Broken Cake

[nbpiper]

The other day I was cleaning one of my pipes and I realized I have a chunk of cake missing in the bowl. Figure I didn't let the pipe rest as it was my second pipe that smoked better than the first and thus got smoked a lot. So I'm curious as to what I should do to fix it. Should I just ignore it and let it rebuild itself (haven't as I figured the uneven cake could cause the pipe to crack), or get a reamer and ream it so its all the same thickness? And since it's happened once now, is there a way to prevent this from happening again?

 

[tobakenist]

Give it a good ream and start building new cake evenly.

 

[withnail]

Is it really necessary to remove all the cake when something like that happens? Because the same thing has just happened to me!

 

[tobakenist]

If you want to have even cake it's best to start again, if you smoke it with a hole in your cake it can develop into a hot spot and result in burn out, a bit like having a crack in a furnace lining, not likely but not worth chancing.

 

[dylan793]

An estate I got from ebay had this issue. There was a small "crater" in the cake and I just reamed it smooth. It really didn't take much effort.

 

[withnail]

Thanks for confirming that for me Tobakenist - I have taken your advice and taking the cake back down to a even layer and will start building it up again. Moral of the story, always make sure the bowl is cool before messing about with it! It's in my newest pipe so better it goes now rather than later!

 

[pentangle]

Ream the pipe without to remove all the cake, leave in the bowl a small fraction of it and put into the small crater some honey then close the crater with the coal dust you removed from the bowl during the reaming.Then start to smoke .That whould fix the problem

Maurizio

 

[nbpiper]

Figured I was going to have to ream it even. Guess this is a good time as any to buy a reamer. Thanks for all the advice.