Lyons / Dawes / Underslung pipe

[JustTroItIn]

Warning: I ended up rambling quite a bit in this thread....sorry about that.

I like cleaning up old estate pipes and bringing them back to their former glory. I'm also a bit of a history buff having spent many an hour with my dad watching various documentaries of Hitler losing the war. I also like weird stuff. Put it all together and you end up with a man in his mid 30's smoking a pipe and dicking around with old BMW and Soviet air head motorcycles. That's stretching a bit far from this thread but may give you an idea as to why I bought something so silly.

A slightly longer than intended preface:

My first odd ball pipe is my Tracey Mincer "The Doodler".



Now this pipe probably deserves a thread of its own just for being stupid...maybe another day. The Doodler (designed in the 50's when everyone was thinking about going to the moon) was supposedly Scientifically designed with all of it's holes and fins to cool the smoke and being less apt to tongue bite. Does it work? The general consensus is....No. In fact some people have reported the pipe is susceptible to burn out due to thin walls because of all the fins and holes. I myself find it to be a fine smoker, but nothing revolutionary. I do love the attempt at innovation though and think it's a neat piece of Americana. Pick up any magazine from the 50's or 60's and just look at the advertisements. People were inventing useless crap left and right and it looked great!

OK, let's get to the original topic.

I'm surfing Ebay a few weeks ago and come upon a pipe called "The General".



My first thought is..what the hell is that!? My second thought is, I have to have it.

So I started my research and intrigued, probably paid too much. Here is what I found about this very interesting pipe.

The original pipe was designed by Charles Lyon in the 1920's. So as the story goes, Charles Dawes (who became a brigadier general in WWI), avid pipe smoker and eventual Vice President to Calvin Coolidge, was sent one these pipes from Mr. Lyon telling him if he liked it to send payment and if he didn't send the pipe back and why he didn't. Dawes responded with payment and an order for a dozen more pipes.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1893&dat=19240705&id=Ve8oAAAAIBAJ&s jid=lNMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1483,307267]The[/url] underslung pipe was born of an idea Mr. Lyon had one night when his smoking was interrupted by one of those cataclysmic disturbances within the stem of the pipe which for centuries has been the bane of pipe smokers. Mr. Lyon set about to construct a backfire-proof pipe, guaranteed to deliver only dry smoke form the stem. Then he saw a picture of General Dawes in a magazine. He was holding a straight-stemmed pipe in such a manner that Mr.Lyon knew the general must be an inveterate smoker. So he sent him one of the underslung pipes, with instructions to send back a check if he liked it, or if he did not, to return it and explain why. Soon thereafter General Dawes sent him a check for a dozen pipes and since has been buying them in lots of one dozen to three dozen to give his friends.

There have been other underslung pipes sold since then, most notably by Walley Frank in his catalog.



I'm really not sure how old the pipe I picked up is as I can find very little info on mine which is only stamped "The General".
Regardless, I have since cleaned her up and now lets take a look at it.



The pipe did clean up quite nice. When I bought it on ebay I had no idea what the bowl was actually made of. Now that I have it, I now know that it's some kind of plastic. That was a bit disappointing.

Here are all of the parts that make up the pipe:



It's designed similar to a Calabash in that there is space below the bowl for moisture to gather. The stem set high in the bowl prevents any gurgle or nasty tobacco juice from entering the stem.

Does it work?



Well, I'm smoking the very first bowl out of it as I type this, and my first impressions are...yes, yes it does work. In addition, I usually break a pipe in with PA to build up a little cake but with the bowl being plastic, screw that noise I'm smoking Hal O' The Wynd!



Overall I find it a neat pipe, an interesting piece of history, and a good smoker. I hope you enjoyed my ramblings.

[OnePyroTec]

Couple of interesting pipes for sure.

[Branzig]

You know I love the mincer

That general is pretty neat indeed! Cleaned up really nice too! Glad it smokes well, must admit I've never smoked a plastic pipe before....an acrylic one sure...oh wait...that wasn't tobacco....yeah never smoked a plastic tobacco pipe before

[JustTroItIn]

The pipe itself is briar, just the bowl is some kind of plastic or bake lite. I really have no idea. Aesthetically I do wish the bowl wood, but functionally the plastic works fine and you do have to look at it up close to notice.

[Tobias Lutz]

Very cool, Jack! Thanks for sharing all the pics.