The Long Shanks

The long shanks is a grouping name used to bring four classic shapes — Canadian, Lumberman, Liverpool, and Lovat — together under a single heading. All four preserve the Billiard body; what holds them together is that the shank is stretched well beyond the usual, with the mouthpiece (stem) shortened to compensate. The term doesn't come from any manufacturer's catalog — it was born from the community's own shape literature.

Source of the Term

The naming is credited to Bill Burney, author of the shape chart known as the ASP Pipe Shapes Chart, prepared within the alt.smokers.pipes newsgroup community. Burney describes the four shapes individually, but also states explicitly that the umbrella heading is his own coinage. What's at issue, then, isn't a historical production family distilled from catalogs, but a classification heading applied after the fact. Because the chart circulated freely online, it became one of the community's most consulted shape resources, and the group name spread along with it.

The Ratio That Defines the Group

The measure behind the distinction is simple. On a standard straight Billiard, shank length stays close to bowl height, while the mouthpiece is long. In the long shanks, this balance is reversed: the wooden section is stretched to at least one and a half times the bowl height, while the mouthpiece is shortened to balance the overall length. Lovat is considered the most measured member of the group; its shank most often stays near this lower limit, while its mouthpiece, like the other three, is kept long. How the four shapes diverge by shank cross-section (round or oval) and mouthpiece type (tapered or saddle) is detailed in the Canadian family entry.

Naming Confusion in Catalogs

The drift of shape names from one manufacturer to another shows up most in this group. In Dunhill catalogs, number 40 corresponds to Lovat and number 33 to Liverpool; according to shape lists, number 335 corresponds to Canadian, while the Lumberman name doesn't appear in these catalogs at all (Dunhill shape numbers). On the Charatan side, shapes numbered 0402 and 104, referred to as Lumberman, are known from estate pipe records; their official catalog counterparts haven't been confirmed, and their descriptions match the oval shank plus tapered mouthpiece combination — that is, the Canadian definition. In GBD listings, too, shape number 9465, matching the Lovat description, is reported to appear under the name Liverpool.

Amid this untidiness, Canadian and Lovat are considered the most solidly established names; Lumberman is regarded as the one with the fuzziest boundaries. In practice, some manufacturers continue to call all oval-shanked derivatives Canadian, others any long-shanked pipe at all. This is exactly where the umbrella heading earns its keep: when no consensus can be reached on an individual name, a pipe can at least be described with a shared definition.

The Cool-Smoke Debate

That a long shank gives a cooler, drier smoke is a view often voiced in the community; its basis is that smoke travels a longer wooden path before reaching the mouthpiece. This expectation has no measurement-based backing, and quite a few smokers say they don't notice the difference. A similar debate runs around churchwarden, with its far longer mouthpiece. The shape is therefore evaluated more as a matter of balance and appearance than of smoking performance.