Routine Tobacco Pipe Cleaning (With Videos)
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Bob - Mar 25, 2010
- 3 min read
By Bob Tate
*Editors Note: These cleaning instructions are for use on wood pipes such as Brair, Olive, Cherry, etc. It is not recommended to clean Meerschaum pipes using these instructions. The actual procedure will be in a video which is included in this article.
As all pipers know, you should always keep your pipes clean. By keeping them clean, they will reward you with a nice, sweet smoke and will help to offer up the true taste of the blend that you are smoking. It will also keep your pipes looking attractive as well. Although it is called routine cleaning, how often you will have to clean your pipe depends on a variety of factors. Things such as the pipe itself, how often you smoke it, how long you let it rest, what type of tobacco blend you smoke in it, etc. are all things that will affect how often you will have to do a routine cleaning on a pipe. On average, you will probably have to do a routine cleaning somewhere around every 10-20 bowls.
When you do a routine cleaning you should use alcohol or a specialty cleaning solution that is made specifically for cleaning the interior of tobacco pipes. They are normally called pipe sweeteners. Some of the name brands are; Brebbia Liquid Pipe Cleaner and PipeMasters Clean & Cure. I like to use Grain Alcohol because it is easily available to me, is relatively inexpensive, and it has a very high alcohol content. It is a lot easier for me to find Grain Alcohol than the pipe sweeteners.
Some people like to use Isopropyl Alcohol to clean their pipes. I prefer to use Grain Alcohol because, in my mind, it is safer. I try not to use anything on my pipes that I can not consume safely. I am not saying that those that prefer to use Isopropyl Alcohol are wrong and that I am right; I am just explaining my take on it. I am not going to debate which is the best to use as it is one of those things that are personal preference.
Whatever type of alcohol that you use, make sure that it has a high alcohol content so that the briar is not absorbing a lot of fluids while cleaning. A high alcohol content will evaporate relatively quickly instead of being absorbed into the wood. One thing to keep in mind while cleaning your pipe is, and it is a very important thing, DO NOT get any of the alcohol or cleaning solution on the exterior of your pipe. Alcohol and cleaning solutions can and will strip the finish, stain, etc. off of the pipe. So be careful!
I am going to list the things that I use when cleaning my pipes. You may choose to not use some of them and replace them with something else to do that part of the job. For example, I like to use Extra Virgin Olive Oil on the last step. Others don’t like to do that. They prefer to use some form of wax or polish instead. So if you don’t want to use that, then omit it from the list. I find that Olive Oil works great. I have been using it on my pipes since I have started smoking them and have never had any ill effects. This is just a guideline to get you started and to show you the procedures on how to clean your pipe. The items marked with an asterisk after them are things that you will definitely need to use.
Here is the list of supplies that will be needed:
•Cleaning Solvent (Alcohol or Sweetener) *
•Bristle Pipe Cleaners (Various Sizes)*
•Extra Absorbent Pipe Cleaners (Various Sizes) *
•Shank Brush
•Cotton Swabs (Such as Q-Tips)
•Paper Towels *
•Soft Cotton Cloth
•Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Now that you have everything that you will need, on to the video!
I hope this article helped get some of you on the way to properly cleaning your pipes.
Happy Puffing!
Written by Bob
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 636. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Barry Kane. Barry started smoking a pipe in 1961 when he was 14-years old. Back then it seemed like everybody smoked, and you could buy pipes and tobacco just about anywhere. Barry is a true old-school pipe smoker, sticking to just one blend. See if you can guess which one before listening. At the top of the show Brian will give his take on Scandinavian Tobacco Group’s purchase of Mac Baren and Sutliff Tobacco and their announcement that they will be shut down.
There’s a pipe in my collection that I cannot bring myself to smoke, though I’ve had it for more years than I care to recall. It’s old, or shall I say, well experienced; that experience, that oldness came to it long before it was in my possession. The pipe is an old Comoy’s Grand Slam from the 1940s. The shape (#93), a slightly canted, stack billiard (sometimes referred to as a Belgian) is right up my alley, and it’s a beautiful example of it. It came to me with some wear and tear; nothing unusual for an old pipe, but more the signs of one that has been well loved, smoked a lot, treated as a favorite tool, cherished, in a sense, by frequent use. It’s the pipe equivalent of a vintage car that’s been driven a lot, enjoyed fully and maintained adequately, rather than one kept in a spotless garage, dusted and detailed weekly, brought out only for leisurely Sunday drives, or to be ogled behind the ropes at the next Concours d’Elegance. When it arrived, those uncounted years ago, it wanted a little restoration. Nothing dramatic needed to be done to it, but the stem was oxidized, the finish a little dingy. The cake was even and fairly thin, and the airway was relatively clean, both signs that its previous owner cared for it, but the bowl’s surface was a little drab and dull. It took little effort to reveal its beauty, to show the lovely contrasted stain and interesting grain beneath the old wax. I often think I should do before and after photos of pipes that I work on, but those thoughts always come after the work’s been done. This one would have been a great illustration of how years of handling that can sometimes make a pipe more beautiful, can other times make it just look grungy. Once I’d cleaned up the externals, it was time to address the inside bits. I approach this a little bassackwards, I realize. It would be more sensible to take care of the inside before addressing the outside, but it’s how I roll. If an old pipe isn’t pretty to look at, it’s unlikely that I’ll care much about it, and cleaning is usually the hardest part, or at least the most boring part of any restoration for me. Alcohol and pipe cleaners. Lots of pipe cleaners. That’s why I leave it for last. Sometimes, I’ll even give a pipe a test smoke before a deep cleaning, just for a point of reference. I gave it a sniff to get an idea of what I was up against, and it stopped me cold. There in that bowl was an aroma that I had not smelled in decades. My head was instantly filled with memories of being in the back room of a fabled Berkeley tobacconist’s shop where I stumbled upon a few jars of long discontinued blends. One of them, a blend called Forty and Eight, had the most engaging and unusual scent of any tobacco I’d stuck my schnoz into. It was sweet, but not in a candy store way. There were none of the usual vanilla, cherry, berry or anise notes of typical aromatics, nothing that could be compared to aftershave or deodorant soap, but something almost musky, a little earthy, something exotic. The shop’s owner couldn’t tell me what was in it, how, or where it had been produced. The old blend had been retired before he’d bought the place. The printed catalogue gave no clues, either, other than being overprinted with the word “DISCONTINUED” in bold, rubber-stamp type. (And, I don’t recall it as being “highly aromatic” as the description indicates.) There was still quite a bit in the jar. Being, at that point, an intrepid explorer of all kinds of tobaccos, whether I thought I’d like them or not, I had to give it a try. It was burly based, but also comprised a good measure of virginia leaf, and maybe some other varieties; I didn’t have enough experience at the time to really pick it apart. But, that aroma was unlike anything I’d experienced before or since. It was something now completely lost to time. Until it wasn’t. Memories are powerful things, and there is no sense more tightly bound to memory than our sense of smell. One whiff was all it took to carry me back in time, conjuring a vivid recollection of something long submerged in the inky depths of a subconscious mind. Look, I know as well as anyone that pipes are meant to be smoked, and that many feel it almost sacrilegious to have a pipe and not set it to its intended task. In this case, I simply can’t. I won’t. Ever. Rationally, I am fairly certain this pipe would probably be a great smoke. It was too well loved by its previous caretaker to be anything less than that. My choice not to smoke it is an emotional one, not something rational. Of the thousands of pipes that have passed through my hands over the years, this is the only one to create such a singular and vivid, almost Proustian recollection of temps perdu, of lost time. It revivified a long dormant memory that is mine, and mine alone, and that’s enough. I keep it in a drawer with other old English pipes. In some ways, it’s nothing special, just a nice old pipe. I don’t lavish it with any particular care that arguably befits the hidden treasure that it holds. It’s not in a special box, or displayed preciously in a glass cabinet. Every once in a while, I take it out, point my nose bowlwards, and every time, those memories return just as powerfully as they did the first time. I have no idea how long it’s been since its last owner smoked it, but in the years I’ve had it, there seems to have been very little degradation of the aroma, and that’s […]
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! 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