I am back today for another episode of "All Pipes Considered." This time we're going back across the pond to Peterson of Dublin, continuing their celebration of 160 years of their iconic marque. What we're talking about today is something very special to me. It's a series that I've always really enjoyed from Peterson and that is the reintroduction of the Irish-Made Army.

The Irish-Made Army series was known by a lot of different names over the years, but you can essentially look back all the way to Peterson's inception and see a very similar type of design — even if you go back as far as the 1906 catalog, for example, you'll see Peterson basically advertising for the patented System pipe, which of course, as we all know, has the patented moisture reservoir, the graduated bore, and all the elements that make up a System pipe as we know it today.

They also had what they called the Peterson's Patent-lip pipes. These were essentially non-System versions of Peterson's classic shape chart. They didn't have the moisture reservoir, so the shanks were a little bit thinner. They were more of a streamlined, classic-looking shape as you would think of from other English or Anglo-Irish pipe makers.

Over the years, basically every decade since the 19th century, Peterson's offered some version of this series. It's been called everything from as whimsical as the Irish Grip to most recently the Irish-Made Army. The Irish-Made Army series was discontinued a couple years ago. We brought it back briefly as a limited drop of the Army Shorts, which were essentially Irish-Made Army pipes with a little bit of a shorter shank and stem. They were nice little pocketable pipes. In honor of the 160th anniversary of Peterson, we wanted to bring back this series as a regular-production line. With that, we have a couple of nice improvements, I think.

New Finishes and Shapes

As you may remember, the Irish-Made Army was available in a smooth finish. For this relaunch, there's actually going to be three different finishes: the Heritage as the smooth finish, a Sandblasted finish, and a Rusticated finish, the latter two finishes being new to this specific line of pipes.

In addition to offering the Irish-Made Army series with three new finishes, there's also a handful of new shapes that you can expect from the line. Some of those you'll probably recognize. There's the 701, the 128, the 608, and the 85.

A Field Tool with Distinctive Features

Additionally, every pipe in this series now has vulcanite mouthpieces. Peterson did offer them with acrylic stems for a time, but with this relaunch, all of the stems are now gonna be vulcanite. They also all have a Fishtail mouthpiece, so if you are a little bit on the fence about the P-Lip stem, this is gonna smoke more like a classical pipe. The Fishtail bit doesn't have a moisture reservoir.

The underlying tie-in here is that they all have nickel-army mounts. The nickel-army mount is a really important addition to any pipe, I think, because it basically turns any pipe into a field tool. I think the inception of the army mount is apocryphal at this point. Some folks say that it was developed after a soldier put a spent shell case on his shank after it cracked during a battle. Others think that it was invented in a far less adventurous way. But either way, I think it's probably one of the best inventions that have happened in the pipe-making world. It really reinforces what is inarguably one of the most delicate parts of a pipe: the mortise-tenon junction.

Every mount, of course, is turned by Jason, and it's really beautiful. You get all the flash and nice brightness that you would expect from a sterling-silver band, but it's nickel so you don't have to worry about it patinating or having to clean it very often, and I think that's really what gets to the heart of the Irish-Made Army series — it really is a field tool.

Irish-Made Army Pipes Return

I'm very excited to see these come back. I've always very much liked this particular line. I love army-mounted pipes, and though I often smoke Systems, as you guys know, I'm a Pete geek, for sure. I do have several of these from the previous run in my collection, and I do reach for them often, and I'm glad to see them return with improvements that the guys in the factory have worked on.

I think having a little bit more variation on the texture and stain color in this series' finishes is really going to open up a lot of different options for folks. Maybe you only like rusticated pipes, or maybe you want a stain that's more classically red. I think that you'll find all those elements in this re-release of the Irish-Made Army line.

Like all pipes produced this year, the 160th anniversary of Peterson, they will have the "Made in Ireland" stamp with the date range celebrating the 160th anniversary. I know that I'll be picking up a handful of them, most likely for doing some yard work, chores, and different things. Make sure to comment below and let us know your favorite shape in the re-released Irish-Made Army line.