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Need help Identifying this pipe

edited April 2019 in Pipes & Tools
I bought this pipe at Straus Tobacconist, downtown Cincinnati years ago. The pipe smokes like it is brand new and a friend of mine is looking for one similar. The pipe is around 5.5 in over all with a stem of around 3in. the Bowl has a diameter of 6/8in and 1 in deep.  Can any one help

Comments

  • Any marks/printing on stummel or stem?
    Another idea woould be to inquire of Straus.
    They've proven helpful in the past, but you need better photos.
  • none, and Straus could not identify it off hand either.
  • motie2motie2 Master
    Here's what many of us use for pipe identification.... but it's useless without markings....

    http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/index-en.html
  • well thanks anyway. I'll the form up, maybe I'll get lucky
  • What the heck is this!?! Now don't be smart, I know it's a pipe, but after a quick search for KLE-NER, I'm drawing a blank. 
    And what's that funky knob at the end? I can't screw, unscrew, pull or push it, and I'm not going to apply excessive force unless I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing...
    Anyway, HELP!
  • Lefty loosey; righty tighty. It appears to be a turning knob. Maybe gentle warmth to loosen it up? 
  • motie2motie2 Master
    edited November 2019
    @KA9FFJ
    It appears to be a design predecessor of the Tsuge e-Star system pipe. Similar stummel design and knurled access knob.

  • Tnx @motie2 You're the best... 👏👍
  • edited November 2019
    @KA9FFJ
    That looks very similar to a Kirsten pipe.  With a Kirsten, the endcap turns from an open hole to closed (single hole) so that the moisture collected in the barrel/tube stays there when stored in a pocket.  Well, the endcaps get stuck with the tobacco juice/condensation/whatever.  They are either sealed with a friction fit (old version), or with a rubber o-ring on the newer ones.  On my estate Kirstens most were stuck...very stuck, along with the bits.  I had to heat the endcap and barrel carefully to unstick them.  Cold did not work for me, only heat, and sad to say...quite a bit of heat. Your pipe looks a lot trickier to heat up since it looks like the bowl is not easily removeable.

    Cool little pipe. 
  • @KA9FFJ
    I can see the tobacco juice ring around the endcap.  My Kirstens were real stubborn.  Interestingly, lots of estate Kirstens have the endcaps and sometimes the stems all boogered up with pliers.  Awhile back, there was someone on eBay with a Kirsten "unsticking" service (for lack of a better term).
  • @RockyMountainBriar Tnx for the info brother. At least now I know what I should be trying to do.  I'll start on it tomorrow and see if I can make any progress...
    Tnx again...
  • @RockyMountainBriar By the way, you are also right about the bit. I got it out, but not without great difficulty...

  • I have another pipe I can't seem to find out anything about.
    It's stamped "Dri-Cool Briar", with a pipe stamped that almost covers the word "Briar". 
    Also, it has a hole in the bottom of the bowl that leads to a 1/4" hollow briar tube up into the bowl.
    The hole in the bottom of the bowl looks as if it's missing a finish ring insert.
    Anyway,  any ideas?
  • @KA9FFJ
    I have a Dri-Cool pipe.  I looked up the patent number and found that the tube valve is/was activated by heat. The valve is a thermal metal.  The pipe I have has a metal bar that flexes with heat and open and closes the hole in the bottom.  If I remember correctly, there was at least one other design that did not have the bar, but some other type of valve built into the tube.  Yours would be that type by the looks of it.  For the life of me I cannot find the patent drawings now?  I thought I had them saved somewhere, but I cannot find them.  The US Patent #2166172 is printed on the bar of my pipe.  Maybe you can have better luck finding the patent drawings, I know they exist.
  • Putting <<dri-cool pipe> Into Google renders nothing, but putting it into Google Images renders several pictures of Dri-Cool pipes, including the one @RockyMountainBriar posted, above.
  •      I dug my Dri-Cool out of the cabinet.  When I got it, someone had bent the metal arm down (like most I have seen on the net), they probably snag on pocket threads etc., or curious people just have to bend them “just because”.  I was able to bend the arm back in place without deforming it, it should work nearly as well as it was designed to.
         The idea is that the “valve” arm stays closed until the bowl heats up, then the “valve” arm bends to open the tube to allow cool air to mix with the “too hot” smoke.  If the smoke/bowl cools sufficiently, the valve will close again regulating the temperature of the smoke.
         As you can probably see, this pipe has not been smoked, so I don’t know if it works as designed or not?  Also, there is a small divot cut into the top of the stem.  I do not know if this is how it was made, or if there was some kind of colored dot/fill that has fallen out.  It does not look like there is any adhesive residue in the divot, so maybe this is the way it was originally?
         I will keep looking for the Patent description/drawings that I have seen somewhere in the past.
     
  • I found the US Patent July 18, 1939 (interestingly July 18th is my birthday).  I did not figure out how to copy and post it here though.  Earlier I could not think of the name of the valve....in the patent description it is called a bimetal thermostat,  basically the same as a thermocouple on gas water heaters and furnaces.
  • I’m sure some of you guys have seen this type of device, but for those who have not, I decided to throw this out there.  It is a Yello-Bole Carburetor. It does not have any kind of valve in the single tube, it is just a small thru-hole.  The two smaller circles on either side of the tube are mounting points for the tube device.  I have an older Yello-Bole with a “propeller” stem logo with a carburetor.  From the bottom it looks like concentric circles, It is just a different way to mount the tube in the bottom of the bowl.  I also have Double Carburetor Yello-Bole that is buried somewhere in my stack of pipes, it has two of the little tubes through the bottom, each positioned just left and right of center (just in case one tube was not enough, two has to be better than one right🤔).
  • @RockyMountainBriar Tnx buddy. I have found those pipes with the inlaid metal bar across the bottom of the bowl, but mine has only a single hole which does not seem to show up on the other Dri-Cool pipes. Still scratching my head here...🤔
  • edited December 2019
    @KA9FFJ
    Yea, The patent drawings I found previously showed a few different designs.  One had the bimetal “valve” that was “built-in” to the tube.  It looks like maybe that internal bimetal thermo-valve part is what is missing from your pipe?  Does the hole go all the way through like the Yello-Bole, or is there something beside tobacco/ash plugging the hole?
         Another design had the bimetal valve assembly through the back wall of the pipe bowl into a air passage that intersected the shank airway.  Not sure how they drilled that one? I did not look close enough at the drawings.  That design looked way to complicated.
  • @RockyMountainBriar Tnx for asking. The hole goes straight through the bowl. I'm guessing it had some kind of heat sensitive "valve" that is now missing. The problem is I can't find anything out there with this single hole setup. 
    I'm hoping one of these days I'll trip across a same system pipe. Until then, I can only speculate... 🤔🤔🤔
  • I really need to find those patent drawings.
  • KA9FFJKA9FFJ Master
    edited December 2019
    @RockyMountainBriar See what I mean? After giving it a good cleaning, looks like a brass tube... period... ? 
  • motie2motie2 Master
    edited December 2019
    This reminds me -- vaguely -- of the little brass hole in the side of the pipe stem on a Duncan Hill Aerosphere, the one non-EA Carey I kept from my first pipe life (1964 - late 1980's)


    “The Duncan Hill Aerosphere smoking system (U.S. patent #4,275,747) utilizes the same principle of physics as the manometer. The Aerosphere, visible as the brass pin on the side of the mouthpiece, brings a scientifically measured amount of air into the stem with each puff. The control of the amount of air and the velocity of the air produces two effects that result in superior smoking pipe performance.”



    For more detail: https://rebornpipes.com/tag/duncan-hill-aerosphere-history/

  • @motie2 Good research. The brass you see in my pic is slightly inset where I am assuming a missing "cap ring" should be covering it (-10 pts)...
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