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  1. rakovsky

    Well-known Scientists, Authors, and Musicians that are Pipe Smokers

    The write-up says, "Of course, a couple of my favorites right from the start are Mark Twain and Albert Einstein." Those come to my mind too. Mark Twain makes it feel more respectable to smoke a cob. Einstein makes blends like Revelation and Epiphany cool.
  2. rakovsky

    Local B/M Summerville SC

    I've been there. It's a nice place if you want to chill out but you need to buy something there if so. I found the staff to be nice and accommodating, which is very important for a place to chill out. It was clean and not crowded with customers, which made it relaxing. They have a small pipe...
  3. rakovsky

    Dating my Dunnies

    How do you date them, do they have special markings? Do some of them smoke much better than others? Are they much better smokers than more run of the mill standard briar pipes like Grabows?
  4. rakovsky

    Evil

    People have different preferences. So giving aros to someone who likes aros seems OK. Ideally I think a pipe afficionado would try all major blend groups even if they didn't expect to like them. Out of curiosity I tried Erinmore Flake, Haunted Bookshop and O.J. Krantz because I knew some people...
  5. rakovsky

    Danish Sir Walter Raleigh

    I tried a 2021 Batch of SWR and it had a little vinegar taste at the start of the bowl for about 4 puffs. The vinegar taste was sub par, but not awful.
  6. rakovsky

    Which Are the Most Incenselike Blends? ⚗️⛪🪔🥢💭

    I don't know how many Lutheran or Episcopalian Churches you would have to attend before you would run into a service with incense. I get the sense that sandalwood is a typical stick and cone incense ingredient. Some Church incense blends include it. I got "Temple of Solomon" AKA "Salomon"...
  7. rakovsky

    ***What Are You Smoking, August 2025?***

    Thanks, it's a fun topic, Singularis. My favorite experimental mix is to use Native American style herbs like sage, spearmint, basil, and lemongrass about 50-50 with tobacco. I got 4 legal Native style herb blends from MyWorldHut.com because they had both low prices and varied ingredients. You...
  8. rakovsky

    ***What Are You Smoking, August 2025?***

    Singularis, The incense quest is alot of fun. A friend gave Kendal Flake to me, saying that it was in the genre of incenselike blends, which he called also "floral" blends. The tin note was like old tobacco, a horse, alittle perfumey, and something like chocolate/coffee/caramel/anise. The...
  9. rakovsky

    Which Are the Most Incenselike Blends? ⚗️⛪🪔🥢💭

    I like how you picked up the incense emojis, Worthy Stewart. Evaluating blend smells is tricky for me in part because of the psychological aspect. When I smoked Fr. Dempsey, the name and the incense description by some reviewers could have biased me to associate it with incense, whereas if I...
  10. rakovsky

    Which Are the Most Incenselike Blends? ⚗️⛪🪔🥢💭

    With church incense, you would be typically dealing with shrub and tree resins, especially frankincense and myrrh perhaps in part because frankincense and myrrh two resins were so prominent in the Gospels for the Nativity story. Church incenses get variations beyond those two resins, like how...
  11. rakovsky

    Which Are the Most Incenselike Blends? ⚗️⛪🪔🥢💭

    I just finished burning two standard brown incense cones that I got in a mall shop 25 years ago. I am guessing that they have sandalwood. The cones when they are sitting in the packet have a sweet slightly fruit syrup smell. Then when they are burnt they have a sweet wood smell, and leave a...
  12. rakovsky

    Which Are the Most Incenselike Blends? ⚗️⛪🪔🥢💭

    Tobacco by itself naturally has a plum grape hay leaf wood smell, whereas Church incense tends to rely on frankincense and/or myrrh, which are tree resins. Where I can particularly see special overlap is the wood aspect, in addition to cases where the tobacco is treated with incense-type...
  13. rakovsky

    Which Are the Most Incenselike Blends? ⚗️⛪🪔🥢💭

    No, just the ones that I mentioned.
  14. rakovsky

    Which Are the Most Incenselike Blends? ⚗️⛪🪔🥢💭

    I want to follow up: After making the OP I tried Moroccan Bazaar, and it was good and reminded me of figs and some kind of sweet hard candy gum drop taste, but I couldn't tell if it was specifically an incense smell. SG Cannon Plug had a major fruit taste that I couldn't identify exactly, like...
  15. rakovsky

    Cleaning Out an Estate Kirsten Bowl

    Xrun, I smoked PA in it after the deep cleaning. PA is already a great easy burning light smoke, whereas Kirstens probably show their effectiveness most with hot goopy blends. The PA burned great and easily, with a lot of very very light smoke that is not stinky. The draw was tighter than a...
  16. rakovsky

    Cleaning Out an Estate Kirsten Bowl

    I soaked it overnight in used Medium Roast coffee grinds, then swabbed it again. It has a faint old tobacco ghost, but it's mitigated by the rum and coffee ghosting, and it smells less than my Grabow pipe that I've cleaned regularly.
  17. rakovsky

    Cleaning Out an Estate Kirsten Bowl

    I put the warm used wet grinds in my bowl tonight for soaking. The tobacco smell is either gone or drowned by the coffee smell. I may get a temporary coffee ghosting, but I'm OK with that. I'm planning on using PA to deghost it, and OTC burleys like PA have what reviewers consider cocoa, coffee...
  18. rakovsky

    Cleaning Out an Estate Kirsten Bowl

    Xrundog, I've seen photos of pipe bowls where the bowls' sides look like the age stripes on canyon walls, like in this canyon photo: But in my case I didn't really notice layers. The cake filled up to within a couple millimeters of the rim. Underneath the cake the wood had shallow long cracks...
  19. rakovsky

    Cleaning Out an Estate Kirsten Bowl

    When people do a good job restoring pipes, do they get out all the cake and does the pipe bowl still smell of the ghosting?
  20. rakovsky

    Cleaning Out an Estate Kirsten Bowl

    A friend gave me his Kirsten pipe that he used to smoke a lot of "1792 with Tonquin" or Coniston Plug. The pipe in the upper right below is my Grabow for comparison. The Kirsten was clean except that the bowl had a strong "old tobacco" smell. When I piped the inside of the bowl with a pipe...
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