Todd P.

Reviews


Tampers & Tools - Brigham Pipe Tool - Flat Red
Needs a couple improvements
I had high hopes of this being the perfect budget tool. It has good looks, decent heft, a long, easily opened pick, and flat edges that prevent rolling (a pet peeve of mine). However, a couple serious design flaws kill it for me. First, the tamping foot is inexplicably small - even smaller than that on a Czech tool or $1 pipe nail. It's small enough that evenly tamping a decently-sized bowl is somewhat annoying. More importantly, the fold-in design of the pick leaves the point of the pick just clear of the edge of the tamping head. So when tamping near the top of the bowl, the tip of the pick can gouge your rim, which is just unacceptable design to me. Attempts to bend the tip of the pick just a bit further in have been unsuccessful, probably because it's stainless steel. It's hard to see how someone could have designed this, used it, and not noticed the problem. And it's even more annoying because making the foot just a little bit larger would safely cover the end of the pick and solve both of my problems at once. If the manufacturer redesigned this with a larger foot, I'd buy it again in a heartbeat, because it's otherwise fantastic for the price. But as is, I can't recommend it.

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