Nording Keystone Pipes

[joshb83]

Any updates as to the smoke of the keystone? How was it??

 

[anchovyd]

I just picked up one of these Nording Eriksen Keystone pipes and it is kind of bittersweet smokingwise. The sweet: The smoke is cool and dry and any tobacco I throw at it gets smoked down to white ash on a single light. The bitter: The bowl is thin and gets really hot, I don't like the way the plastic portion of the pipe feels in my hand at all, and the worst part is when you get down to the bottom of the bowl the heat really seems to release the BPA's and chemicals from the plastic bottom of the pipe. You no longer taste tobacco, it is overpowered by the chemical taste which lingers in your mouth for a couple hours after smoking.
The strong chemical taste as you get to the end of the bowl is a bit disconcerting. I feel like It might give me a miscarriage and I am a 240 pound man with no uterus.
There isn't much briar mass for the bow, and it does get really hot but the system does work giving you a cool dry smoke. The size of the bowl is decent, you can get a 40 to 45 minute smoke out of it. It is a shame that the plastic off gasses into your taste buds. I've only smoke three bowls in the keystone pipe so maybe some more break in would get rid of the chemicals and some cake would insulate the briar but the plastic taste sucks so bad and lingers so long that I don't want to put myself through the misery.
The Eriksen Keystone would make a great glove box emergency pipe or a good beater pipe if the chemicals fully out gas. For now Missouri Meerschaum still reigns supreme in that category smoking wonderfully right off the bat and being cheaper.
AnchovyD

I live my life one bowl at a time.

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

I guess on a similar note I've been filling the bottoms of my bowls with activated carbon pellets. They seem to keep tobacco dust out of your mouth a bit, but mostly just help keep the bottom of your bowl clean. I can't say it makes a huge difference with gurgle. It definitely makes emptying the bowl at the end nice and easy, just a little bump and everything usually comes out, I do appreciate it for that.

 

[anchovyd]

Yeah Churchwarden, when I bought the Eriksen system pipe, I also ordered a couple of bags of the Keystones and plan to drop a few into the bottom of some of my huge pipes to see how it goes. I've got a couple really big Nording and Wiley freehands and a massive Ser Jacopo maxima that seem to smoke a little wet with anything approaching an aromatic tobacco and want to see if the volcanic clay can really get those pipes to smoke down to nothing but ash like a meerschaum or the Keystone pipe does.