Army Mount

I've been anxious to see the new 2018 Burren line—an unfinished or “natural virgin” sandblast army-mount at the entry-grade level.  Followers of the blog will remember that in the 2018 Peterson catalog, the Burren line was originally named “Summertime,” but as the Burren area of County Clare was a favorite haunt of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, who often took long walking holidays there together, I think I can cope with the change. Karst landscape typical of the Burren in the southwest of Ireland My co-author Gary Malmberg, being more knowledgeable than I about the history of pipes, told me that, off-hand, he could think of at least three distinguished forebears in the sandblast virgin style of finishing: the Dunhill Tanshell sandblast of the early 1950s, the Savinelli rusticated Capri Root Briar of the 1960s, and of course the Castello rusticated Natural Vergin line, also beginning in the 1960s. But the Burren's immediate inspiration was Peterson's small-batch Sansone Rogha, an annual release of about a dozen pipes hand-selected by Mario Lubinski. Sansone Rogha X220 System (2017)  “The Burren and the Rogha are indeed very similar,” Conor Palmer told me, “and there is not a massive difference to be honest. We really like the natural, ‘unprocessed’ look and feel of the Rogha pipes that were for the Italian market previously. We simply wanted to offer it to the wider market and so decided to incorporate it into the 2018 series with a few small tweaks. The Burren doesn’t take any finishing while the Rogha were buffed with a white soap buff to give them a slightly glossier finish.  The Rogha pipes have a black saddle acrylic P-Lip mouthpiece while the Burren have acrylic mocha- colored fishtail mouthpieces.” “Each pipe receives a light brush and polish” the copy reads in the 2018 cataalog, and at first glance the B10 I have in front of me (pictured at top) doesn't appear all that much different than the Rogha, aside from the fact that the latter did indeed seem a bit cleaner or whiter. Having logged almost two dozen smokes in the Rogha and one in the Burren, I’m inclined to say there are two chief differences, one in the smoking experience of the P-Lip System vs. the army-mount fishtail, and one in the aesthetic experience of the bowls. If you’ve mastered the typical air-turbulence problems of a Peterson army-mount, you’re home free. This type of pipe smokes hotter for me than either a traditional tenon-mortise (better) or well-made System (best), but I’ve learned that a slower cadence and a sipping style (rather than my standard chuffing routine) overcomes such difficulties, at least when I shy away from virginias and va/pers. The aesthetic difference lie in the Rogha’s sterling mount, the fact that it is hand-stamped rather than laser-engraved, executed as a System pipe, and is comprised of hand-selected bowls. Joe Kenny, factory manager at Peterson, told me the two lines are of the same bowl grade and finish. But it’s…