24 or 48 Hours Rest?

[Milleniumsmoker]

EDIT: Fixed Capitalization in Title (See Rule 9) - Bob

Hello Everyone,
New to this forum and getting back into pipe smoking after about a 10 year hiatus. I’m wondering about opinions on resting your pipes. I’ve read that some rest a pipe for 24 hours, others recommend 48, and still others even longer.

This is assuming one is only smoking 1 bowl per day out of the pipe.

I ask because prior to this I took a nice Peterson and smoked it 3-5 times a day every day and it got to the point where it tasted terrible. I still feel bad about that poor pipe.

I have added some new pipes to my collection and hope to keep them in great shape. Thanks for your help!

 

[shanez]

I've been known to let a pipe rest for months and other times I've let a pipe rest for about a minute and a half.

 

[seanv]

Resting a pipe is really subjective to how much you smoke. I will often smoke the same pipe for a week or more before setting it down for a bit. Most pipes can be cleaned and recovered even when they sour. Do you still have your Peterson?

 

[trubka2]

It depends on how big a pipe collection you want to have.

Seriously, though, all I can conclude is that it's a matter of personal taste. A lot of people think pipe-resting is just a marketing myth, but a lot of people swear that their briars must not be pressed into service more than twice a month or the universe will implode. Personally, I come down somewhere in the middle, if for no other reason than that I enjoy shopping for pipes.

 

[alaskanpiper]

Mine get more like 48 days, haha. I have too many pipes.

 

[BROBS]

They do need rest but every pipe and tobacco smoked from it is different. Fast and loose I would say 1 day rest per bowl. Sometimes I smoke a pipe 10 times a week but then won’t smoke it for a month.

 

[Chasing Embers]

I smoke the same pipe twice per day for a week or more before getting another one. I've gone for over a month doing this sometimes, and as long as they are cleaned after each smoke, they'll be fine.

 

[hoosierpipeguy]

I don't think the pipe got bitter because you smoked it too much. Rather, because you didn't keep it clean. It's nice to have enough pipes to rest them but many people don't have that luxury of don't care.

 

[Akousticplyr]

I tend to dedicate different pipes to different blends so what tickles my fancy generally drives my pipe rotation.

 

[rushx9]

Meh. Clean it well, dry it well, smoke it up. I let a pipe rest until I feel like using it again. Usually that's a day or more, because I have plenty of pipes, but if I go out with only one pipe and feel like smoking more than one bowl, I don't hesitate out of fear of not giving it enough rest. Many old timers smoked bowl after bowl in the same pipe without thinking anything of it. If it starts to go sour, dip a pipe cleaner in some booze and run it through. Scrape out any loose cake and wipe the chamber with a boozy paper towel. Give it a hot water rinse afterwards. If that doesn't do the trick, fill the bowl with salt and alcohol and leave it overnight. No set rules and no need to overthink it.

 

[didimauw]

I don't give my pipes any sort of rest schedule. Most of the time I smoke the same pipe all day, sometimes 15+ bowls in a day, for multiple days. And there has been no damage so far.

And with the pipe I'm currently smoking, when it starts to taste bad or the wife starts complaining about the bad smell, I give it the warm water flush, and the next day it's fresh again .

Also, I have noticed that the dryer the tobacco, the dryer and harder the cake. I had a Peterson that I just couldn't get to smoke well. I had a huge cake going in it and still didn't know what was wrong. The. I finally decided to ream the pipe, and the cake came out like tar. Smoking wet tobacco caused the cake to stay soft, gurgle and overall smoke like crap.

 

[F4RM3R]

It also depends on the tobacco you're smoking. If the bottom of your bowls are soggy dottle at the end then it's going to need more rest. If it's relatively dry at the end of a smoke then less rest.

It also depends on how dry and warm the place is where you rest your pipes for the night. If it's In a cold humid room like a garage or something they won't dry out as fast.

I give this advice cause there are no real hard and fast rules about it. It all depends. I smoke some of.mine maybe twice a day for a few days then give them a couple days rest.

 

[brunot]

If I ever did smoke the same pipe more than once I just ran a pipe cleaner through it and let it cool off. Never a problem.

Most people I knew had problems with their pipes, they smoked extremely hot and didn't clean properly afterwards.

 

[blues4goose]

I have 5 work pipes, and 5 home pipes. I usually smoke all 5 of each every day, and if I want more than 5 bowls in a day at work, I grab the first one I used that morning. I don't worry about rest at all really, like others said, just clean with a pipe cleaner after each smoke. Sometimes my pipes go sour if I set down an almost finished bowl and don't clean it while it's still warm, but a quick warm water rinse clears it right up. Don't overthink it, your pipes work for you, not the other way around.

 

[orobusto]

You should wipe out the bowl and mortise after smoking. Any gunk will stay in there if you don't get it out. It's the accumulation that is making it sour. If you smoke 20 bowls a week, it may taste sour within the week if you don't clean it. If you rest it a day between smokes, it will be a couple of months before it tastes sour. The rest didn't do anything, it's still 20 bowls of accumulated gunk.

 

[prndl]

Imo, pipes are kinda like horses.

You can ride 'em hard...just don't put 'em up wet.

 

[ray47]

The pipe will let you know if it needs rest.

 

[Richmond B. Funkenhouser]

I wash them and smoke them as soon as they dry, if I want to. I have one I smoke everyday.

 

[sablebrush52]

To the extent that there were any kind of rules surrounding resting a pipe, the two I remember hearing were these:

1 week of rest for a pipe smoked multiple times in a day - Hence the origin of the 7 day rotation and seven day sets.
1 day of rest per bowl smoked, so if you smoked one bowl it was 24 hrs, two bowls 48 hrs, etc.

I've smoked the same pipe for days on end with no issues, but there is the risk of eventually developing a shank crack if that's your common practice.
As for souring a pipe, most of that evil resides in the mortise. A good clean out of the mortise as well as the rest of the airway, followed by a day or more or resting to let everything dry and air out, and the pipe should be good to go.

 

[mso489]

In light of the fact that most of us are afflicted with Pipe Acquisition Disorder, the habitual purchasing and accumulating of pipes, for most of us, the pipe resting problem soon disappears, since we have so many pipes our rotation takes months to bring the same pipe around again. However, to answer the question, if you are smoking only one bowl, 24 hours rest ought to do. If you smoke a pipe for hours or all day, 48 hours would probably be nice for the pipe, so as not to hurt its feelings.