Dunhill
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A good thing about a new Dunhill/white spot pipe compared to other makers is it comes with a 1 year guarantee against burnout
Well, that's worth maybe 50 cents. You have to have very bad luck to have a burn out, or be very careless, or be an abject idiot.
S**t does happen. I knew how to smoke a pipe when my first burnout happened, a Charatan Special that was replaced by Royal Cigar in Atlanta because it was within the one year guarantee period. And I still knew how to smoke a pipe when the second one, a GG 75 Castello Epoca, happened. Bad news: it was a grey market import, no guarantee. Good news: I was a good customer and friend of Barry Levin, and he got Jim Cooke to fix it for me. But not for free.
At least back in those days,the 1980’s, reputable shops wouldn’t handle a line if the distributor didn’t have a liberal policy of making burnouts good. They are a fact of life. Not everyone is a skilled decades long pipesmoker. Just look at the estate pipe listings on Smoking Pipes and see what % list “ carbonized bowls” under the condition notes.
I am assuming your burnouts were caused by a bad spot in the pipe, not your technique. Yes it happens, but I think extraordinarily rare among reasonably skilled pipe smokers.
It is rare but I've had that hit me twice, once in a Set Jacapo and another in an Ashton made McCraney pipe. I still consider it rare but I'm not sure about whether skill is involved. Working 20 or so years in pipe shops, I never had a customer return a burn out pipe.
I own both Dunhill's and basket pipes and once broken in, I see no difference in either. I have spent a small fortune on not one, but two Eltang pipes that did not suit my taste at all. Over the years, I found that I simply like what I like with no rhyme or reason as to why.....and I think that’s part of the fun of piping. Go ahead and buy a Dunhill! They are like owning a Jeep: fun to drive and when you’re done, you can get 90% of your money back out of them both.
No doubt there were bad spots in the two pipes that I had burn out. But there seem to be a lot of people, including no doubt posters on this forum, who are new to pipes, are ex cigarette smokers and use butane lighters for repeated relights so they can smoke all the way down to a grey ash. For them, I would suggest that the burnout guarantee is worth way more than 50 cents. Where do all those caveats on condition about carbonized chambers on Smoking Pipes come from if not from people smoking too damn hot? That plus a fissure is a recipe for a burnout. As Sykes Wilford has posted here in the past, bowls get coated to minimize burnouts, and the cost of replacing them can be a significant issue.
I've smoked cigarettes, cigars, and pipes regularly since '91. Never had a burnout.
Since 1991, I haven’t either. But I learned years before that how to smoke a pipe without burning, spiderwebbing or carbonizing a bowl. If all of this is so easy and immaterial, why does Smoking Pipes make a point of noting when estate pioes have signs of carbonization in the bowls?
Every pipe has a purpose and a place. I have a few, and they are nice. But so are many others I own and enjoy. For the right price, any pipe is nice.
It's just hard cake. I've bought a few like that and it wiped out with alcohol and Q-tips. When they say rim darkening it's often hardened tar that can be removed with a wet paper towel. A chamber and rim is never going to be flawless after smoking.
As far as rim darkening is concerned, that is totally off the subject of burnouts. The few estate pipes I have bought from Smoking Pipes that mention bowl carbonization have, at least half the time, shown evidence of bowl burns into the wood when reamed. Sometimes the bowl is sound. But sometimes it isn’t. I don’t expect perfection, never said I did, and never mentioned rims, but heat stress is heat stress, and if it is present it ought to be dealt with. That is an issue I can handle on my own, but not everybody can. My experiences are simply not the same as yours. C’est la vie.
But not off of the subject of SPC descriptions. I was quoting you.
Well, there was a fire in there.?
Vepres Tubuli Fumantibus
I assume you know that a burned bowl means something akin to a depression in a part of the bowl, spider webbing into the wood, enlargement of a pre existing fissure, etc. and that I was never talking about normal smoking of a pipe by someone who knows how not to heat stress a pipe. If not, please forgive me.
I never smoked a Dunhill, but from the reports I never tried to get one. Yes, Albert Dunhill was a great marketer. Let me say this again, he was a great marketer and found a way to associate the brand with the successful. He sold a lot of pipes, I guess, and got top dollar for them.
I think that you get a very successfully marketed brand when you buy a Dunhill and pay twice the price of many other pipes of comparable value.
I think that you get a very successfully marketed brand when you buy a Dunhill and pay twice the price of many other pipes of comparable value.
Waaaiiit a second there is a Ferrari worth it? It does the Ferrari thing and no matter how good a basket Toyota is it can never do the Ferrari thing.
It’s not actually just an A to B thing, where as in the end a good basket smoker can do the thing Dunhills are purposed for... burn tobacco.
I think I’m not out to lunch on this one, but I’m curious to hear your thoughts
Indeed I do. For thirty years I've smoked them, made them, restored them, and repaired them.
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