowl was centered at the bottom, and that, overall, the pipe was sound. Surprisingly, it had decent wood, too. However, it did NOT smoke well at all despite my experimenting with various tobaccos and packing methods.

I was about to consign this exercise in frustration to the trash, when I read an article by Rick Newcombe titled Your pipes should have an easy draw, which appeared in the Fall 1997 issue of Pipes and Tobaccos magazine. In it he suggests enlarging the draft-hole in the shank from the "standard" 3.5 - 4.0 millimeters to 4.1 - 4.3 millimeters. I used a 5/32" drill-bit, the same which he mentioned is used by Jim Benjamin, to enlarge the draft-hole in the shank and in the bit as well (both were undersized), and it made a world of difference!

This pipe now draws well, stays lit, does not over-heat, and has become one of my favorite "cheap pipes."

 

[Grangerous]

For the money you’d pay for a Forever Stem these days, you could pick up a Rossi or other known maker of briar in the 40 dollar range. But if the pipe you have smokes well, use it. Make it a travel pipe or work pipe so if lost or broken it’s easily replaceable.