How Long Have You Been Smoking A Pipe?

[newbroom]

robwoodall

If newbroom reads this, it's been a week since I burned my tongue! Yay me, and thank y'all!

I sure did read it! That's wonderful. Which blends were you burning? All genres? It seems to me that Lat blends are the ones that burn coolest for those learning technique.

Maybe that's just my experience.

I enjoy the full spectrum and am beginning to find my way with my briars, culling some of the less 'productive' from my rotation.

Cobs are still the backbone of my pipe experience, but I know that a good briar too, is a delight. Knowing when you've got a good briar isn't automatic, especially when you're acquiring them as estate pipes.

If you don't have experience a cob will help overcome that deficit, helping you to enjoy the leaf and have confidence to explore the briar patch.

Mike

 

[stanlaurel]

Almost 5 months. I'm just barely starting. I have a lot to learn.

 

[porshcigar]

I started smoking a pipe in September 1970 at the age of 22,so it will be 45 years of pipe smoking and collecting in just a few months.

 

[wolfe64]

Cigrmaster I love that pipe !!! The apple shape does it for me.

I am hoping my next pipe purchase will be an apple like that ::
Mark

 

[papipeguy]

45 years this month. I started just before my first term as a college freshman. Lot's of pipe smokers on campus in those days and we could smoke in the classrooms. We'll never see those days again.

 

[sparrowhawk]

I've tried the pipe several times over the decades, but didn't quite understand how, and I was also a cig smoker. It's only relatively recent since I took up pipe smoking seriously three years ago; I started a month after I finally kicked cigs. A month after, wanting something for an oral fix, I thought of pipe smoking, and with the help of the internet learned how to smoke a pipe properly, and have been smoking pipes ever since. I've found it to be a very enriching experience and an aid to meditative thought and writing. And with the discovery of this forum, found much aid in learning about the endeavor.

 

[dhintonca]

My first pipe was in 1963. I Smoked till 1976 when I got asthma, then not again until about 2000. Had a few pipes from back then, including my very first one (picture below) and my Grandad's Meerschaum! I've added a whole bunch more since then!!
My very first pipe -- Drugstore basket variety! Still smokes well!

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[stephenw]

I smoked my first pipe on September 17, 1970 and have been enjoying smoking ever since, so I am coming up on 45 years. It is amazing to see how many people here have been smoking for many decades and are still around to talk about their pleasure. According to all the anti-smoking zealots we should all be dead by now.

 

[wyfbane]

I started in 2006 in Afghanistan. I used to spend time in the bazaar, as the local food there was LESS prone to giving me the shits than the morons cooking the army chow on my base in Qalat provice.
I used to smoke with my favorite rug merchant. It was great.
I put it down after deployment as I was a single parent to my 2 year old and my future ex wife's evil 16 year old partygirl daughter... No time for smoking then, let me tell you.
After the divorce and ex and her spawn moved out I didn't take up the pipe again until 2012.
It has been balls to the wall since, however. I have a lot of pipes and Should be approaching 30lb cellared.
~Wyf

 

[lraisch]

Fifty years now. Started with a Yello-Bole I "borrowed" from my Dad and some Middleton Cherry Blend. I still have the Yello-Bole along with ninety five other pipes. No Cherry Blend anymore though.

 

[scrooge]

A little over 40 yrs first started out as good hand warmer for us kids dad would light up an let us hold it when fishing, to keep hands warm. of course we'd sneak a little puff now an then. hah old memories

 

[nhpro]

-going on 4 years now, very moderate piper.
wyfbane, fellow vet, thank you for your service sir.

 

[navypipe23]

I started smoking about 4 years ago...stopped when my pipe broke...picked up ciggs again and just recently started pipe smoking in the past month. Definitely hooked.

 

[gtclark]

Started a little over 12 years ago as a college freshman with a Dr. Grabow billiard and a pouch of Captain Black gold blend.

 

[dulgunz]

Only 5 years, switched over from Cigars. Occasionally I smoke a good cigar when the kids are doing smores at our fire pit.

 

[zitotczito]

10 months so far. What a ride so far.

 

[jkrug]

A little more than 30 years for me as an occasional piper. I've really poured it on the last few years now that my kids have grown up and I have more me time. I'm enjoying it more than ever now and don't see me giving it up anytime soon. I still have my first 3 pipes stashed away somewhere, Brighams. Hopefully I will stumble upon them some day tucked away in the back of a drawer somewhere. ::

 

[sparrowhawk]

I really regret not discovering the joys of pipe smoking until recently. The years (and money) I wasted on cigs! Suffice it to say, i wish I discovered the pipe much earlier. Also, I think the advent of the internet helped a lot.

 

[phred]

2 and a half years now - I actually joined this forum before buying my first pipe. I was researching both the health risks and the pitfalls that newbies run into, and this forum was a great deal of help with both. I wound up buying a Bjarne Viking Classic from a local B&M, and a couple of ounces of their best-selling pipe tobacco (which turned out to be Lane's 1Q).

 

[brass]

Episodically, since I was seventeen. I'm now 61. You do the math. I'm too tired. While I was primarily a cigarette smoker for many - but not all - of those years, I don't think there was any year that I didn't keep one pipe around. And I was very serious about the pipe when I had local B&Ms that I could frequent. When they started to disappear, I didn't smoke the pipe as much because I had become accustomed to good house blends and my own custom blends. Smoking pouch blends regularly had lost luster. Not that I am by any means a tobacco blend snob. While I enjoy Russ's blends, and Stonehaven and GL Pease and C&D, etc, I still usually have a pouch of Carter Hall, Prince Albert or Captain Black in the rotation.