Don't Fear the Meer

I've only owned two meerschaum pipes in my life. The first one was a beautiful, large Bacchus shape that I ended up selling to help pay for a honeymoon years ago. I was always very careful about it -- taking care not to touch the bowl while smoking it, blowing smoke across the exterior to induce coloring, etc. But because I thought it required special handling, I just didn't turn to it very often.
I've decided to do things differently with my current meerschaum. No gloves. No worries about touching the bowl and potentially affecting its ability to color. I'm just going to smoke it as I would a briar. I have a feeling that I'm going to enjoy it much more than if I fretted about it like it was a piece of pampered art.
Sure, it may not color evenly. I may be sacrificing some potential "beauty" in the long run. But I guarantee you I'm going to be smoking it -- and enjoying it -- much more than I did my Bacchus. And that seems like a fair trade-off.
Bob

apatim:
I just have time for a quick response. Others'll fill in the gaps, I'm sure.
In general: With a meerschaum, you don't have to go through any breaking-in process. They smoke well straight out of the gate. You don't build up a cake in a meer either; doing so would threaten to crack the bowl. So after running a pipe cleaner through the stem/shank, I just fold it up and wipe out the inside of the bowl. They're incredible porous, so a wetter tobacco might work better in a meer than a briar. . . and the moisture will just help to color the meer over time. Meers also don't need the resting time that benefits briar; I think you could safely smoke a meer every day and never have to worry about "souring" your pipe.
The only real care they require, IMO, is with regard to the stem/shank. Meers either have a plastic push/pull tenon or a screw-in tenon. I prefer the former; a screw-in tenon can be overturned, stripped, and end up resulting in a stem that is no longer tight/secure at the correct smoking angle.
Finally, you can drop a briar and not break it. Meerschaum is more fragile in that regard. I keep mine in its little lined case whenever I'm not smoking it.
Bob

After I wrote that reply, apatim, I had to ask myself, "Well, then, why aren't meerschaums more popular? They seem to be the perfect pipe!"
I think there are a couple of reasons. Despite our common-sense approach here, historically meers have been treated with much greater "care" than briars (and certainly cobs). A lot of us were brought up to believe that you really DID have to hold them with a glove or risk them not coloring well. And "coloring well" was almost the whole point of smoking a meerschaum in the first place.
But coloring aside, meerschaum can be easily marred. You can't just toss them on the seat of your car or drop them in a pocket and expect them to survive unscathed. You can easily scratch a meer with a fingernail. So they tend not to get smoked "out" much; they tend to be much more an at-home pipe.
High-quality block meerschaum isn't cheap, either. If you find a "basket" meerschaum, chances are it's going to be pressed meerschaum or something that's going to be a real pain to smoke. So the "cost of entry" is higher for a meerschaum, I think.
Finally, they're not always easy to buy. Some shops do stock a small handful of meerschaums, but briar is still going to be much more easily available. (I ordered mine directly from Turkey, via an eBay shop, and it took more than a month to arrive. Not everyone wants to put up with that kind of arrangement.)
Still, I think I need to think seriously about adding more meers to my own collection.
Bob

layinpipe wrote:
"I don't get the whole gloves and holding by the stem thing with meerschaums. Why even buy a pipe if you aren't going to fully enjoy it without holding it a certain way and being worried about getting it dirty from bare hands?"
"Dirt" isn't the issue. The issue is that your warm hands will rub away the beeswax coating the exterior of the bowl -- and its the beeswax seeping into the warm bowl as you smoke that helps the meerschaum to color evenly and (relatively) faster than it would otherwise. And for people who love the look of a well-smoked, well-colored nut-brown meerschaum, smoking it is only part of what it means to "fully enjoy it." The other part is seeing that that coloring happens in the best way possible. (I'm sure there are meerschaum purists who would sniff at anyone who doesn't have a properly colored pipe.)
Bob