System Pipes

A little over a year ago I took a close look at the Standard System tenon extension, its purpose, function and changes made in its design over time. In that post, the wider tenons and reservoirs of the Patent, IFS and Eire eras were contrasted to the narrower versions that came along from the Early Republic era forwards. The earlier Standard versions Charles Peterson designed visibly allowed for more moisture to accumulate in the reservoir with less air turbulence and better condensation with their built-in funnel-shaped extensions than the square-end tenons and smaller, shallower reservoirs that followed from c. 1945 onwards. Today on This Old Pete we’ll complete our look at System tenon engineering, looking at a part of the System that has caused confusion since its first appearance in 1891: that little screw-in, screw-out part at the tenon end of the mouthpiece on the De Luxe and Premier Systems. In The Peterson Pipe: the Story of Kapp & Peterson we describe it as a tenon extension, adding that in old “Pete Speak” factory jargon it was called a “chimney.” These days craftsmen at K&P refer to it as as a “condenser,” according to factory manager Jonathan Fields. But what does this piece do exactly, and does it do that job effectively? Its purpose was sufficiently obscure by the 1980s that I knew several pipemen—myself included—who screwed it out and threw it away, as it seemed to be merely an added step in the cleaning process. In fact, it’s something almost remarkable to buy an older estate Premier or De Luxe and find the piece intact. Knowing what it does and how well it does it leaves us with one more question: what should it be called? For help in all these deeply fascinating (!) questions I turned to three experts: renowned pipe collector and retired mechanical engineer Andy Camire; commercial pipe expert and managing director of K&P, Josh Burgess; and pipe artisan and arm-chair physicist John Schantz of Rocky Mountain Briars. But first, let’s look at the chief historical examples in the development of the part in question. 1. DE LUXE & PREMIER TENON EXTENSIONS Unsmoked bone tenon extension, c. 1955, from a hand-made STRAIGHT GRAIN From the very first, as you’ll be able to see when the 1896 catalog reprint is issued by Briar Books Press sometime in the not-to-distant future, the top tier of System pipes had a funneled, screw-in bone extension, which was cut according to the size of the mouthpiece, bowl and mortise. It could be quite large in the case of an Oversize or “House Pipe” and was scaled according to the bowl in question. Bone was used until around 1963, according to the retired craftsmen at Peterson, at which time the factory switched to aluminum. Here’s a used bone condenser from a De Luxe 4B, also c. 1955: Smoked bone tenon extension, c. 1955, De Luxe 4B The bone condenser’s temperature remains close to that of the vulcanite mouthpiece during smoking so that…