Post #580200 by TorchGuy on Sun, Mar 13, 2011 6:56 PM

That shirt is innnnncredible! I've never seen anything like it. Never.

Okay, first off, I'm also a pipe smoker and collector. I collect everything - briar, unusual corncobs, lots and lots of meerschaum...and Kirstens. In my entire collection of 60+ pipes, there are only five that I smoke. Three of these are Kirstens. Things they have going for them (no, I swear I'm not a Kirsten rep, I just love 'em a whole lot)
-- Easy to clean. Whole pipe comes apart. Use the ramrod to force a wad of tissue down the bore, empty out the gunk well at the end, occasionally put a pipe cleaner through the mouthpiece, and it's good.
-- No gurgle. No gunk. The stem radiates minute amounts of heat from the smoke, condensing it, and the tarry liquid portion ends up trapped in the radiator stem. If you don't have time to clean it after a smoke, a twist of the valve that is the gunk trap at the hell will lock the liquid in the stem, so it can't leak into the bowl or into your pocket.
-- I find that they stay lit almost ridiculously well. Don't pack these bowls in stages like you would a regular pipe; fill the bowl to overflowing, tamp gently, check the draw, then do the usual char light-tamp-relight and you should be set.
-- Bowls unscrew, so you can swap out bowls to switch between, say, aromatic and English, or to give the pipe a new look. And with looks...
Straight, quarter bent or full bent radiators. Three sizes (two on full bent). Radiators come in silver, brass or black. Mouthpieces come in black, gray marbled or brown marbled. Bowls come in about six or so shapes, in three or four sizes, in countless finishes: various shades of smooth, brown or black sandblast, part-sandblast, carved, etc. You can really mix-and-match your ideal look. I prefer the full-bents with an optional 'pedestal' valve that lets them balance upright on a table, waiting to be picked up - very elegant, esp. as a black pipe with one of their meerschaum bowls. They have new Turkish meerschaum bowls (about $100) and a few vintage 1960s bowls carved by various employees, which are (I'll warn you) not waxed, so they won't color as quickly as a waxed meer, but they WILL color. These are $30, and get 'em while they last - I guess an employee found a stash of 'em in the factory.

The shops: One is very new and has no real specific decor. The other (at Fishermens' Terminal in Ballard) is the old shop, and it has a bare-bones, subdued nautical theme, with some old maps framed and a few bells and ships' clocks and nautical gifty stuff. This is where you want to go if you're buying a Kirsten; it's fun to look through the doorway into the back and see eggcrates full of hundreds of briar bowls, which are turned on a lathe by machine and then hand-finished. This shop will also have the big basket of $10 'seconds' bowls to dig through, most of the stock of old meerschaum bowls, and if the guy working is an older man with white hair, asking him may help you get a few vintage bowls to choose from, like the old 'staghorn' carved bowls, depending on what's poking around (the vintage meer bowls are 'staghorn' carvings, too). They'll help you assemble your ideal pipe.

My Kirstens: I have a black Esquire (small full-bent) with a gray mouthpiece, a vintage silver Designer (large full-bent) with a massive Danish-style plateau freehand bowl - about 100 of these bowls were made as custom one-offs in the 70s - and a brown mouthpiece; a silver Horizon (small quarter bent) again with brown, and a 1930s or 40s 1st gen. Kirsten straight, which I don't smoke, as well as a whole bunch of bowls, and I built a display for 'em, which I'll photograph if anyone is interested.

My display has room for (in addition to the four pipes) ten bowls on the main shelf, three more below (that are filled with vintage bowls including the Missouri Meerschaum corncob bowls that were made only in 1969) and six more off the side, for a total of 19. Five spots are left. If someone here wanted to carve some tiki themed bowls, I want one - very, very much. My advice would be to contact (or even visit) Kirsten's Ballard shop, tell them you want to carve some bowls for yourself, and see if they'll supply you with pre-drilled rough blanks with the tobacco chamber already finished. If no other TCers who want to look into carving bowls are in Seattle, let me know here and I'll visit the shop for you and make the inquiry in person. Remember though: briar is tough stuff, a bit harder than your average hardwood, but it can be carved. Also, if you prefer to carve very shallow relief designs onto the surface, an already-turned and "finished", smooth bowl might be what you want. The shapes are shown here:
http://www.kirstenpipe.com/page_customization.shtml
...but the details aren't shown well, so I'll elaborate. The "billiard" is out-of-production, as is the "dynasty", though some may still be available. The "billiard" is shown well. The "columbus" has a conical bottom that ends in a smooth, round bulge near the top. The "brandy" is a bulbous brandy-snifter form, a round bulge that then tapers. The "mandarin" is a brandy variant that comes out to a semi-sharp edge. And the "dynasty" is simply a mandarin with the top rim sloped inward rather than flat. The "bulldog" is a take-off on the standard briar bulldog, and also has the inward-sloped top. The brandy, mandarin/dynasty, bulldog and columbus have the thickest walls where carving could be done.

Let me know who wants to do what and I can help if you're not in Seattle. I can also buy a prospective carver a good pick out of the cheap $10 'seconds' bin in the shape of their choice (but then, you can always ask them to do it for you - if I do it, though, I won't charge anything for doing it and I'll look for something without existing carving or any severe pits or fills).