Quality of new Dunhill pipes compared to old.

[Ben.R.C]

Honestly, esthetically, I lean toward the new Dunhills. How is the quality/smokability these days compared to old ones? I assume the quality also varied fro the 20s to 80s, etc? Links to info also appreciated

 

[georged]

Copy & paste into Google:

site:pipesmagazine.com tobacco dunhill pipe vintage quality

 

[bullet08]

General opinion would be, anything old is better. Some prefer Dunhill pipes, and collect them, and smoke them. Others don't think highly of recent stuff. While other just don't care for them.

 

[Val]

Made in the same factory with many of the same workers that have been there for decades. Name changed to white spot but it’s the same operation. Some argue that the old ones are better but I believe they make them just as good today. Also, my understanding is that Briar continues to age even after it’s been cut which would promote a better smoke as the pipe ages. Perhaps that could be an argument for the older pipes.

 

[shanez]

I've found my old ones are no better than my new ones.

It does seem briar selection and use of grain is  better more common in older ones but this could be the result of time weeding out the lesser ones. The exact same thing can be said of mechanics/quality.

It seems only a small percentage of new ones have a certain je ne sais quoi (vs old) but they do show up from time to time.

All of that being said I can't justify spending the asking price of new ones when I easily get 2 hand carved artisan pipes for the same amount.

 

[anotherbob]

I've found my old ones are no better than my new ones.

It does seem briar selection and use of grain is  better more common in older ones but this could be the result of time weeding out the lesser ones. The exact same thing can be said of mechanics/quality.

It seems only a small percentage of new ones have a certain je ne sais quoi (vs old) but they do show up from time to time.

All of that being said I can't justify spending the asking price of new ones when I easily get 2 hand carved artisan pipes for the same amount.

generally that's how I feel about Dunhill pipes. I often like them but find I could get several pipes I like as much or more for a fraction of the price. Except the swan shaped ones, those are just so elegant.

 

[trouttimes]

I like the old ones because of the history of the pipe. There is something about a thing that was around during so much world change. I often wonder the stories my pipes could tell if they could talk. Smoking quality…I can’t tell all that much difference.

 

[AJL67]

I like the old ones because of the history of the pipe. There is something about a thing that was around during so much world change. I often wonder the stories my pipes could tell if they could talk. Smoking quality…I can’t tell all that much difference.

Same but I’m like this with all old pipes I like the romanticize the pipes history.

 

[pauls456]

One big change has been the design and execution of the buttons. Going back to the 20's, they were slim and finely shaped. Nowadays they are more oversized and slightly crude.

 

[Chalaw87]

All of that being said I can't justify spending the asking price of new ones when I easily get 2 hand carved artisan pipes for the same amount.

Which artisan(s) do you like?

 

[sablebrush52]

Honestly, esthetically, I lean toward the new Dunhills. How is the quality/smokability these days compared to old ones? I assume the quality also varied fro the 20s to 80s, etc? Links to info also appreciated

Generalities of this kind are pretty useless. Pipes will vary from one another in performance. So overall one can say that they do what they're supposed to do, allow you to smoke tobacco.

Dunhill fanciers have periods that they prefer, like the patent era Dunhills, '20's Magnum and '20's shell blasts when they were using Algerian briar, or pipes from between 1958 and 1968, when the briar they used was supposed to have had more character. There are those who believe that the 1970's was not a good period for Dunhill, some bad marketing ideas, bad designs, and a loss of quality of fit and finish. The 1980's are viewed by some as a return to form, the '90's as not special, and so on and so on. In other words, BS generalities.

The three veteran Dunhill dealers with whom I spoke years ago, one of them a tier 1, all said similar things, superb stem work and design, generally so so wood with some superb wood from time to time. That I can understand because that presents a company emphasis.

All three of those Dunhill dealers smoked Barlings for their personal use.

 

[Ben.R.C]

I think I might have not needed this post if I’d done a bit more poking around old posts first first. Thanks all!

 

[kcghost]

I don't own any Dunhill's, but I've always kind of had a hankering for a birth year (1947) pipe from them. I also "think" the pre-1960 Dunhill's smoke better than the later years. But this is a belief, not a fact.

 

[pauls456]

Why would Dunhill wood be so-so? I expect they purchased the best that was available at the time all thoughout the 'golden age' of Dunhill pipemaking (twenties through sixties). Did other makers have superior ways of aging their briar?

 

[shanez]

Which artisan(s) do you like?

I really like Doug Finlay's work. He is a member of the site here @doug535 . You can also look him up on instagram and see lots of his work.

 

[shanez]

Why would Dunhill wood be so-so? I expect they purchased the best that was available at the time all thoughout the 'golden age' of Dunhill pipemaking (twenties through sixties). Did other makers have superior ways of aging their briar?

It's not just Dunhill's wood that is/can be so-so.

Wood is a natural product with lots of variations and/or imperfections therefore anyone's wood can be (and is at certain times) so-so.

Many artisans are very good at selection of raw briar to minimize this and in the event they later discover a piece of material not up to theirs standards they throw it away. Nobody is perfect it's just that some deal with imperfections better than others.

Factories, including Dunhill, purchase much higher volumes and are more likely to have some lower quality material show up in their production and, hazarding a guess here, are also much more likely to overlook said lower qualities at least to some degree.

 

[sablebrush52]

Why would Dunhill wood be so-so? I expect they purchased the best that was available at the time all thoughout the 'golden age' of Dunhill pipemaking (twenties through sixties). Did other makers have superior ways of aging their briar?

I was paraphrasing what these dealers told me, but to be more accurate, one of them said "mediocre". I think they were referring to the quality of grain, and to be fair, grain wasn't that big a deal to most of the British makers as you can't smoke grain. It's nice to look at, but not necessary.

As for processing, that was an area of debate, with some makers stating that oil curing and stoving the wood to speed up the curing process did not replace air curing, which took longer.

Both Barling and Comoy did their own harvesting, curing, cutting, seasoning, etc. In their 1909 (or maybe 1911) catalog, Comoy wrote about their process for curing the wood they harvested through their Algerian operations. I don't know how long they continued to do that. Barling did the same thing, preferring to select their own burls based on their metric for a quality piece of wood, and kept their harvesting operations going, with an interruption during WW2, until 1954, when they were forced to abandon their Algerian operations after Algeria won its independence. After that, they did what the rest did, bought from a broker like Otto Braun.

 

[Ben.R.C]

I’m getting a 66 dunhill, I figure it will hold its value if I don’t wind up liking it. I have a feeling I will though!