A Better Pipe Smoking Community

I have had the fortune of trying some of the quickly becoming legendary Captain Bob's Blend from Cornell and Diehl in cohoots with our very own Captain Bob.

Now I am not normally much of an English blend kind of guy, but with the reviews of the crew, I just had to try it.

When I opened the bag, the grape aroma definitely hit me along with a chemical type smell that was no doubt the mixture with the latakia in it.

The blend lit very well and stays lit after the charring light.

Ya win some, ya lose some.

Everything was going swimmingly with my first pipe of 2009 until I decided to go outside of my comfort zone and try to stain this pipe.

Now I'm an extreme traditionalist when making pipes and I prefer simply buffing the raw briar with wax and watch the beautiful grain deepen and darken with use.

I bought some cherry stain, in the hopes I'd put the pipe making world on it's ear with some awesome Timberwolf pipe. With the first stroke of stain on my beloved briar, I knew I had just laid the proverbial turd.

Muddler's discussions and pics of GBD's had really piqued my interest in trying these pipes.

I recently scored one from eBay and have recently finished the refurb.

I have to say that this pipe has me enamored. It fits just right, smokes even better, and IMHO, is just an aesthetic beauty.

Before:

As I had posted a few days ago, I discovered that one of (3) pipes being sold on eBay alongside one ugly duck tobacco jar was an early 30's era Kaywoodie.

I received it in the mail yesterday and couldn't wait to open the box. Below are 'before' pics:

I eBought this pipe a month or so ago. A beautiful Custombilt rhodesian:

Got it home, tried to pull it apart and found this:

SONOFA....