My esteamed fellow pipe smokers. What is an Army mount? What is the difference between a lovate and a Canadian? Is there a video of the shapes of pipe?
Shapes?
- Thread starter Swampdragon69
- Start date
The stem of an army mount pushes into the shank and is held in place by that friction instead of the usual insertion of the tenon into the mortise. Both a Canadian and a lovat have a long shank, but while the lovat has a smaller saddle stem, the Canadian has a smaller tapered stem.
Materials and Construction - Pipedia
Pipe Shapes - Pipedia
On the last link, if you click on each shape you'll get a more in-depth description and schematics, as well as illustrations of the variants of said shape/family.
Enjoy.
Basic idea of an army mount is that it can be disassembled while hot without compromising the shank. The shank is reinforced by a metal ferule so it won’t crack if you have to remove it quickly. Soldiers need to react fast and disassemble their pipe at a moment’s notice. Army mounts are usually fit with a tapered tenon on the stem rather than cylindrical, though some modern iterations are sort of a hybrid between the two.
Canadians are pipes with a billiard bowl with a looong shank and short stem. Lovats are short Canadians with a round shank that are about average pipe length. A lumberman is a lovat with oval shank.
Canadians are pipes with a billiard bowl with a looong shank and short stem. Lovats are short Canadians with a round shank that are about average pipe length. A lumberman is a lovat with oval shank.
Not quite. Looooong shank would make them churchwardens. And shorter stems would make them billiards.
Pipes from the Canadian family are not differentiated by the length of the stem (although a pipe must meet the requirement that the stem length be at least twice the height of the bowl), but by the shape of the shank and the shape of the mouthpiece.
See here: Canadian - Pipedia - https://pipedia.org/wiki/Canadian
A Canadian Lumberman visiting Liverpool wondered why everyone was so concerned with the shape of his shank.
Edit: and the taper of his stem
Edit: and the taper of his stem
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To the OP: None of this matters, always remember that.
Being new to pipe smoking. Is there a shape that is easier to use or even hard to use. Do I pick one sticky by looks.Materials and Construction - Pipedia
pipedia.org
Pipe Shapes - Pipedia
On the last link, if you click on each shape you'll get a more in-depth description and schematics, as well as illustrations of the variants of said shape/family.
Enjoy.
Shapes really don't affect the smoking one way or another. Quality of drilling, tobacco moisture, packing, and smoking cadence are going to have the greatest impact on the smoking over anything else.
Proverbial can of worms there. But I'd say a straight billiard should be a good starting point.
I'll have to disagree with the Cap'n on this one: shapes CAN affect smoking, based on the smoker. Point in fact: when I started out I bought pipes based on shapes that appealed to me; one of my first acquisitions was a bent volcano; last year I purchased a full bent egg, as well as a Prince, which is a 1/4 bent apple, basically. For ME, full bents don't work, especially if their stems are short, because I need to look into the bowl when lighting in order to see the flame, and this results in the bit pointing straight down at my tongue, with the subsequent problem of one spot of the tongue getting the 'jet of hot air': full bents for me mean tongue bite. You can guess how often I smoke those pipes.
Of course, once you get the ropes and learn your pipes' quirks and idiosincrasies (as well as your own), these problems may go away. But if I were to start over with the knowledge I have now, my first pipes woulda been straight billiards with small bowls.
I've taken to liking that general style. The I'm curious, does anyone find there to be any difference between a longer shank like on canadian types vs a longer stem on the billiard types, assuming I have my terms correct?
the story I read. Who knows is the army mount is based off of soldiers cracking their shanks and making on the fly repairs with bullet casings. And it worked so well it became the fashion later. Kind of like how the corck screw borer for getting things out of the rifle barrel became the wine key after troops figured out it worked on wine bottles.
Careful there: remember that even though the Canadian family is an offshoot of the billiard family, Canadians et al. all have long stems (in this case 'stem' includes the mouth piece). Thus a Canadian will always be longer than a billiard: if a billiard has a stem that is twice as long as its bowl is high (including the mouthpiece), it's no longer a billiard.
Now, if you're asking whether there is a difference in smoke, like, the smoke being cooler, kind of a churchwarden effect, I'd say it's another can of worms due to subjectivity. **I** would say no. Others might notice a difference. It depends.
Got it, thank you. That is very useful info for me. I've seen some of the longer shanks with shorter stems, and then some with longer stems and shorter shanks, and was wondering if it matters that more of the length is briar. Rough example below.
That one on the bottom is in the Canadian family (as per my screen ruler (JR Screen Ruler)). The one above is not even a billiard, so, even though its stem is ≥2x bowl height it cannot be a Canadian: it's just a long-shanked acorn.
Shapes are shifty, but by most definitions, a Canadian has an oval shank and the aforementioned tapered stem. The Lovat has a round shank and saddle stem, but some do not have the longer shank. The one I have has a rather short shank with the relatively big billiard bowl. But usually Lovats have the longer shank. Lovats seem not well defined; I've seen various distinctly other shapes labeled online as Lovats.
The best way to learn shapes is to plow through a lot of online pipe sites, especially the more established ones. All sites occasionally get shapes wrong, but the larger sites do pretty well.