Mobility. A mobile piece will face more dangers than a home piece. Mobile units also may be smaller and lighter for carrying in a pocket or a purse and typically are not water based due to spillage.
Bowl size. The Retail Tobacco Dealers Association (RTDA) specifies a bowl of an inch wide by ˝ inch wide as an optimal size for a long, even burn. Depending on your use, the bowl size will vary, large for a communal piece, smaller for a personal or taster style piece.
Bowl Hole. Often overlooked, it is an extremely important facet to review before you purchase your pipe. Chameleon quality control uses a two stage 2 poker with 2 millimeter and 3 millimeter diameters to measure the aperture and ensure that the bowl hole is no smaller than 2MM and no larger than 3MM. A bowl hole of less than 2MM will clog easily whereas a hole greater than 3MM will allow too much ash/ember pull through.
Bowl Condition. We spend so much time on the bowl because it is where the combustion occurs and is where long-term life of the piece is made (or not). Inexperienced glass blowers and especially importers do not properly prepare or finish the area of glass before or after the bowl is pushed into the glass because of the extra steps involved.
- First, the bowl area needs to be pre-thickened before the bowl push. The push will thin and stretch the glass, so if it is not thickened before hand, the bowl will have inconsistent thickness. This inconsistency will cause the bowl to be prone to breakage due to residual stress imparted to the glass from repeated uneven heating and cooling of the glass during use.
- Second, the bowl needs to be fire polished after the push to reheat/remelt the glass and remove stress left by the relative cool temperature of the carbon tool. Left alone, the stress shows up as jagged lateral lines (up & down) in the bowl, which (again) will ultimately crack and lead to the demise of your pipe. Concentric circles are also stress but do not cause early cracking.
- Third, the bowl should not have air bubbles of any kind. While an air pocket of less than ˝ millimeter will not create enough expansive force when heated during use, anything larger will eventually weaken and crack the bowl due to repetitive stress of expansion and contraction (gases such as air expands and contract faster and with more force than solids).
What to do. Hold your pipe up to a light source and examine the bowl area carefully before you buy.
Overall Size. A smaller pipe offers less time for the smoke to cool between the bowl hole and the mouthpiece whereas a larger/longer pipe will allow the smoke to cool more. Pipes like the Chameleon Original “Gandalf” completely cool the smoke before it reaches the mouthpiece due to its extreme length.
Flat Spot. Make sure there is one under the bowl so your pipe does not roll over and spill your tobacco!
Position of the Third Hole. Righty, Lefty, Endy or “NCH”? Your call, just get one that is most comfortable for you. No Cleaning Hole (NCH) refers to a lack of a third hole. Old school smokers remember a time when pipes did not have this feature, and realistically, it is not really needed in a hand pipe. It is important in a hookah to clear volumes of old smoke, but, in a hand pipe a cleaning hole is not needed if the pipe is cleaned regularly. It is useful however if cleaning is less often and you have stubborn stains to remove.
Once you have established the functional needs, next review the desirability or beauty of the piece.
Color. The palette available to today’s glass artist is enormous. Gone are the days of dim, drab colors, replaced by colors that almost pop out of the glass. Unfortunately, many blowers do not stay current or do not wish to use newer colors because they are difficult and expensive. Combinations of brown and green may not be what you are looking for.
Clean. Are the colors smeared together into an unintelligible jumble of overlapping lines, giving the appearance of a messy finger-painting or is there a well chosen set of complimentary colors combined into a discernable, attractive pattern.
Fuming/Color Change. The secret to color changing glass is actually the fuming. Fuming is the process of vaporizing a precious metal (silver, gold, platinum) onto clear glass. This atomized metal is what causes the glass to appear to change color. It actually does not change color, which becomes obvious after the first time you clean the pipe. Here is why: As you use the pipe, the oil from your tobacco hits and sticks to the inside of the pipe. Over time, it builds up to a point where light no longer passes through, it is reflected. As the reflected light exists the glass, it passes through the fume layer. Different metals produce different light prisms as the light exits the glass, giving the appearance of a change of color. Note: More is not better. If the fume is so heavy that is becomes opaque, there will be no light passing through which means there will be no color change. Look for a transparent fume job for best color change.
Pattern/Design. This area is one of the most contentious in glassblowing. What is Inside Out (ISO) work? What is Surface work? Is there such a thing called “fakey”?
- Inside Out is where the fume AND color are both melted into the inside surface of the raw glass tubing by pre-melting the tubing and making a wine glass. This two-step melt is why ISO is often referred to as “double blown”. ISO maintains the brightness of color and the depth/thickness of the glass best. It requires the most preparation and most in process work time of all blowing techniques, and is therefore often the most expensive. Surprisingly, it is not the best technique for the best color change.
- Surface is where fume and color are applied to and melted into the outside surface of the raw glass tube. As the glass melts, it is exposed to the oxygen rich flame of the torch and the color often fades/washes out due to the oxidation. The fume is not affected, and consequently, surface work is the actually the best color change blowing technique.
- “Fakey” is what knowledgeable glass connoisseurs refer to when some blower mistakenly refers to their “internal fume” pipe or their “sleeved” pipe as Inside Out. Sorry guys, no short cuts allowed. No pain, no gain.
Thickness/Depth. Probably the second most contentious area, thickness is thought to indicate strength. Borosilicate, the engineered crystal material commonly known as Pyrex, obeys standard engineering science. Force = (Mass) x (Acceleration) where A is constant (gravity). If you have an extremely thick pipe, you have a large Mass. The thicker the pipe, the larger the Mass, the larger the impact Force when the piece is dropped. Simple science everybody. Thicker pipes DO feel better in the palm of your hand, but they are not stronger or more impact resistant (quite the opposite actually). There is a marginal strength associated with thickness where glass blown paper-thin is truly more apt to shatter; like a light bulb, and an average thickness pipe is actually the strongest.
Decoration. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but make sure your clear magnifier marbles are highlighting a point of interest on the pipe. Make sure the color marbles compliment the piece. Is the Dichro stretched so thin to where it looks like stringy tinsel or is it rich with minute points of light?
Quality. An unseen part of glass is Quality, which is driven from unseen factors in workmanship and especially the final process of annealing. Since it is unseen, some blowers and especially importers do not take this final (and most important) step because specialized glass kilns are expensive and use a great deal of electricity. However, in reality, that cost is simply transferred to you (the buyer) because the fist time the piece is dropped, the chances of breakage are 3X that of a properly annealed piece. Sometimes, you get what you pay for.
- Since importing any tobacco accessory is illegal, importers often bring pre-formed pipes without a bowl hole in country laced together on a string and call them necklaces. Then, a drill is used to make a hole. Not only does this ruin the integrity and strength of the glass, it is only a matter of time before the bowl cracks and the pipe is unusable. Often, these importers don’t even clean out the glass dust after drilling.
