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Sona Oíche Shamhna! Or, in translation from the Irish, Happy Hallowe’en! Most folks don’t know that All Hallow’s Eve has its origins in the ancient Irish festival of Samhain, although back 2009 Peterson tried to educate the masses with an annual Samhain commemorative pipe for a few years. I have been promising myself that this year I’d devote a post to an after-market sideshow which we’ll dub the “Franken Pete,” Peterson’s version of the “Frankenpipe.” Frankenpipes lie at the spectral end of pipe restoration, sometimes going to unearthly lengths to exhume something that will resemble a pipe. A "frankenpipe," then, can be defined as “a pipe made from spare parts,” and has doubtless been around as long as there have been broken pipes, but I first ran across the grisly science in posts at two of my favorite restoration sites, one at Steve Laug’s Reborn Pipes and one at Charles Lemon’s Dad’s Pipes. Most frankenpipes are created by using one strand of the System’s engineering: the army-mount. As soon as you have a pipe that readily disassembles (hot or cold) into (somewhat) interchangeable bowls and mouthpieces, you’ve created the opening for design aberrations. And that’s how Franken Petes are made. Sometimes they’re easy to spot, sometimes only a Pete Freek with the heightened powers gained by ingesting Tlachtga Celtic fire can spot them. (1) I’ll begin my tour of the Franken Petes with a non-example, just to set a baseline. Here’s a D19, which was originally stamped TANKARD after appearing as the faux-cob pipe in 2010’s Mark Twain set: This is not a Franken Pete The would-be mad scientist here didn’t like the stem’s bend. He apparently thought that since the pipe had a flat bottom, the bottom of the bowl ought to fully rest on the landing platform, which it didn’t. He simply heated the pipe stem and rebent it. Anyone with a knowledge of Peterson’s bending practices will at once recognize the incongruity of it. It’s a bit like a kid after-marketing his Honda to give it a little more juice. And if the kid’s happy and his vehicle street legal (me, in this case), that’s all that matters, right? (2) "Karloff's Monster" With the 307 pictured above we get into basic Franken Pete bowl alterations. Someone new to the brand might not know the bowl was topped. Someone who studied Peterson shape charts like a maniac instead of devoting his life to more profitable ends, should. It's actually a fun shape, a kind of ladle, resulting from a substantial "topping" of a scorched rim. It gives a pleasing profile and leaves a deep enough chamber to still be serviceable. The problem comes when the buyer (it was me several years ago) is disappointed to find he hasn't discovered a long-lost Peterson shape, but a "chop"! Caveat emptor, as the saying goes. (3) The most common type of Franken Pete occurs when someone has a bowl but not a mouthpiece to go with it and goes to the…