I get the whole, "It's my property so I can do what I want with it" principle, I truly do. You want to texture the hood of your Porsche with a ball peen hammer, toss your iPhone in a blender, or pour a $5,000 bottle of wine into a sewer drain, knock yourself out. I might smile sadly, but I won't raise a finger or say a word. It's your stuff.
But some property has rules. You can't (overly, anyway) mistreat a dog, cat, or horse without potential consequences, for example.
And while a fine old high grade pipe isn't a living thing, it isn't an identical-by-design mass-produced item like an iPhone, or something with a shelf life that's made to be consumed like wine, either.
Every high grade pipe is unique, and with reasonable care will last several hundred years. They are much closer on the spectrum of belongings to, say, a good violin, where owning one is more like being a caretaker.
Which brings me to the subject of this thread. A Dunhill PO made in 1934. Not only is it a fine specimen, but the shape is one of the rarest in the Dunhill catalog. Always high on any Britwood bulldog collector's list. Most smokers have never even seen one in the flesh (wood?).
So, given what it is, what sort of thought process would result in some former owner of the pipe thinking that it was a good one to PRACTICE OPENING THE AIRWAY on? And---for reasons unknown---stuff a roll of sandpaper into the mortise and scrub away to make it a lovely HOURGLASS SHAPE in profile, and EGG SHAPED in cross-section?
Because I don't want Kevin to nuke me from the board, I will not speculate on said previous owner's thought processes.
The slot is now too tall, making the bite zone's "roof" too thin to remove toothmarks from; the walls of the tenon are so thin in relation to the airway's diameter that it won't stay cylindrical (distorts from compression); and the mortise, which needs to be cut larger in diameter to become true again, is at odds with the shrinking-diameter, floppy-loose tenon (fixing one problem exacerbates the other).
At last count there were 66,784,965,014 inexpensive pipes in the world---what collectors frequenty refer to as "basket pipes"---which would have made a wonderful training ground for learning the do's and don'ts of airway enlargement.
But no. Imma gonna git me some files an' drill bits and go after this a'here one, by golly, yee hah!
Figuratively speaking, of course. (He might have had a Boston accent, or been a hipster bro from Seattle.)
Please don't misunderstand. I'm all for people being interested in and trying their hand at pipe restoration, modification, and repair. But NOT using rare collectables as practice fodder. (Or worse, practiced enough on basket pipes to know they're not good at it, then go ahead and jack a good pipe anyway.)
Puttin' my money where my mouth is, the me: If anyone here on The Kevinboard is unsure of their skill level at this stuff but determined to dive in on a good pipe anyway, CALL ME. I'll tell you what you need and walk you through it. (No guarantees against squoinking something, but at least the odds will go down.)
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But some property has rules. You can't (overly, anyway) mistreat a dog, cat, or horse without potential consequences, for example.
And while a fine old high grade pipe isn't a living thing, it isn't an identical-by-design mass-produced item like an iPhone, or something with a shelf life that's made to be consumed like wine, either.
Every high grade pipe is unique, and with reasonable care will last several hundred years. They are much closer on the spectrum of belongings to, say, a good violin, where owning one is more like being a caretaker.
Which brings me to the subject of this thread. A Dunhill PO made in 1934. Not only is it a fine specimen, but the shape is one of the rarest in the Dunhill catalog. Always high on any Britwood bulldog collector's list. Most smokers have never even seen one in the flesh (wood?).
So, given what it is, what sort of thought process would result in some former owner of the pipe thinking that it was a good one to PRACTICE OPENING THE AIRWAY on? And---for reasons unknown---stuff a roll of sandpaper into the mortise and scrub away to make it a lovely HOURGLASS SHAPE in profile, and EGG SHAPED in cross-section?
Because I don't want Kevin to nuke me from the board, I will not speculate on said previous owner's thought processes.
The slot is now too tall, making the bite zone's "roof" too thin to remove toothmarks from; the walls of the tenon are so thin in relation to the airway's diameter that it won't stay cylindrical (distorts from compression); and the mortise, which needs to be cut larger in diameter to become true again, is at odds with the shrinking-diameter, floppy-loose tenon (fixing one problem exacerbates the other).
At last count there were 66,784,965,014 inexpensive pipes in the world---what collectors frequenty refer to as "basket pipes"---which would have made a wonderful training ground for learning the do's and don'ts of airway enlargement.
But no. Imma gonna git me some files an' drill bits and go after this a'here one, by golly, yee hah!
Figuratively speaking, of course. (He might have had a Boston accent, or been a hipster bro from Seattle.)
Please don't misunderstand. I'm all for people being interested in and trying their hand at pipe restoration, modification, and repair. But NOT using rare collectables as practice fodder. (Or worse, practiced enough on basket pipes to know they're not good at it, then go ahead and jack a good pipe anyway.)
Puttin' my money where my mouth is, the me: If anyone here on The Kevinboard is unsure of their skill level at this stuff but determined to dive in on a good pipe anyway, CALL ME. I'll tell you what you need and walk you through it. (No guarantees against squoinking something, but at least the odds will go down.)
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even I draw the line at Dunhill, especially since a new "entry-level" Dunhill costs more than double my Santambrogio "water bong". (I swear it had to be a seconds reject) But a vintage, Brit Bulldog...NOoooo! :crying:
