Small TAD and new pipe today. Put my regular meer next to the new pipe for size comparison. Grabbed the Ropp while they were on sale, was only ≈$50. I also have an L.J. Peretti aromatic burley sampler on the way. I wanted the non-aromatic burley sampler, but seems out-of-stock at the moment. Also picked up those two foldable pipe stands, one plastic and one metal.
I've wanted a kind of cheap, all-day workhorse pipe for a while, and the small size makes it better for quick smokes. I really wanted something that would be army/spigot mount, but nothing came up that fit the bill. Sure, I could have gotten a workhorse for far less on eBay, but I didn't and don't feel like digging through mountains of garbage to try to find
gold...
silver... a scrap of copper.
This is my first pipe with a vulcanite stem and I have to say, I don't get the fuss—it seems just as hard in the teeth as my acrylic stems... the genetic meer stems seem softer (like the one all the carvers use you see on mine, is that acrylic or is it nylon, and if acrylic certainly a different formulation than what most briars use). And yeah, I get it's a smaller pipe, but I tried flexing it by hand compared to acrylic and the meer stems and tried just a soft bite onto it and it doesn't feel any different than acrylic.