charles perry

With all of the home remodelling (OK, just a bathroom) I thought I would
never get a chance to smoke this pipe. Here is a pic:

http://www.knology.net/~chperry/tonni.jpg

I finally took a break about 7PM and sat down with a neighbor, a couple of
bottles of home brew, and my new pipe. Tonni's favorite tobacco is Capstan
Yellow. I have several tins of that, but none were open. I opted for F&T
Cut Blended Plug. I don't have the talent to write the long, flowery
reviews of some on ASP, but I can say that this pipe smokes Virginias GREAT
from the start. As some of you already know, I always start a new pipe off
with several bowls of various Virginia blends. If the pipe fails that, I
try english blends. If that fails then it is either aromatics or
sale/trade. This pipe will stay with Virginia blends!

The fit/finish of this pipe is top notch. I love the rustication technique.
Even the mortise is polished. When I asked Tonni about why he would polish
a part of the pipe that you don't see he replied something like "well of
course it is polished, the pipe must be perfect". He was smoking a very
nice pipe at the time. It is the one he is smoking in the P&T article. I
made mention that it was nice to have such a great pipe to smoke. He
commented that the only reason he was smoking it was because it was flawed.
I had looked, and handled, that pipe for several minutes and I detected
zero, none, flaws. He explained that he had chipped the button a little
while buffing and had to shorten the stem a small amount and reshape the
button. It no longer passed his requirements for a pipe worthy to sell. I
would have never noticed the problem, and honestly I couldn't tell after he
told me! He is definitely interested in selling only the best pipes he can
make.

Not much of a review, but it is a great pipe!

Oh, the home brew wasn't bad either.

Charles Perry P.E.