Savinelli 6mm Charcoal Filters

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Worknman

Part of the Furniture Now
Sep 23, 2019
982
2,875
Anyone tried these? The last 6mm charcoal filters I bought, White Elephant I believe, were too long for most pipes and had very tight draws. Im curious if the Savinellis are made properly.
 
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Worknman

Part of the Furniture Now
Sep 23, 2019
982
2,875
Last edited:

Worknman

Part of the Furniture Now
Sep 23, 2019
982
2,875
If your pipe is a Sav you shouldn't have any issues. Kinda like Vauen with their Dr Perl for 9 mm: made to fit their own pipes.

Third parties is where you run into issues.
Im confident they should fit properly, I guess my main moncern is if the draw is still rather tight due to it being 6mm and not 9mm. I like Savinellis but I also prefer to use charcoal filters and their selection of 9mm pipes is rather limited. This would open up alot more options for Savinelli and Rossi pipes.
 
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stokesdale

Part of the Furniture Now
Apr 17, 2020
845
2,534
Stokesdale

Its a fairly new product.
The big question is how long do they realistically last and do they capture that much more tar without taking out much of all the other stuff (i.e., flavor and nicotine mostly). Why don't you buy some and let us all know how they are ;)
 

Casual

Lifer
Oct 3, 2019
2,579
9,444
NL, CA
I’m not sure I understand filters very much, unless they manage to filter out stuff I don’t want and leave in stuff I do want.

Balsa takes out more water than flavour, so I like those. What are charcoal filters supposed to do?
 

stokesdale

Part of the Furniture Now
Apr 17, 2020
845
2,534
Stokesdale
I’m not sure I understand filters very much, unless they manage to filter out stuff I don’t want and leave in stuff I do want.

Balsa takes out more water than flavour, so I like those. What are charcoal filters supposed to do?
Charcoal, if I'm not mistaken and I very well could be, will capture more tar than balsa will simply because the smoke draws through beads of charcoal instead of around a piece of wood. Historically, charcoal filters themselves are mostly used for filtering out certain toxins like ammonias and stuff...I used to use them a lot to filter out organic compounds in some of the experiments I conducted on livestock feed back in grad school. What exactly that compound would be in tobacco, I'm not sure, but to me, if they left the taste and the nicotine, I could care less what else it filters out...anything else is likely to be a good thing...but if it affects the taste and nicotine, to me, it wouldn't be worth it.
 
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swilford

Starting to Get Obsessed
May 30, 2010
209
747
Longs, SC
corporate.laudisi.com
Hey, I just wanted to get ahead of speculation on this one.

The charcoal filters were brought to market for a pair of reasons (from Savinelli's perspective):

1) You may have noticed that buying Savinelli balsa filters has become challenging lately (a problem that will get worse over the coming weeks). Something like 95% of all balsa (the lumber) comes from Ecuador and the pandemic (for reasons I don't really know) has utterly snarled global trade in the wood. Raw material of the right quality just isn't available at present.

This problem isn't limited to filters, or Savinelli. Tons of industries, from wind turbines to model making, have been struggling with this for months now.

So, since Savinelli is, obviously, pretty committed to 6mm filters, they had to come up with an alternative.

2) More broadly, Savinelli has long been toying with the idea of offering charcoal filters alongside balsa for those who prefer those.

Anyway, short term, this means that balsa filters are pretty scarce. Savinelli is out, LDG (the US distributor) is out and SP is down to very little inventory of some of the sizes. Other US shops are probably running out too, but at least there's an alternative with the charcoal.

Long term, Savinelli will make balsa filters again when it is able to do so. None of us has a good timeline of when that will be. Hopefully, since the scarcity is related to covid, as the pandemic comes to a close, the balsa market will return to normal (and then, a few months after that--wood has to travel to Italy, be milled, packed, travel on to distributors etc etc--balsa filters will be back on shelves).

Sykes
 

Casual

Lifer
Oct 3, 2019
2,579
9,444
NL, CA
So, what do we use to clean pipes when there are no pipe cleaners?

I find straight pipes can be cleaned very effectively with one of those shank brushes and water. Paper towel for the bowl, although a dedicated rag that gets rinsed out often will also work. Pipes were used before the time of disposable cleaning materials, I’m sure we can be just as creative as they were.
 
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Worknman

Part of the Furniture Now
Sep 23, 2019
982
2,875
I’m not sure I understand filters very much, unless they manage to filter out stuff I don’t want and leave in stuff I do want.

Balsa takes out more water than flavour, so I like those. What are charcoal filters supposed to do?
For me, charcoal filters make for a better smoke, moisture wise as well as taste wise. Others disagree, thats their prerogative. Im not sure how it affects the nicotine, if at all.
 

stokesdale

Part of the Furniture Now
Apr 17, 2020
845
2,534
Stokesdale
Hey, I just wanted to get ahead of speculation on this one.

The charcoal filters were brought to market for a pair of reasons (from Savinelli's perspective):

1) You may have noticed that buying Savinelli balsa filters has become challenging lately (a problem that will get worse over the coming weeks). Something like 95% of all balsa (the lumber) comes from Ecuador and the pandemic (for reasons I don't really know) has utterly snarled global trade in the wood. Raw material of the right quality just isn't available at present.

This problem isn't limited to filters, or Savinelli. Tons of industries, from wind turbines to model making, have been struggling with this for months now.

So, since Savinelli is, obviously, pretty committed to 6mm filters, they had to come up with an alternative.

2) More broadly, Savinelli has long been toying with the idea of offering charcoal filters alongside balsa for those who prefer those.

Anyway, short term, this means that balsa filters are pretty scarce. Savinelli is out, LDG (the US distributor) is out and SP is down to very little inventory of some of the sizes. Other US shops are probably running out too, but at least there's an alternative with the charcoal.

Long term, Savinelli will make balsa filters again when it is able to do so. None of us has a good timeline of when that will be. Hopefully, since the scarcity is related to covid, as the pandemic comes to a close, the balsa market will return to normal (and then, a few months after that--wood has to travel to Italy, be milled, packed, travel on to distributors etc etc--balsa filters will be back on shelves).

Sykes
Thanks for the post, but I have a question you may or may not be able to answer; how many bowls can you reasonably get out of one of these filters? I generally get 3 bowls out of a balsa before having to toss it.
 
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