Thanks Al, I've read those sort of comments too.
Let me add this about the McGimpsey,
I could have easily returned it, but I chose not to because it's a beautiful pipe.
What nudged me most when considering the pipe was seeing the attention to detail
of the stemwork on his flicker page, and indeed, the thin bit is incredibly well-done,
as well as the deep V channel...
...but the V channel was the source of the problem, that's where the pinch was,
at the endpoint of the apex transition to straight airway channel, once I smoothed
that out, it's not a problem at all. I can only speculate as to why there was a
"pinch" there, perhaps the heat generated from making the V channel caused a
slight collapse of the airway?
I remember the first time I bent a vulcanite stem, I didn't have a pipecleaner
in it and I got some airway shrinkage, it made me feel really dumb, I kind of
messed that stem up.
I recently saw pix of an old Larry Roush pipe and it came with a little card
with a quality contol checklist with little boxes to be ticked off by Larry
before he released the pipe as "finished", I thought that was a spectascular
touch, and little things like that go a long way...
...a little bit more attention paid to QC on my pipe and I would have been
most delighted and thoroughly impressed with the maker, and in fact,
I am yet highly impressed with his billiard, it's a great pipe,
I've been breaking it in with PPPlug and it's been smoking very sweetly indeed,
I wouldn't hesitate by buy another of his pipes.
I got mine from James Island Piper,
he still has a couple McGimpsey's,
but for some reason the billiard was cheaper at $189.
http://www.jamesislandpiper.com/store.php?seller=JamesIslandPiper&navt1=110811&navt2=110856&navt3=132503
In the end,
I'm very happy with the pipe,
and it has been serving me well.
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