One of the joys of owning a meerschaum pipe is to color it by saturating the pipe with the tobacco oils produced by burning tobacco.
It takes some incredible amount of smoking, but over a long, long period briar pipes will become saturated with oils, too.
Unlike meerschaums, most folks don’t appreciate a tobacco oil saturated briar.
This otherwise nice 7 pointed star era medium apple Three Star Lee is oil saturated.
You’ll notice the tobacco oils have only saturated the shank (to black) and then the saturation is only on the bottom part of the bowl.
If this was a meerschaum I’d be giddy.
It came with another Lee and a Yello Bole that were far worse saturated than this one, and I’ve salt treated the other two. This one is still a good, but not outstandingly good smoker, so I’ve left it with just a good washing in hot soapy water. It helps, but not very much.
This next pipe is my oldest I know of in my stash. It’s an early KB&B marked Kaywoodie Drinkless that has faint lettering on the bottom that reads
SYNCROSTEM
PAT APP FOR
The ball stinger came first, and then the syncrostem patent was approved in 1931, I believe. This pipe was new when Herbert Hoover was President. It’s old.
I spent hours and hours salt treating this and scrubbing it with toothpaste.
It’s only a barely acceptable smoker, now. It was horrible before.
The Kaywoodie is in amazing shape for the amount of smoking it took to color the entire pipe black.
The bit isn’t chewed, the rim isn’t bad, there’s no big dents or deep scratches, and it’s not had the bowl reamed lopsided. Somebody just loved smoking it too much.
I think the average member of a pipe forum might be an addict but they are surely a pipe enthusiast (I avoided the word hobbyist. ).
To smoke a pipe enough to saturate the briar required a stone cold addict that took his nicotine through that vessel for years, if not decades.
But if it’s survived, the addict was also a pipe enthusiast that took enough care of it to not just burn it up.
The Lee owner kept a perfect cake the thickness of a dime, and didn’t smoke to the bottom.
The Kaywoodie had so much cake it held about a cigarette’s worth of tobacco.
Id like anybody to give me pointers how to make the Lee look like the Kaywoodie. That, was too much work to do all at once.
I think that if you want to have an excellent smoker, you’d better buy lower mileage pipes.
I don’t know the exact number, but even the best kept briar can be smoked until it’s mainly good for showing off and saying lookie here at this old relic that I resurrected from dead.
I can make them acceptable to smoke, but you’d never grab one first from the stash.
It takes some incredible amount of smoking, but over a long, long period briar pipes will become saturated with oils, too.
Unlike meerschaums, most folks don’t appreciate a tobacco oil saturated briar.
This otherwise nice 7 pointed star era medium apple Three Star Lee is oil saturated.
You’ll notice the tobacco oils have only saturated the shank (to black) and then the saturation is only on the bottom part of the bowl.
If this was a meerschaum I’d be giddy.
It came with another Lee and a Yello Bole that were far worse saturated than this one, and I’ve salt treated the other two. This one is still a good, but not outstandingly good smoker, so I’ve left it with just a good washing in hot soapy water. It helps, but not very much.
This next pipe is my oldest I know of in my stash. It’s an early KB&B marked Kaywoodie Drinkless that has faint lettering on the bottom that reads
SYNCROSTEM
PAT APP FOR
The ball stinger came first, and then the syncrostem patent was approved in 1931, I believe. This pipe was new when Herbert Hoover was President. It’s old.
I spent hours and hours salt treating this and scrubbing it with toothpaste.
It’s only a barely acceptable smoker, now. It was horrible before.
The Kaywoodie is in amazing shape for the amount of smoking it took to color the entire pipe black.
The bit isn’t chewed, the rim isn’t bad, there’s no big dents or deep scratches, and it’s not had the bowl reamed lopsided. Somebody just loved smoking it too much.
I think the average member of a pipe forum might be an addict but they are surely a pipe enthusiast (I avoided the word hobbyist. ).
To smoke a pipe enough to saturate the briar required a stone cold addict that took his nicotine through that vessel for years, if not decades.
But if it’s survived, the addict was also a pipe enthusiast that took enough care of it to not just burn it up.
The Lee owner kept a perfect cake the thickness of a dime, and didn’t smoke to the bottom.
The Kaywoodie had so much cake it held about a cigarette’s worth of tobacco.
Id like anybody to give me pointers how to make the Lee look like the Kaywoodie. That, was too much work to do all at once.
I think that if you want to have an excellent smoker, you’d better buy lower mileage pipes.
I don’t know the exact number, but even the best kept briar can be smoked until it’s mainly good for showing off and saying lookie here at this old relic that I resurrected from dead.
I can make them acceptable to smoke, but you’d never grab one first from the stash.