Filter 6 Palm 72 Sandblast Bent Apple Pot Estate Pipe - Oval Shank, Vulcanite Saddle Stem, Metal Band

The shank reads FILTER 6 PALM 72. Look inside, though, and there is no filter chamber at all - the bore runs straight and open from chamber to button.

This is a sandblasted, slightly bent apple pot on an oval shank, fitted with a metal band at the shank face and a fishtail-slotted vulcanite saddle stem. No maker's name accompanies the stamp; the pipe is offered exactly as marked, under the code above.

The apple pot sits in the family of rounded-bowl shapes that pipe makers turned to as an alternative to the strict architecture of the billiard. Where a true apple carries a fuller, rounder bowl on a fairly long shank, and a pot is squat and flat-heeled with almost no shoulder, this shape borrows from both: a rounded bowl wall that narrows toward a flatter base, set on a shank short enough to keep the whole pipe compact in the hand. The bend here is slight - just enough lift to bring the bit to the lip without forcing a change of grip, nothing like the deep curve of a full bent bulldog.

The shank is oval rather than round, which changes how the pipe sits between the fingers and how it reads on a rack: an oval shank has a top and a bottom, so the pipe has an orientation, and cutting one cleanly is a more deliberate operation than turning a round shank. Briar is weakest across the grain, and an oval mortise puts extra stress on the wood at the shank end. The metal band there is the common answer to that stress, guarding against the hairline cracks that oval and diamond shanks are more prone to than round ones.

Sandblasting is done after the bowl has been turned to shape: compressed air and an abrasive medium are directed at the briar, cutting away the softer summer growth in the grain and leaving the harder winter growth standing proud as ridges. It rewards a block with strong, straight grain to start with - cross grain or bird's-eye blasts unevenly and can look patchy - and it is chosen as much for what it does in the hand as for how it looks, giving the fingers something to hold onto. Coloring and the grain pattern itself are best judged from the photographs.

The stem is vulcanite, cut to a saddle profile with a stepped shoulder rather than a smooth taper, and finished with a fishtail slot: the airway widens and flattens just before the button instead of ending in a single round hole. With no filter chamber behind it, that open bore is the whole story of the draw - nothing sits between the tobacco and the smoker's mouth but shank and stem, which most pipe smokers read as a cooler, more direct smoke than a filtered equivalent, at some cost in moisture on a long, hard-packed bowl.

The numbers behind the shape are worth reading too. A bowl 40mm across at its widest with a chamber 20mm in diameter leaves roughly 10mm of briar in the wall on each side once the chamber is bored - a substantial wall for a bowl this size, the kind that resists scorch and holds heat evenly through a smoke. A chamber depth of 33mm against a bowl height of 38mm means the draft hole meets close to the true base of the chamber, leaving little unburned tobacco pooling beneath the ember.

Condition: Pre-smoked, graded good. A tiny chip is present on the rim.

THE MARKS
- Stamped on the shank: FILTER 6 PALM 72

THE MEASUREMENTS
- Length: 133mm / 5.3"
- Bowl height: 38mm / 1.5"
- Bowl width: 40mm / 1.6"
- Chamber depth: 33mm / 1.3"
- Chamber diameter: 20mm / 0.8"
- Weight: 1.4 oz

Ships from the Faridunhill / Pipe Collectors Encyclopedia archive. Worldwide shipping and professional sanitation on every estate pipe.