Air hole is too large -- How to decrease?

Brothers of Briar

Help Support Brothers of Briar:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

forsooth

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 12, 2011
Messages
237
Reaction score
0
I have a rather large pipe with what seems to be an overly generous air hole. I'd like to do something to decrease the draw. Any suggestions?

Thanks!
 
Yes, both. The stem is vulcanite, if this makes any difference.

I was thinking that there might be something that could be inserted into the shank to impede the draw. (The pipe is a non-filter type.)
 
Lining both the stem and shank with a stainless steel tube is possible if the stem is straight. If the stem is bent, you'll need a new stem in addition to an ss tube in the shank.

Not every specimen will allow the tube/lining trick (it's a geometry thing), but most will.

Neither affects the taste of the smoke.
 
LL":dnb57sln said:
Lining both the stem and shank with a stainless steel tube is possible if the stem is straight. If the stem is bent, you'll need a new stem in addition to an ss tube in the shank.

Not every specimen will allow the tube/lining trick (it's a geometry thing), but most will.

Neither affects the taste of the smoke.
Very innovative! Never would have thunk that one.
 
Hmmm....Stainless steel tube...where might I get something like that? I'll give it a try.

Thanks.
 
Unless the airway is tremendously huge, like let's take 3/16" as maybe being a functional maximum at the bowl, you can control the way the pipe smokes just by packing a tiny bit tighter than you normally would.

I have a Ser Jac with an absolutely silly airway - one of this curved drilling setups, and it's probably 5/16". I was shocked when I got the pipe and almost sent it back. But I thought "well, these guys probably know what they are doing" and loaded up a big wad, and the pipe smokes fine, but you certainly can pull any amount of air through it that you want, and in a sense, it takes a slightly different technique to smoke it.
 
Had this problem with the one and only Dunhill I've ever owned. Draft hole was just way too big and had a bugger of a time getting the bowl to burn properly, despite trying to pack firmer and such.

The only conclusion I came to was the diameter was far too large and just couldn't reckon it up, being as Dunhill had this reputation for QC and so forth.

Ended up selling it off for a big loss (~25% on the $). Perhaps I should've sent it back to Dunhill or had a pipesmith look at it. Yet sometimes it's also better to cut your loss and move on.

Lesson learned......



Cheers,

RR
 
Top