Are there glass pipes for actual tobacco?

I've seen clay and porcelain, but never glass that was really made for tobacco. It seems that the glass would get crazy hot if you steadily puffed on it for 45 minutes or an hour.

I know a certain blender who uses a double-fired porcelain pipe to test stuff. That's probably as good or better than glass could do.

I could be wrong but i would suspect that it would be a terrible smoke anyway. Glass is considered impermeable so the oils ect would have nowhere to go. I would suspect it would clog and boil and melt your face off :mrgreen:

Ok..glass pipes..I think we all know the connotations. But has anyone ever seen a glass blown pipe made for tobacco?

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No.

I have seen calabash shaped glass pipes, but they had a carb on them. Although the glass blower said he could make one if I wanted. Too bad I didn't have the cash, I would have gotten one.

sixmp makes a good point that I never really considered -- even in the context of porcelain pipes.

Here's a link to some nifty double-bowled clay pipes that are absorbent: Lepeltier

G.L. Pease has several times made reference to a glass pipe he used to have for tasting tobaccos. I gather it broke and he's never been able to replace it.

I would like to actually see the tobacco in the chamber. It would be interesting to take pics of the bowl loaded using different techniques, I think it would be a really "cool" teaching tool.

Before I joined this site... Actually before I ever really smoked a pipe, I made the decision to smoke one and went on ebat to find the cheapest pipe I could. I found this "stone tobacco pipe" from a chinese vendor for 4 dollars shipped and bought it. Well, by the time it got here i had 16 briars and had forgotten about the chinese pipe. I was curious to see if it smoked good. It turned out to be ceramic with some sort of inlay in the bowl. To be honest, it smokes like a champ. I was embarrassed to bring it up on here, but this thread pretty much opened the doors for me to talk about it.

I've used glass pipes for tobacco before and it is not that great, what happends is like someone mentioned before, the oils have no where to go and because it really builds up in the pipe, it imparts a lot of nasty flavor into the smoke as air goes over it, into your mouth.
Man those clays are cool, I might have to get one!

Thank you for the link Cortez, I have never seen those clays, they are very interesting.

I use to have the best glass pipe it was kind of a calabash style. It was made at the local head shop where they did the blowing all in house. The head glass blower their smoked strictly tabacco and was very adamant that all his pipes were for strictly tabacco use. So much so that if a stoner came in looking for a pipe and made even the slightest reference to smoking pot in one he simply kicked them out of the shop. Any who back to the pipe. As i said b4 it was a calabash and was made of pyrex glass. It was not a blown glass pipe where it was a hollow bubble of glass. it was a solid pipe. It was a 2 piece just like a regular pipe and had a cork band to fit the stem into the bowl. not something you could just stick in your mouth and try to hold onto with your teeth though. It was to heavy for that. No carb. The bowl was super thick so as to not get hot when smoking for a while, and it realy wasnt a big bowl just a small to med pack. about a 25 to 30 min smoke.The whole piece was hefty and thick. i use to say you could drop it from 6 feet onto the ground and the damn thing still wouldnt break. it had a smooth air tube for the greatest of ease drawing a puff and made it a dream cleaning. Just run a pipe cleaner down the length and out the bowl and wa la totaly clean. as for the problem mentioned about a build up of moisture and tar he used charcoal filters in the stem to catch any of that. I guess it kind of goes against the whole tradition and history of classic pipes where you need to break them in and get a fine char in the bowl and all that ritual type stuff that goes along with wood, cob, and meer pipe smoking. the best part was every time you smoked it was the freshest cleanest taste of tabacco. No ghost flavors just the here and now taste of what was in the bowl. and after a quick clean and a few min rest to let the bowl cool you could pack something all together different and have a whole different experience all in one pipe. No need to rotate pipes for a different flavor. man i miss that pipe. It eventualy got knocked off the mantel by one of my cats and it broke right where the stem and bowl meet so the pipe would no longer go together and stay. So on a nice day we went for a hike in the woods one last time and i burried it in one of our favorite spot where we would sit and smoke together. by that time the man who made the pipes had died and stoners took over the head shop, and yada yada. and i have never seen or heard of a pipe like that cence. so now i smoke meers cause they offer a close match to that kind of smoke, but still have a taste all there own. I wish some one would come out with a glass collection. Even if it was just a glass bowl in some traditional shapes with a regular stem that fit. I think people would enjoy the beauty as well as the way they smoke.

koshersmoke that is very interesting. Using a filter to catch oils etc sounds like a good fix.

Re the Lepeltier pipes: IMHO double bowl glazed clays are much better pipes than the rustic "Tavern" clays.

Here's a couple of pics of a clay I've had since the late 60's. As it is smoked a scene

emerges under the glazing; this one is a bucolic scene with three maids with baskets

approaching a pond. Hard to focus on curved, glazed surface.

Brand unknown, style name is Manhattan.