A lovely pipe and a wonderful gift, enjoy it!
Show Off Your Meerschaum Pipes Here!
- Thread starter smokeybear
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New translucent and first Yanik, a just barely rusticated Acorn.
I’ve heard some not so wonderful things about Yanik’s pipes, but seeing this beauty made me throw all that out the window in a flash.
Translucent block meerschaum (or whatever you’d like to call it) practically being my main meerschaum interest, being that most of my meers have been some form or another, as soon as I saw this on the bay, I grabbed it lickity-split. Could not and would not hold back.
It sports such a mixture of that familiar quick-coloring ghostly yellow translucent silicate and loads of solid specklage in such a fine and detailed manner.
Looks like the process of making ghee, where the milk fats separate from the oils.
Gorgeous.
A few iffy bits, which I expected, the seam between the stem and the shank doesn’t meet up to one another perfectly on the right-hand side, the brass rim is blemished and the drilling does seem to be off center, but that is all that sticks out at the moment, which is fine with me. The pros greatly outweigh the slight cons here, 9mm filtered, a new strange translucent pattern to keep an eye on, and surprisingly, despite its chunky appearance, the bit fits between the teeth quite comfortably and the button is darn near perfect for the shape and weight, which gives Yanik points above A. Govem in my book. I’ll be looking to see how well the filter chamber fits the filters themselves, as I’ve found so far that only Altinay really nails filter chambers so the smoke goes right through the filter and not around.
My first pipe with a capped rim as well, and it’s likely my widest bowl yet, nearly an inch wide, and about 1.75 inches deep. Truth be told, I’ve no idea what to smoke out of a bowl this size. My last translucent, a dragon claw now in the hands of Isaac, I used for aromatics, which colored it a lifetime-worth of smokes in just 50 bowls, but I don’t know if I’d like to take that route again, the pipes end up smelling and tasting so sweet, and while coloring is fun, with a trained eye you can pick a meer that will color three times as fast as any with any tobacco at all, and this being one as far as I can discern, means I won’t have to worry about coloring speed. Also aromatics soak into meers like no other material, as it’s just a big sponge. If anyone has any ideas what kinds of blends you’ve had success with in a bowl so wide and so deep, please let me know. It’s not just wide and deep, it even tapers in the lower half. If it would smoke VA’s like a dream, I’d never put it down, but I’m afraid it’s width will make it quite a different experience.
All in all, I’m very excited, a bunch of new things to expect and new information to collect, with such a different color combo, dark, blue-silver stem, a brass ring, and a block to darken from brown to black. If folks have any interest, I’ll take pictures down the line every now and then to show how it ends up coloring, and how quickly. If I’m right, this will color fast and very, very differently from any I’ve seen. So damn cool!
I've not known Yanik to use translucent, and check the drilling prior to smoking. Yanik can knock out some amazing carvings but his drilling is a bit iffy. That is some very attractive rustication and his spot shading with yellow wax is very distinctive.
Hands down the best pipe I have seen. I started four years ago, and that is the best I have seen yet, bar none.
That’s the exact reason I jumped on it so fast, I’ve never seen him have anything like it. The wax isn’t unbleached or anything like he is usually want to do, it was probably just a bit of more absorbent silica nestled inside a larger chunk, probably just a fluke.
Oh, not at all, few carvers do, in fact, I bought an Altinay pipe that was truly translucent by definition and wasn’t listed as such, despite the fact that they really pushed forth and popularized the concept of translucent meerschaum being of the highest grade of meerschaum, as well as the grading of “Translucent Meerschaum” period as far as I’ve found. It was a dragon-claw, with deep pools of clearer silicate, yet just called a dragon-claw, nothing more.
Strangely enough, Altinay only designates a pipe translucent if there is little spotches of more solid silicate on the pipe itself, completely removed from whether or not there is an abundance of clearer, more absorbent silicate that I find to be just as if not more important when designating translucent meerschaum pipes. When a pipe is splotchy, but the underlying material is not as absorbent, more opaque, and not as deep, you get a translucent meerschaum pipe that colors just as slowly as a normal one. If it was up to me, while they would still be within the grade of translucent meerschaum, I’d put one without a higher concentration of actually truly translucent silicate lower in the highest grading than one with less splotch and more color-hungry silica. The ideal “Translucent Meerschaum Pipe” to me should have both factors in spades.
FWIW I've bought a few Altinays in the last little while, and only one was marked as "translucent." That one colored immediately - maybe 2-3 bowls in, but the progression stopped just as quick. It is now pretty much indistinguishable from my non-translucent meerschaum pipes. Have decided to just smoke the hell out of the damn things and revisit in a decade or two. I've decided that the premium they charge for "translucency" isn't worth it to me.
@Copernicuslyrun - beautiful pipe. Hope it smokes as well as it looks!
@Copernicuslyrun - beautiful pipe. Hope it smokes as well as it looks!
@Copernicuslyrun You really luck out with some great blocks.
A side note, I have a tekin that i have been smoking aromatics with. It just has a mild yellow hue, so dont think smoking aromatics alone adds to quick coloring.
A side note, I have a tekin that i have been smoking aromatics with. It just has a mild yellow hue, so dont think smoking aromatics alone adds to quick coloring.
OK. Here are a few pieces of meerschaum 'pipe porn' for you to hand party over after I have gone to bed. The first one is a turn of the century meerschaum 'cutty' with Redmanol stem, silver band work that has been turned 'shit' brown color by me smoking the pipe. The other one is a very fancy meerschaum with beautiful silver work and a screwable and detachable amber silver collar that has been hardly smoked late 19th century.
You're amongst men here, there are no secrets. We all have favorites
Not luck at all, as far as identification goes, just gotta keep a keen eye out, they are out there. As far as the aromatics go, I too feel that it depends on the overall absorbency of the block, but anything rich in oils or goop definitely helps color bum-rush to the surface in my experience.
Well if you put it that way there is this cute little Chinese waitress....You're amongst men here, there are no secrets. We all have favorites
This Tekin bent apple (listed as a tomato for some reason?) is on its way to me. My first pipe purchase of the year. My first tekin as well.
That's what I'd have called it, or an author.
Fair enough. Chamber size is .8 x 1.2-1.3ish
The stuff of nightmares for you!
Thar she blows!