Recent content by bent bulldog

I truly do not understand. Let me be as clear as possible, it is clear that the Ezratis purchased the Astley name, the rights to use the name and also purchased a large number of stummels from companies such as Dunhill among others. So apparently your position is that because the Ezratis miht...

Sorry gentlemen, I have to disagree. Whether or not the Ezratis had issues with their ebay performance in the distant past, the fact remains that they did purchase hundreds if not thousands of pipes and stummels made for Astleys by major makers such as Dunhill. Don't you think Dunhill would have...

Pear wood, by definition pretty soft wood compared to briar. Stick with the briars. There are good reasons why the wood has been proven over the past 200 years as the superior material for pipes. I have got briar pipes in my rack that date back to the 1930's and still smoke great.

I have just purchased three beautiful Astley pipes from Karen and Mordecai Ezrati who now own the name Astleys and bought all the remaining inventory along with the rights to use the Astley name back in the early 2000's. Apparently there has been some controversy over the past several years...

So I know many of us pipe smokers are Sherlock Holmes buffs but I am also somewhat of a Basil Rathbone buff. He made many interesting movies in addition to the Holmes series. Therefore I have always lusted after a Peterson shape 4AB which is the one he smoked in all of the Universal productions...

Gentlemen: I absolutely agree that there are tons of alternatives to the Capstan Virginia flake profile out there, many, many more than there were 30 years ago when we were trying to find a viable alternative to the original Dunhill Light flake. In those days once you got past the Dunhill Flake...

Capstan: Glad you asked. W.D. and H.O. Wills were the original makers of Capstan which is one of the oldest Virginia flakes available. When I was first introduce to pipe smoking by my fellow pipe shop workers in Portland, Oregon back in the 1970's most of the guys I worked with were sold on...

I just received the new St. Bruno flake in my shop and sure enough, Macbarens again has come fairly close to the old original, just as they did with Capstan, although I did notice upon opening the initial tin of the new stuff that, although the vinegar aroma is very similar in character to the...

I just managed to obtain some tins of Edgeworth Sliced that was manufactured in England and imported by Lane Limited. Does anyone know when this tobacco was imported and when Lane quit importing it. I understand that the original Edgeworth was made by Larus Brothers in the U.S. but I am not...

For years I was taught by every pipe shop that I ever visited that a high quality pipe never needed a filter. When Savinelli introduced the balsa system back in the 1980's I had gone to work at a Tinderbox in Portland, Oregon and had a long discussion with the Savinelli representative about the...

Thanks so much to Carlos. Pease's article is very enlightening.

Hello Brothers: O.K. here was the question on the table at the last pipe club meeting, The term "Balkan" is often used these days to denote a particular type of mixture, usually Virginias, Turkish and Latakia combinations of various percentages. One of the older members brought up the fact that...

Hello brothers:Have any of you who watch YouTube pipe videos, as I do, noticed the videos out of Taiwan by Michael Reyfeldt. He is always very amusing and it is fun to see videos coming from that part of the world. He seems to have disappeared from the YouTube channel about a year or two ago and...

I have collected Dunhills for many years, dating back to the mid 1970's and one of the most overlooked advantages of a superior quality pipe is the quality of the mouthpiece. As far as I am concerned the Dunhill fishtail mouthpiece which is hand crafted from a single high grade piece of...

Hello Brothers: I've been impressed with the quality I have been seeing online of the Design Berlin pipes, especially the blond honey finish but I am wondering about the smoking quality of the pipe if one skips the 9 mm filter. I have never liked filtered pipes so I am wondering if any of you...