A Question of Proper Cake Thickness

[telescopes]

Cake is important if you have but a few pipes and you smoke the piss out of them. A working person's pipe has cake because it must. Winds, tough jobs the challenge the body, and puffing because you must all were a part of working life for past pipe smokers. A good cake insured that the pipe would NOT burn out.

I have no idea why cake would keep a pipe from going out, but... ok.

No... Literally burn out means burn a hole through the pipe...LOL.

Working out doors, smoking under any type of physical labor creates a situation where a burn out is much more likely. A good cake helps insure that the bowl stays cooler and a briar burn through is less likely.

 

[telescopes]

For most pipe smokers today, cake is not an issue that one needs to worry themselves. My post was referring to pipe smokers in days gone by who by observation noticed that their pipes were less likely to burn out or get overheated by constant use when they smoked, worked, and engaged in chores in the outdoors. They most likely had few pipes and the ones they did have benefited with a bit of cake. For smokers on this forum, the old rule of maintaining a cake is something that doesn't apply - but .... that doesn't mean that the smokers who maintained that thought were wrong - it means that their style of smoking dictated a protective cake. Could they have done differently? Sure, but would it have been practical for them? Think about the time necessary to maintain a pipe in a manner that is protective and then imagine that this time could be spent on other things that were simply more necessary at that time of history. Like, going to the outhouse or strolling down to the pump to get water. Pipe cleaners? Using paper and water to clean a pipe? Conveniences that properly were not so convenient.

Practice is dictated by necessity.