For an extended period I smoked only flakes, and flake smoking is a wholly separate skill from smoking regular pipe tobacco. The first few smokes were ruined and had to be dug out of the bowl! The first technique that worked for me was the fold and stuff method, smoking the flake lengthwise makes it easy to keep lit, and it gives an excellent cool and long smoke, roughly 50% more smoking time than regular tobacco. As I recall it required less frequent puffing too, due to being easier to keep lit when smoking lengthwise.
As time went on, I settled into a continuous feed method of stuffing, where I just kept feeding flake lengthwise into the bowl until it was 'just right'. Flake really has to be kept moisturized, as while it is possible to smoke dry regular pipe tobacco, dry flake is horrible and very difficult to stuff right - and will smoke very hot, too. As I recall it, flake always worked better in my larger pipes - my first ruined pipe was a small Peterson dubliner that got horribly discoloured from overheating when I tried it with flake back when I was still quite inexperienced. My advice is to forget all you thought you knew about pipe smoking and learn it all over with flake - including using a less important / expensive pipe until you are comfortable with the technique, so as to avoid the expensive kind of mistake I made with my dubliner.
Oh, and I'll agree with the other gentlemen here in that rubbing flake defeats the purpose. Tried it once, never again.
Good luck, flake smoking is the best smoke I had up until the point where I discovered traditional english style tobacco.
