Hairline crack inside of bowl: is the pipe ruined?

ryeguy · May 10, 2019

I have a very small (small bowl and thin walls) billiard. The other day, I noticed that the outside of the bowl wasn't round--there was a slight change in the curvature of the outside. When I looked in the bowl, there was a hairline crack running down from the rim.
It doesn't look big enough to get pipe mud into it.
Is there something I can do to fix it (this is not an expensive pipe, I'm not interested in dropping significant money on this).
Is the pipe ruined?
Is it safe to keep smoking it (maybe the crack will fill in with cake?) or will it suddenly fall apart in my hands one day dropping a big ball of glowing tobacco in my lap--presumably while I'm driving and wearing a silk suit.

prairiedruid · May 10, 2019

Pictures are really necessary for us to give you good advice.

ryeguy · May 10, 2019

I was afraid you'd say that.
Let's see if this works:

ryeguy · May 10, 2019

Okay, embeding images is too hard for me.
But here are links:
1: Outside of the bowl

2: rim

3: rim, straight on

didimauw · May 10, 2019

Interesting. It looks like it's the very very start of a crack. As if it is caving in. I personally would keep smoking it and see what happens.

davek · May 11, 2019

I found this crack on an estate I purchased a year or so ago. I just smoked it, and the crack actually got smaller. It looks about like the crack in yours now. Maybe my pipe had just dried out, I dunno.
Anyway, smoking is good for a pipe, IMO.

haparnold · May 11, 2019

This is one of those "what's the worst that could happen" scenarios. Maybe avoid smoking it in your paper suit, but I wouldn't be surprised for it to last forever, or to fall apart tomorrow.

bassbug · May 11, 2019

will it suddenly fall apart in my hands one day dropping a big ball of glowing tobacco in my lap--presumably while I'm driving and wearing a silk suit.

It may or may never happen, but IMO that's exactly why you should allow your friend to retire with grace and dignity :wink:

smokeyweb · May 11, 2019

Throw it in the burn barrel or smoke it while you mow. That pipe is trash now!

jpmcwjr · May 11, 2019

Pasteboard is trickier than most.
Once your photos are on a photo hosting site (such as Imgur.com; Postimage; Dropbox, etc. ~~Photobucket~~), or on virtually any site, including this site's album such as eBay; Amazon Pinterest; Facebook; an online Pipe retailer; you-name-it, select the full sized image, then Control-click (Mac) or Right-click (Windows) on the image itself, then choose "copy image location" or similar words. Now paste that URL (the full web address, which should end in .jpg or .png) into the IMG box in the reply window of the thread you're posting to.
The site's album is also a good choice for displaying photos, and the same method works for obtaining the image's URL for copying into the IMG box.
There are other good illustrations and steps on how to post photos under "Latest Discussions" in different formats:

LINK to that thread

cortezattic · May 11, 2019

It looks like the cake in the bowl is too thick. Since it heats up and expands quicker than the wood, the expansion causes the crack. Eliminating the cake would help prolong the pipe's life, but it doesn't seem to be worth the effort.

mso489 · May 11, 2019

The crack inside the bowl could be incidental, an easy patch, but the deformed bowl means there's a process that's not likely to be well fixed. I think you may be looking at smoking it on a bowl-by-bowl basis, and being ready to abandon the pipe in the not distant future, keeping in mind there's a fire hazard if the bowl comes apart while lit. Once a bowl is deformed, I'd say it's well along toward burning out. Just my take.

jpmcwjr · May 11, 2019

I'd ream it thoroughly and clean all the gunk off the rim. It may not be so out of round looking. And I'd sure as hell smoke it!

ryeguy · May 11, 2019

It looks like the cake in the bowl is too thick. Since it heats up and expands quicker than the wood, the expansion causes the crack.

That was the first thing I thought; but if the problem was the cake expanding faster than the briar, the crack should have started on the outside and gotten smaller as it went in (since in that case, the briar was being forced to expand too far, and thus, the briar furthest from the cake would have been most split), but the crack here starts on the inside and gets smaller as it goes towards the outside, almost like the briar expanded, but the cake didn't (and thus was forced to split open).
The night before I noticed this, I'd left it on the porch during a rainstorm. The porch is covered, but the winds blew enough mist onto the porch that everything on the table was slightly wet in the morning. I wonder whether the outside of the pipe got wet and absorbed enough water to expand faster than the (relatively dry) inside of the bowl, causing the inside to crack.

jpmcwjr · May 11, 2019

The physics you cite are incorrect. Cake expanding will tend to open the briar on the interior first. And it's highly unlikely that a drenching would cause the briar to expand to any degree.

ryeguy · May 11, 2019

The physics you cite are incorrect. Cake expanding will tend to open the briar on the interior first.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I don't understand.
It seems to me that a crack occurs because the part that cracked was being pulled or pushed apart.
So if the expansion of the cake caused the crack in the briar, then I wouldn't expect the cake to be cracked. The cake is what's expanding, the briar is what is getting pushed apart. But the crack is widest in the cake, and gets thinner in the briar.
And if the briar split because it was getting pushed open from expanding cake on the inside pushing out on it, then I would expect it to buckle outward not inward when it cracked (I don't know if you can tell in the pictures, but the outside of the bowl bows inward over the crack--the visible line on the outside of the bowl in basically an inward crease).
Again, I'm not saying you're wrong; I'm just trying to understand something that I obviously haven't wrapped my mind around.

Chasing Embers · May 11, 2019

Looks like heat damage to me. Ream it back to the wood and press fireplace mortar into the crack.

Hairline crack inside of bowl: is the pipe ruined?

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