Let's back up. Perhaps there's some way out of this, some argument, some fact I've overlooked.
I don't expect that everyone sees it, or follows anything myself or Tyler has said over the last few years. So I'll lay it out pretty explicitly just so anyone reading will know what I'm talking about.
Coming out of nowhere, realizing that making pipes is really pretty hard, and trying to sell them at a price that's fair for the maker and the buyer, I have always compared my pipes to other available brands - what value do I offer, what can my potential customer buy for 75 dollars, or 100, or 150, or 300... (Pipe makers sell pipes, that's what this game is.) Tyler's approach was different - in essence (and feel free to correct any of this Tyler), Tyler's advice was, learn to make pipes, get good at it, then hit the market with a brand, market the brand as a brand, and be a big success.
I couldn't understand how you could get good at pipes before you sold, say, 50 or so, and so my approach has been to sell pipes at just about any price I could, sell and make and sell and make and develop slowly and build a client base at the same time. "Brand" and "marketing" are utterly secondary in my approach. I take awful pictures, I don't promote myself except by joking around on forums. I don't have fancy stamping or grading. If you want a pipe, come find me. Not much of a concept.
In all of this, there is a common thread however: pipes that are good enough will sell. This is just a fact.
Where am I going here? Where is this revelation?
I bought a Dunhill. Got an old one, a 1969 shape 120. Unsmoked, N.I.B. A real classic.
It is no longer unsmoked.
"What was it like, oh mighty Sasquatch, who art wise in the ways of smoking pipes?" the crowd cries.
It was utterly fucking fantastic. I kid you not. It's a great smoker. It's probably my best smoker, and I have a lot of awfully nice pipes. The draw is beautifully smooth, just load it, light it, and wake up in an hour. It doesn't get hot, it tastes great, doesn't gurgle. It's as good as a pipe could be, I think. And yet, it's far from perfect. The stem could be thinner - here's a pic of one of mine, it's slightly thinner for slightly longer, and overall just a little more comfortable in the teeth than the Dunnie, and I don't cut especially super thin stems (Dunhil on the left):
It doesn't pass a cleaner, doesn't even pretend to. You couldn't get this pipe to pass a cleaner without applying a 10 ton electromagnet to the shank. The finish level on it is.... all right, but in all honesty, I think most of us get a better finish on our pipes. (In Tyler's words, Dunhill is not a benchmark for pipe making, but a benchmark for pipe marketing - this is true on one hand.)
I wouldn't have sent a new pipe out the door in this condition. I strive for better finish, better bit work, and better drilling. And yet.... I paid 400 bucks for this Dunhill and I don't regret it at all, either as a smoker or as a pipe to look at, copy, and learn from.
What do I learn? I learn that the 200 dollar handmade Danish pipe I also just bought will never, ever smoke as good as this Dunhill, and the Dunhill weighs half of what the freehand does. So, I blew 200 bucks, could have bought half a Dunhill.
More importantly I learn that these pipes are cut for business. No spare material - take your average Italian midgrade, and cut 30% of the weight off it, and make the stem more comfortable, and you've got a Dunhill. I am seriously considering selling a lot of my collection, and GETTING more dunhills. No one, NO one, could be more surprised than myself. I'm like, the anti-Dunhill, anti-marketing crusader. And I'm immediately converted.
I also learned that the pipes I'm currently making are EVERY BIT as good as a Dunhill in terms of fit and finish, and from what I'm told and have experienced for myself, the smoking experience. That kind of surprises me. And it didn't come by accident - I've worked hard at this.
So, enough self-congratulatory indulgence. What's the point?
Point is, you've got to make good pipes. Pipes that look good, and smoke good. If you do that, they'll sell, they'll keep selling, and you get to retire filthy rich and be all famous and hang out with Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, maybe at the same time. The bigger point is that Dunhill's marketing, their niche (which they also fill), is a big big part of their success. The pipe is very good, but no better than the best of what Peterson offers, for example. But a Pete is just a Pete. A Dunhill is a Dunhill and you know it because they tell you over and over again, with multiple pieces of paper, a box, a silk bag, a congratulatory handshake a wink, that their pipe is better than anything else in the universe, and you walk out smiling even though you know it's total bullshit!
I think every aspiring pipe maker here should buy a Dunhill, or some other high grade pipe, possibly from one of the makers active today - a Rad, a Ruthenberg, hell maybe even an eMarkle if you're not very bright. I think it's nearly impossible to understand what you are "supposed to be doing" if you have a collection full of fat assed, fat stemmed Italian midgrades, or even some of those funky 70s freehands from Denmark. The fact is, most of these pipes are only reasonably good in many, many ways. Comfort, balance, smoking, all of it. There's better out there and until you experience it for yourself, you will have a tough time making a superior pipe.
My next pipe? Copy a Dunhill 120, except drill it better. Finsh it better. Out-Dunhill Dunhill, and then sell it for half the price of a Dunhill. Stupid, I know. Well, to hell with it. LOL
The moral of the story, I think, is that it's possible to make an absolutely terrific pipe - there's no magic involved here, just understanding and practice. How you get there is up to you, but you absolutely cannot compare your own product on a value vs value level with anything coming out of Italy or England (or China) right now. Do your thing, make the pipes and sell 'em, keep doing it, and do it as good as you can. But a dollar isn't a dollar in the custom pipe world, and focusing on that is not the best approach. Who the hell cares what someone can get for $124.70. Anyone looking to buy your pipe is looking to buy YOUR pipe, and that's the fundamental thing here. My copy of a Dunhill won't be a Dunhill - it will be a BST, no matter what, and that's why it's gonna sell, and that's why someone is going to smoke the hell out of it.
