Break In Question

[toehead]

I am fairly new to the hobby (been smoking since December 2010), I bought my first "real" pipe the other week, a Peterson 2011 St. Patrick's Day edition and I am in the process of breaking it in.
I am only able to smoke a bowl about once a day and have been smoking about half a bowl to do the break in.
I was wondering if it is okay to smoke my new pipe everyday, since I am only smoking once a day?

 

[papipeguy]

Should be OK with a days rest. Just make sure you run a pipe cleaner through it when it cools down. Since it is new you may want to lightly wipe the inside of the bowl with a paper towel as this will promote a uniform cake in the bowl. Good luck and welcome aboard.

 

[marmal4de]

Sometimes I smoke the same pipe three or four days in a row, more than once a day YMMV. If I remember correctly, the Pete St. Patty's Day pipes don't need a break in because of a pre-carbonized chamber.

 

[lordofthepiperings]

Pretty much all Peterson's are pre-carbonized, but the Peterson company still reccommends giving it the usual break in attention of about half a bowl for the first five or six bowls. Breaking in a pipe though is all done by how you like to. Some fill it up and go from the the beginning, some do it in quarters or halves. I think the major thing is to make sure you're smoking a blend that burns to the bottom the most consistantly for you, that way the bottom of the bowl, which is a tricky area to get a good cake, gets a good cake. Most people say to rest a pipe for a day after you've had a bowl. Not sure if it really does help the briar or if it's more so just an excuse for us to buy more pipes. I myself keep enough pipes for a weekly rotation and try to let each pipe rest a day or so in between smokes.

 

[toehead]

Thanks for all the info. I knew that it was pre-carbonized but that they recommended still breaking it in because I watched the video on Pike Making on the Peterson website.

LordofthePiper: I am betting it is just to feed our addiction to buy more pipes. I am new, have hardly broken in this new pipe and I am alreayd itching to buy another one.

 

[romeowood]

I vote you indulge yourself with more pipes! It's all about personal preference. The consensus' adage of letting your pipe rest a day for every bowl smoked has merit; considering that during a smoke you're subjecting it to a couple hundred degrees of direct heat and steam which is adsorbed into the wood, allowing the wood a period of time to normalize to relative condition will ease both wear and tear and the effect of loading the porous, hygromorphic wood cells with trapped moisture and solubles. Then again, there's the school of thought that enjoys this. There's a codger in my neighborhood, an older Polish gentleman carpenter, who is never seen without the same pipe and the same steamtrain-stack of smoke circling his head, excepting, I presume, to pack the next charge. I would hazard a guess also that his frying pan is markedly brown, as is his coffeepot. TEHO :nana:

 

[toehead]

That was a very eloquant way of saying PAD!! I may have to use that reason to convince by wife I need another pipe.

 

[pstlpkr]

The buttermilk, sour cream, and activated charcoal only give you a carbon base on which to build your cake.

However; just stuff and puff and you should do well.

Remember to screw in a paper towel (once in a while) while the pipe is warm to smooth out the cake and keep it thin.

The paper towel will also remove some of the excess moisture that could make your cake soft.

 

[nmbigfoot02]

My break in procedure is to smoke 4 half bowls then alternate full and half bowls for the next 4 smokes. After that I consider the pipe to be broken in. I usually use a burley like Prince Albert for this purpose. This procedure is more superstition than anything else, but it works for me.
As far as smoking the same pipe multiple times in a day, you should be fine as long as you're not getting any gurgle. I know a lot of people like to wait 24 hrs between bowls, but so long as you're not getting a wet smoke, you should be fine.

 

[hauntedmyst]

Your pipe will be just fine. Just keep it clean and run pipe cleaners through it.
My grandpa showed me how to break in a pipe really quickly. Take your pipe and put it in vice. Run ignitors through the shank and duct tape an Estes D12 rocket engine to it. Place a beer can on top of the rocket motor and stand back and ignite the engine. When you see the beer can fly off the rocket engine, the pipe is ready to be smoked! Just make sure you tape the engine tight enough or with 2 pounds of thrust and a 5 second burn, that engine will go flying all over the garage potentially starting a fire and killing a cat. I miss that cat and grandpa misses his garage.

 

[cortezattic]

:rofl: Haunted, you forgot to advise removing the stem first! :rofl:
In my anal-retentive phase I broke in several pipes smoking 100 half-bowls before declaring a pipe "broken-in".

None of those pipes smoke any better than pipes broken-in the way nmbigfoot02 suggests. So take his advice.

Interestingly, my best smoker, a $40 GBD bulldog, was broken-in exactly as nmbigfoot02 suggested.
I once heard, or read, that new pipe break-in, and the lore and wives' tales growing out of it, originated back

when pipes were made and sold in a "green" condition -- that is, with residual internal moisture and resins that

had to be driven off slowly lest the wood split if smoked too aggressively.
I dunno about that; and in any event, it doesn't account for the need to build up a carbon coat to protect the wood.

With respect to the bottom of the bowl, I like Russ Ouellette's homely yet practical advice: if you never smoke

a bowl down that far you really don't need any protection down there. If you do, then the heel cake will come

whenever it does, so don't fret over it.
IMHO, the best single piece of advice so far is Lawrence's paper towel thing. It gives amazing results.