Forgive the stacking posts here, but I got the clay/bamboo set yesterday, but picked it up 4 hours ago (dun ask why I checked my mail at 2:30 am I dunno)
Anyway, let's talk about it because it is so fantastig.
first the stem isn't fully babmoo, it's 3 pieces. The bit is some plastic, I assume the cheap kind MM cobs come with that screws into a bit on the tip of the bamboo part of the stem, which will be great in a few years when I break the bit (its too soft and my teeth are sharp, it'll happen) -- on the end that fits into the bowls, there's a little bit of cork that goes inside the bowls to make the metal piece at the end of the bamboo fit in the bowl. . .
that bit of cork cracked into four pieces the second I touched it (with a poof a dust if you'd believe it), but I managed to wedge it in the bowl anyway and it seems to work just fine despite technically being broken. Besides, I drink wine, so I have corks, and a knife -- I can manage to make myself another whenever I get around to it.
It's a shame it takes a bit of cork to make a clay bowl properly fit a removable stem, but -- totally worth it. Here's where we get to the pros of the thing.
First: The main hole in the bowl is dead center, which would normally be bad, but there is a secondary hole halfway between the wall and the primary. Again, would normally be bad, I even thought it was a flaw when I saw the first bowl until I looked inside the lead and found that while it looks like the shank is blocked off by a stray bit of clay, the result is actually that no matter how tight the bowl is packed, the airflow is absolutely free (I assume because there is sufficient airflow below the tobacco). Which is cool as hell.
Second: The clay has NO taste. I heard clays don't add flavour to the tobacco, but that's just not true in the case of the other clays I had, the black ones in particular because of whatever special finish is done to/put on them -- anyway my other clays impart some sort of slight earthy taste. . .like clay. . .heh heh, and these bowls have NOTHING, its all the tobacco.
Third: Bamboo stem man! Any kind of wood stem will season just like a wooden bowl. Various plastic stems have no flavour, don't absorb any of the fluid, and don't season either, however they are the most resilient. Clay stems do season, albeit very slowly, but they have just a smidge of clay taste and eventually have to be fired because they absorb way too much fluid. . . though you can't hate that perfectly dry smoke and utter lack of tongue bite. Unfortunately they break. . .easily. Then we get to wood, they age, gracefully, absorb a good deal of moisture but not so fast or completely you can't clean them with a pipe cleaner, thus slowing the technical eventuality of ruining the stem to something that will likely make it through your entire lifetime without spoiling. -- Plus, bamboo adds this quirky sweetness I'm starting to fall in love with.
Fourth: In general it has all the advantages of clay, none of the disadvantages, plus its genuinely well-made, attractive, just brilliant -- and my absolute new favourite pipe (set?)
Oh, and I'm still curious why it comes with 6 bowls and 1 stem. . . its a rather old (thus the broken cork) and the box says they extra bowls are so you don't have to clean, ever I suppose. . .but that does seem a tad silly is all. especially since you should clean the stem anyway.
Last of all -- this full review is only useful if its possible to get a set. . .. Brilliant thing is that it is possible, but a bit hard to find. These sets by any company will be called Coffeehouse - Pipe in English, but seem to be universally German of make and more oft called Kaffeehaus Pfeife (same thing, just in German heh heh) Cherrywood stems also seem to be slightly more common. Also they -all- come with 6 bowls, though some are half black half white while others are all white.
Ah yes, and the brand I have is Waren-Zeichen.
EDIT: Thank you people, I just wrote the (very) rough draft of my progymnasmata exercise, ennconium. I have no idea what that 'p' word is, something about practice exercise would be my assumption, enconium is like a rant about how good something is.
Anyway, I couldn't come up with a topic until I realized how much I had to say about this pipe. . . but out the few downsides, add some adjectives, voila -- progymnasmata.
Oh and I just googled that word, apparently it means "fore-exercises" . . . practice exercises designed to gradually teach students rhetoric -- or basically what I thought it was heh heh.
I need to sleep more; talk less.
