Charatan's numbered pipes conformed to a pretty rigid standard as to size, shape, length, etc (their 1951 catalogue is a good example of this: they even give the WEIGHT the pipe is supposed to be!). Your pipe is a hand-made variation of one of their familiar and famous shapes, a shape in their vocabulary but with a difference...a longer shank for one thing. I'll venture the belief that I've long held, that after Lane bought Ben Wade out, the Wades and Charatan lower grades (again, the Belvederes, Specials, etc) were all made on Wade machinery (with some exceptions...you will find freehand Charatan Specials, etc that are clearly hand-made and just don't measure up grain-wise to, say, a Distinction or Rarity): if the pipe turned out clean it became a Belvedere, etc, and if it needed filling it became a Ben Wade. These shapes all bore shape numbers...the hand-turned pipes did not. Member Greeneyes could weigh in and correct me or confirm my Wade/Charatan idea. So my thought is sometime between the 1951 catalogue, when ALL pipes produced bore shape numbers, and the time Lane acquired Ben Wade, the numbers vanished for the high-grades.
The Charatan boys had a few then back to work.
BTW I laughed hard as both my parents in law are sociologists!
