Confused On What The Really Mean When They Say "Thick-walled bowls stay cooler"?

My, purely anecdotal, experience is that there is little or no correlation between bowl mass and how hot a pipe actually smokes. I do like thick walled pipes though because they do stay cooler in the hand and it makes the experience a bit more enjoyable than having to work around a scorching hot bowl.

I think a thicker walled pipe just doesn't conduct the heat as quickly. Or perhaps some of it naturally dissipates before it reaches the surface. Smoking a really thin walled pipe can be like putting your fingers on a hot coal. Really thin walled pipes are usually cheap pipes.

The fire's just as hot. The thicker bowl (often) insulates your hand. Similar to a pot holder.

A cooler smoking pipe (what you feel on the tongue) vs a cool to the touch pipe is what's meant by thicker walls having the advantage. The thick walled pipes tend to dissipate heat over a broader surface area or mass. Any pipe will "smoke hot" if improper tecnique is applied such as a too rapid cadence, puffing and not sipping, etc. I have some old estate pipes that have very thin walls yet I have a little cake layer built, I smoke slowly, carefully and they don't get hot, at least not so hot I can't hold it. The smoke stream entering your mouth should not exceed room temp unless you enjoy tongue blisters which I doubt anyone does.

Thin walled pipes will radiate heat more efficiently than pipes with thicker bowls resulting in a pipe that will more readily feel hot in the hand, all else equal. The impact on the smoke stream is minor provided the pipes are made from decent briar and do not feature an insulating exterior finish, like urethane for example.
There are many examples of pipes from respected carvers that feature walls as thin as 10mm. The walls on my thinnest pipe are 11mm and it certainly let's me know when I'm smoking too quickly. I think this is an asset particularly for folks getting there technique down.

The smoke stream entering your mouth should not exceed room temp unless you enjoy tongue blisters which I doubt anyone does.

Click to expand...

Well, you'll need to live in a pretty hot spot for this to be the case. Apparently our tongues perceive anything within the range of 85-105f as cool smoke. Our tongues are pretty stalwart organs. They happily put up with coffee and tea without blistering, which are regularly served at 180f.
Cool smoking temps come from this article. http://www.neatpipes.com/blog/built-for-comfort-a-short-history-of-the-chubby-style/&id=7

Other sources of documentation are really difficult to identify with the amount of time I can spend lol
Edit: To the OP, I often get the impression that people are referring to the smoke stream when they say something smokes cool. I'm not sure if it's an issue with how I'm perceiving what said, or the way it's said, but it can be confusing!

Bigpond, I'm not sure about your math. 10mm is actually a thick wall (12.7mm would be half an inch thick).
Here's a Tsuge with walls 4.7mm thick:

http://smokingpipes.com/pipes/new/tsuge/moreinfo.cfm?product_id=172103
Here's a Radice with walls 4.7mm thick:

http://www.smokingpipes.com/pipes/new/radice/moreinfo.cfm?product_id=161824

Thick-walled pipes feel cooler in the hand because they don't conduct heat from the bowl to the surface as readily as a thin walled pipe. Heat dissipation takes place at the surface, so has nothing to do with thickness, only surface area.

Yeah, I guess that's confusing. It's just a lazy shortcut and a easy way to compare pipes when looking at a retailers description Yaddy306.
For example.
taken from SP description of the Tsuge:

Chamber Diameter: 0.60 in./15.24 mm. Outside Diameter: 0.97 in./24.64 mm.

=

wall size

diameter would be /2
Wha can I say? I read pipe descriptions too frequently!

I prefer thicker walls on my pipes as they fit my smoking style better. I once owned a Rad Davis Belge that had thin walls and while the pipe smoked fine, I had to change my smoking style to keep it cool. When I smoke a pipe, I light it up and start smoking and don't think about it after that. This particular pipe had walls so thin that I had to change my style and smoke it much slower to keep it cool. I am lazy and don't enjoy having to think about my cadence so I ended up selling the pipe because it did not fit my style.
Now most of my pipes do not have super thick walls, for example here is one of my average pipes.

The combustion temperature affects atomization of particles etc... but I have a hard time believing that the temperature of the smoke coming out of the stem has any effect on anything other than a person's imagination.

In one of my physics classes the professor always said: "Take it to Monty Python Proportions".

• Lets say the pipe wall is 1/16 of an inch thick. Will the heat transfer through? Most likely is will.
  If the pipe wall thickness was 1-inch thick, will the heat transfer through? Well maybe rabbit, maybe.
  How about if the pipe wall was 12-inches thick, will the heat transfer through? No possible way.

Heat transfer is relative to the material and the thickness. Thermodynamics 301.

Saying that, either, a pipe will smoke cooler by virtue of thick walls or length of the stem is untrue and is used to sell pipes. When tobacco combusts in the chamber the time it takes to reach the mouth is very fast, and thus neither of these features do much to cool it. Nonetheless you read this hucksterism in pipe listings frequently.