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Old 12-04-2008, 10:11 PM   #1
El_Fumador
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Join Date: Jul 2005
Posts: 401
Kirsten Pipes

I broke a couple a pipes over the past few months (copious amounts of alcohol were involved ), nothing special. I decided to replace them with some ebay specials, a Kirsten Companion and a Peterson second (called what else but Irish Seconds).

I've always been intrigued by Kirstens, but didn't want to spring for a new one at >$50, so for the princely sum of $9.50 this piece of junk landed at my place. There was still dried out tobacco in the bowl and the cake was about 1/8th of an inch thick. The valve on the end was frozen stiff with dried tobacco juice and the mouthpiece was blocked. I reamed out the old tobacco and enough of the cake to expose the screw that holds the bowl to the aluminum body. I then removed the bowl. The bowl shape is conical, so the Senior reamer wasn't wide enough to remove the cake completely. I used sandpaper to ream this down further. It took about an hour to get down to bare wood.

Before doing this, I removed the mouthpiece and soaked the metal rod and the main body of the pipe in denatured alcohol. After soaking for an hour, I was able to free the valve. The pipe was filthy and I had to remove random bits of tobacco and caked tobacco juice. The o-rings were in good shape and apparently the fact that there were two of them indicates that the pipe was made between 1958 and 1985. Judging from the condition of this thing, it hadn't been cleaned since the Kennedy administration I had to use a paper clip to clean out and unclog the mouthpiece. After passing about 15 bristle and regular cleaners soaked in everclear through, I got the mouthpiece clean. I used sand paper on the inner-tube/rod to clean it off.

I then cleaned out the body with soap and water, followed by everclear. I gave the bowl the salt/alcohol treatment overnight. By morning the pipe was reassembled and didn't even smell of tobacco. The pipe looks like it's in pretty good shape now

I fired up a couple of bowls of St. James Flake tonight. The first one had a residual taste of Everclear but half-way through the taste improved vastly. The smoke was the coolest I've had so far (not that I have a great deal of experience in these matters ) The second bowl was much tastier, very little gurgling, even though I was puffing hard. I think the bowl needs to be broken in again. I emptied out the condensate after smoking, and ran a Kleenex through the body. I was surprised at the quantity of liquid. The other great thing is that I haven't had any tongue bite, which would have been normal in a briar, given the rate at which I puffed the damn thing.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with it, but I don't foresee replacing my briars with these. This will find a place in my rotation, and I'm going to see if I can score a few more ebay specials...

Sorry for rambling, but what are the opinions on Kirstens?

Last edited by El_Fumador; 12-04-2008 at 10:15 PM.
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