Another Revival Of The Great And Contentious Bowl Coating Debate

Why, you may ask, have I resurrected this old horse for another round of further flailing?
Do a simple google search for "bowl coating" pipes , and you'll get a good many hits.
From clueless to connoisseur - in my short four year pipesmoking career I've only given brief thought to the topic. I'm certainly not an expert judge in matters of taste, but I've come a long way in knowing what's what, even if I'm still clueless of many more nuanced aspects, at least I've developed a sort of "informed cluelessness" ifya get my drift.
I was forced recently to give pause for thought on the subject of bowl coatings because of a new pipe I got which had the waterglass treatment and it was immediately noticeable right from the get-go, even before I smoked it when I drew in only air to test the draw, it had an "off taste" that was a good bit acrid --- and after actually smoking it, I noticed that the usual characteristics of my baccy was tainted and a bit harsh. The flavor profile had been transmogrified in an unpleasant way.
Well, I wrote it off as one of those various peculiarities involved with briar root and continued smoking it and after a dozen bowls it would not shake the off-taste, although the cake building did certainly dampen the oddity of flavor it didn't seem to override it as it was still the predominant taste.
At that point I decided to sand the bowl back to bare wood. It worked. The pipe smokes lovely now like any sweet well-cured briar should.
I bought several more pipes from this same maker because I love the shapes and finish --- all but one started off with the odd taste. I had noticed a greyish powdery residue in the bowls, but really didn't know what it was. Now I know that it is waterglass, and these pipes are my first experience with that particular bowl coating.
Unless, that is, I have a pipe which has a waterglass bowl coating that I never noticed and that's quite possible because each maker has their own recipe and ingredients to create whatever formula works best for them.
I should say that this is my first experience with a bowl coating that I'm actually aware is waterglass.
Even though I've read about the topic before, again I went off searching for monographs on the subject because in this instance I actually had real-life experience with it and had formed a concrete opinion of its attributes.
What I found most enlightening to read, is this:
http://pipesmagazine.com/blog/out-of-the-ashes/bowl-coatings-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-part-i/
&
http://pipesmagazine.com/blog/out-of-the-ashes/bowl-coatings-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-part-ii/
Good stuff.
What really flipped the switch for that dim bulb in my head is when I was reading the comments section, which is vigorous and engaged, and came across a barb thrust upon GLP which stated that his writing was sprinkled with "poetic distractions" --- and that struck a chord with me and made me think in archetypal terms that maybe we are dealing here with different personality types with different reality grids, or rather, to simplify, the right brain/left brain dichotomy --- literary vs. logical, romantic vs. rational , etcetera and all the other perceived traits within that cognitive purlieu.
But that whole argument is still a raging debate also,

as Kara D. Federmeier writes:

Specifically how and why the hemispheres differ remains a mystery. They are actually remarkably similar physically, and this is one reason I think that studying hemispheric differences is critical for the field.
Over the past decade or so, a lot of effort has been put into "mapping" the human brain – that is, linking areas that differ anatomically (have different inputs, outputs, types or arrangements of neurons, and/or neuropharmacology) to different functions. From this, we hope we can learn something about how and why these anatomical differences matter. However, in doing this, the field has also uncovered a lot of hemispheric asymmetries – cases in which, for example, a left hemisphere brain area becomes active and its right hemisphere homologue (with the SAME basic inputs, outputs, etc.) is much less active (or vice versa). This should really surprise us: here are two brain areas that are essentially the same on all the dimensions the field is used to thinking about, yet they behave strikingly differently. There must be physical differences between them, of course – but then, this means that those "subtle" differences are much more critical for function than the field has appreciated.
My own view is that studies of hemispheric differences will help to move the field away from thinking in terms of mapping functions onto localized brain areas. I believe that cognitive functions arise from dynamically configured neural networks. On this view, the role played by any given brain area is different depending on the state of the network of which it is currently a part, and how activity unfolds over time often matters more than where it is in the brain.
Why do the hemispheres differ? I think it is because even small differences in something like the strength with which areas are connected can lead to very different dynamic patterns of activation over time – and thus different functions. For language comprehension in particular, my work has shown that left hemisphere processing is more influenced by what are sometimes called "top-down" connections, which means that the left hemisphere is more likely to predict what word might be coming up next and to have its processing affected by that prediction. The right hemisphere, instead, shows more "feedforward" processing: it is less influenced by predictions (which can make its processing less efficient) but then more able to later remember details about the words it encountered. Because of what is likely a difference (possibly small) in the efficacy of particular connections within each hemisphere, the same brain areas in the two interact differently, and this leads to measurable and important asymmetries in how words are perceived, linked to meaning, remembered, and responded to.
This is unlikely to be the only difference between the hemispheres, of course. But I think the answer to your question is that what we see across the pattern of asymmetries is neither a random collection of unrelated differences nor divisions based on one or even a small set of functional principles (e.g., the left hemisphere is "local" and the right hemisphere is "global" ... another popular one). Rather, some of the underlying biology is skewed, and this has far reaching consequences for the kinds of patterns that can be set up over time in the two hemispheres, leading to sets of functional differences that we can hopefully eventually link systematically to these underlying biological causes, and thereby deepen our understanding of how the brain works.

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&

A lot of research shows that concrete and abstract words are processed differently in the brain. We wanted to see if those differences could be found for exactly the same word depending on what it was referring to, and whether the two hemispheres were similarly affected by concreteness. We found in this experiment, as we had previously in many others, that the left hemisphere is very sensitive to the predictability of word combinations. Fewer nouns can go with "green" than with "interesting," and brain activity elicited in response to "book" reflected this when the words were presented initially to the left hemisphere.
However, to our surprise, it was the right hemisphere that elicited imagery-related brain activity to "green book" compared to "interesting book." Thus, although the left hemisphere is clearly important for language processing, the right hemisphere may play a special role in creating the rich sensory experience that often accompanies language comprehension ... and that makes reading such a pleasure.

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Hmmmmm...

I thought,

what if such a "debate" as ours upon the impact of bowl coatings will never be able to reach an agreeable consensus simply because the participating entrants have radically different core beliefs along with diametrically opposed views of the world at large?
What the gag panel said,

if it made sense it would be a powerful idea LOL
This started out with me just looking into waterglass and seeing how it could possibly alter the flavor profile of a briar pipe and I was stimulated by intriguing commentary to offshoot through tangential vines upon a subsurface of undercurrent which may or may not apply to the argument on whole, which is everybodies got their own damn opinion and you're not gonna change nobodies mind without much difficulty and gritting of teeth.
That gnashing grind can be fun though and that's why we jibber-jabber about our views so freely I reckon.
So why even talk about it if no resolution may be in sight?
Sometimes persuasion can be made, and there's a seemingly egocentric drive to convince others that your views are the correct views.
Anyway,

I never really had an opinion about bowl coatings, even after reading the arguments for/against them, simply because I had yet to encounter a distasteful example of one.
Now I have,

and I'd have to agree that waterglass ain't no damn good --- but that isn't empirical in my mind because there could be different formulations which are A-okay, what I should say is, I don't care for this specific makers recipe and use of waterglass and I came to that opinion based solely upon first-hand experience, of which there is no substitute.
If you are actually reading this, do have any input, opinion, or theoretical musings to add?

So the pipemaker told you he uses waterglass?

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Yep.
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Much ado about nothing.

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My recent experience makes me feel otherwise.
.. :idea: ..

::

Sorry, I just read the cartoons.

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:lol:

They're gag panels man, gag panels,

cartoons are animated!

Let's debate comics vs. toons!
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Bowl coatings are an abomination and the carvers who use them are blasphemers that need to be put down like the dogs they are. Other than that I have no opinion on the subject.

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Please, don't hold back, no need for delicate language here,

tell me how you really feel.

:P
My general lack of pipesmoking experience is further evidenced by the fact that I've only broken in exactly 2 pipes that had nekkid virgin bowls...
...a Genod allbriar which gave a delightful woodsy flavor and continues to gain sweet depths as I smoke it each time, and a Ryan Alden rusticated chubby billiard which from first test draw of air tasted supersweet yumyum nutty and proved to be so upon smoking and it also continues to sweeten deeply with each smoke - in fact, the Alden is the sweetest pipe I've ever smoked!
I was a little worried about the nekkid bowls because I am moreso of a puffer than a sipper (another debate there!) and my pipes do get hot at times, but I was amazed at just how quickly that purty bowl took black with carbon and started building up a good cake --- no problems whatsoever, to the contrary, more benefits!
.. :!: ..

::

Don't like em, had a tete a tete with Me Cooke, no more.Mr Cooke

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Bradley,

wow, that's a testament to how much this stuff can actually matter.
Thanks for weighing in.
:puffpipe: