PreppyHippy
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I wanted to start a thread of thoughts on fills.
These days I hate 'em. I've got a few pipes with small ones and every time I smoke out of them I just wish the manufacturers hadn't had the vanity to put a fill in--I wish they'd left the pinhead-sized flaw just as it was, an unexpected craggy tiny absence. The fills never color the way the rest of the pipe does, and the better the pipe gets from smoking the worse it looks because the fill just stands out more against the aging and handheld briar. Ugh, the pipe just gets uglier and the flaw begins to remind me even more about the mistake. They make me swear not to buy any pipes if there’s any hint of a fill.
Sometimes I wonder if I could somehow remove the fill with, say, a hot needle, but that’s probably too much work and its own invitation to sloppy work at that.
I once had a lower line pipe by one of the main manufacturers with five or six fills that were each probably about two pinheads in size. I smoked it one night on a very windy winter night and the wind super-heated the bowl of tobacco since I didn’t have a wind screen and the briar became very hot quickly. The five or six fills all melted slightly, causing them to have very noticeable little horizontal ridges across them. Of course that made me feel like the idiot that I am, and it meant I didn’t have much time for that pipe anymore. Maybe it would have still provided fine smokes, I don’t know, maybe the heat wrecked it (no visible or scratch-able inside burn out though). But it made me wonder if the manufacturer had used poorer quality fill putty in the first place or if that’s a risk that all pipes with fills have. If the latter, again I wondered why bother?
On the other hand my first pipe was a Savinelli natural, which surely came out of a basket when my girlfriend got it for me. It’s got fills, but it’s a damn good pipe and smokes beautifully. The presence of those fills, in a pipe to which I have sentimental attachment, well, they make the pipe all the slicker in my mind; they show me that I’m not one of those smokers wrapped up in vain perfection after all, and that I care more about the taste than the look. Yeah, I can tell anyone who sees me, I’m proud to be smoking this flawed pipe in the company of anyone!
Similarly I came across an old no name straight billiard marked nothing but “Algerian Briar” and it has three or four pinhead sized fills that are dimpled in from age and whatever. They’re thus more prominently visible. But the pipe is incredibly light for its size and the briar does indeed make it fantastic. Again, I smoke it with public vanity--telling myself “this pipe kicks your pipe’s rear” as I smoke it with smoking buddies.
So I can love and I can hate fills. Still, unless there’s an element of “I know I’m slumming” to the pipe with fills, I hate ‘em. Sometimes they’re a badge of daring honor, sometimes they’re a mark that you’re smoking briar that wasn’t good enough to be a better line of pipe. Drat!
Also makes me wonder if fills could be made to hold if they were made of sterling silver dripped into the flaws, or some other bold triumphing in the wood’s flaw rather than an attempt to cover it up. I imagine the heating and cooling a bowl goes through would probably dislodge any precious metals for fills though.
I post these thoughts and stories to see what reflections other brothers of briar have had about their fills.
Thanks!
These days I hate 'em. I've got a few pipes with small ones and every time I smoke out of them I just wish the manufacturers hadn't had the vanity to put a fill in--I wish they'd left the pinhead-sized flaw just as it was, an unexpected craggy tiny absence. The fills never color the way the rest of the pipe does, and the better the pipe gets from smoking the worse it looks because the fill just stands out more against the aging and handheld briar. Ugh, the pipe just gets uglier and the flaw begins to remind me even more about the mistake. They make me swear not to buy any pipes if there’s any hint of a fill.
Sometimes I wonder if I could somehow remove the fill with, say, a hot needle, but that’s probably too much work and its own invitation to sloppy work at that.
I once had a lower line pipe by one of the main manufacturers with five or six fills that were each probably about two pinheads in size. I smoked it one night on a very windy winter night and the wind super-heated the bowl of tobacco since I didn’t have a wind screen and the briar became very hot quickly. The five or six fills all melted slightly, causing them to have very noticeable little horizontal ridges across them. Of course that made me feel like the idiot that I am, and it meant I didn’t have much time for that pipe anymore. Maybe it would have still provided fine smokes, I don’t know, maybe the heat wrecked it (no visible or scratch-able inside burn out though). But it made me wonder if the manufacturer had used poorer quality fill putty in the first place or if that’s a risk that all pipes with fills have. If the latter, again I wondered why bother?
On the other hand my first pipe was a Savinelli natural, which surely came out of a basket when my girlfriend got it for me. It’s got fills, but it’s a damn good pipe and smokes beautifully. The presence of those fills, in a pipe to which I have sentimental attachment, well, they make the pipe all the slicker in my mind; they show me that I’m not one of those smokers wrapped up in vain perfection after all, and that I care more about the taste than the look. Yeah, I can tell anyone who sees me, I’m proud to be smoking this flawed pipe in the company of anyone!
Similarly I came across an old no name straight billiard marked nothing but “Algerian Briar” and it has three or four pinhead sized fills that are dimpled in from age and whatever. They’re thus more prominently visible. But the pipe is incredibly light for its size and the briar does indeed make it fantastic. Again, I smoke it with public vanity--telling myself “this pipe kicks your pipe’s rear” as I smoke it with smoking buddies.
So I can love and I can hate fills. Still, unless there’s an element of “I know I’m slumming” to the pipe with fills, I hate ‘em. Sometimes they’re a badge of daring honor, sometimes they’re a mark that you’re smoking briar that wasn’t good enough to be a better line of pipe. Drat!
Also makes me wonder if fills could be made to hold if they were made of sterling silver dripped into the flaws, or some other bold triumphing in the wood’s flaw rather than an attempt to cover it up. I imagine the heating and cooling a bowl goes through would probably dislodge any precious metals for fills though.
I post these thoughts and stories to see what reflections other brothers of briar have had about their fills.
Thanks!