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Talking to a briar merchant today concerning some pre turned stummels 100 assorted stummels $600 American good deal?? what do you all think? thanks Bob Clark

$10 a stummel sounds pretty good to me as long as the quality is decent and the shapes are sellable.

That's six bucks each.

It would sure be awful to be stuck with 50 you couldn't use, but even so.... if you had 50 you COULD use... that's still cool.

Will they offer any quality guarantee?

Too many questions. When were they made? What was the briar? What are the shapes/sizes? Can you inspect them? Can you send them back?

Let's say they're decent sizes and shapes, and the briar is such that, with sandblasting or rustication you can get a presentable pipe out of the majority of them. Now what? Is your market position such that you can offer a "field grade" line of pipes, or would you not make a distinction between the factory stummels and your handmade pipes? I think Trevor's Ligne Bretagne line is a good case study.

If you just want a bunch of stummels to play with, $600 isn't bad. Shopping for cheap briar you could spend more than that on ebauchons and have a LOT of rejects.

As Jack say it really depends on what you would do with them. If it were me I would probably grab and do something similar to Trever, in the past when i have come across pre-turned stummels they have sold well once finished. $600 for 100 stummels, means I would only need to finish and sell 5 or so to make the money back.

If your market isn't established enough to handle that kind of product then you need another use. Practice pieces to learn/test rustication and finishing or for sandblasting would be the main thing that comes to mind, once you have done this practice you should have no trouble selling them as finished pipes and making your money back.

That's pretty close to what I pay. Even if only half are usable that's still a decent return at typical "hand finished" prices. If you shop around you might be able to find them for less, but they're usually in lots of 20-30 all the same.