I think the experience of burning through a pipe is more likely with a cheap pipe described, or perhaps
with a really worn pipe. I've never burnt through a pipe, but my dad, who chain smoked pipes (he said
he looked forward to getting up in the morning so he could light his first bowl of tobacco) would smoke
one pipe continuously for months, and I know he cracked and burnt out many bowls. He got a lot of
mileage out of them; this didn't happen quickly. But finally his smoking went beyond the material
tolerances and the bowl would surrender. He never rotated pipes. The only extras he had were burnt
out pipes that might be in better shape than the one he'd just burnt up, until he could get to the
pipe shop or big city news stand to buy another. He had some fair pipes, but he was the opposite
of a pipe snob ... Scottish blood you know.
