Hi everyone, it's been years since I've been on this site, so I apologise in advance if this was posted in the wrong section, or there was already a thread about my issue that I just failed to find.
So last night I smoked a bowl of Pirate Kake in my brand new Peterson Irish Harp (in case this is important somehow) before putting it down and heading to bed. This morning when I tried to clean it, I noticed what must be a layer of unburnt tobacco that had hardened overnight and it completely covered up the draught hole. I first tried to scrape it out with a pipe tool but it was too hard and too stuck and wouldn't budge. Then I tried to go in the other way via the shank with a pipe cleaner, and after several tries, managed to poke a hole through the layer. I eventually got most of it out of my bowl with a combination of the scraper on my pipe tool, bristle pipe cleaner, and even a reamer. It is now smokable again, though there are still tiny chunks of it on the wall that I couldn't remove. I'm worried that I might have damaged the bowl somehow with my harsh scraping, mind you, it's not the most expensive pipe I've bought, but I do want to find out why this happened, and how to avoid similar things in the future. I've never had this kind of experience before in my 5 or 6 years of pipe smoking.
Was I smoking too hot? Was the air-conditioned room too dry? Did I pack it too tight? Should I have cleared the bowl immediately after smoking? Or was there something wrong with the pipe?
So last night I smoked a bowl of Pirate Kake in my brand new Peterson Irish Harp (in case this is important somehow) before putting it down and heading to bed. This morning when I tried to clean it, I noticed what must be a layer of unburnt tobacco that had hardened overnight and it completely covered up the draught hole. I first tried to scrape it out with a pipe tool but it was too hard and too stuck and wouldn't budge. Then I tried to go in the other way via the shank with a pipe cleaner, and after several tries, managed to poke a hole through the layer. I eventually got most of it out of my bowl with a combination of the scraper on my pipe tool, bristle pipe cleaner, and even a reamer. It is now smokable again, though there are still tiny chunks of it on the wall that I couldn't remove. I'm worried that I might have damaged the bowl somehow with my harsh scraping, mind you, it's not the most expensive pipe I've bought, but I do want to find out why this happened, and how to avoid similar things in the future. I've never had this kind of experience before in my 5 or 6 years of pipe smoking.
Was I smoking too hot? Was the air-conditioned room too dry? Did I pack it too tight? Should I have cleared the bowl immediately after smoking? Or was there something wrong with the pipe?