I'm a big fan of Missouri Meerschaum cobs for taking out on walks, to work, or anywhere I might worry about a more expensive pipe getting dropped or scratched up. They smoke just as well as any of my vastly more expensive briars once they're broken in and the shank gets a good char on it, but my one complaint is that they never seem to last more than a year and a half or so of smoking once a day or every other day before the cob material itself starts cracking and more or less falling apart.
Maybe it's just the intense fluctuations in humidity throughout the year where I live in Minnesota, or that I tend to use my cobs for wetter aromatics that I wouldn't want gunking up a more costly briar pipe, but at this point I've been through two Country Gentlemans and a Cobbit Shire and they all lasted about a year to a year an a half of once a day or every other day smoking before the finish on the outside started falling off and the cob began to crack and separate. I do thoroughly pipe cleaner the stems of my pipes and rub down the bowl with a folded up pipe cleaner after every smoke once they're broken in to prevent excess cake buildup, so the short lifespan hasn't been due to lack of maintenance, but my cobs still don't seem to last terribly long.
I don't overly mind replacing them once a year or so, since they're not at all expensive, but being faced with the prospect of replacing two Country Gentlemans and going through the foul green wood tasting break in period once again I was wondering if I might be better off picking up a couple Missouri Meerschaum Ozark Mountain Hardwoods this time around instead? Do their hardwood pipes tend to have a longer lifespan than their cobs? I've heard they smoke quite well, so I figured it was worth asking to see if a few hardwood beater pipes might save me the yearly process of having to replace and break in new cobs.
Maybe it's just the intense fluctuations in humidity throughout the year where I live in Minnesota, or that I tend to use my cobs for wetter aromatics that I wouldn't want gunking up a more costly briar pipe, but at this point I've been through two Country Gentlemans and a Cobbit Shire and they all lasted about a year to a year an a half of once a day or every other day smoking before the finish on the outside started falling off and the cob began to crack and separate. I do thoroughly pipe cleaner the stems of my pipes and rub down the bowl with a folded up pipe cleaner after every smoke once they're broken in to prevent excess cake buildup, so the short lifespan hasn't been due to lack of maintenance, but my cobs still don't seem to last terribly long.
I don't overly mind replacing them once a year or so, since they're not at all expensive, but being faced with the prospect of replacing two Country Gentlemans and going through the foul green wood tasting break in period once again I was wondering if I might be better off picking up a couple Missouri Meerschaum Ozark Mountain Hardwoods this time around instead? Do their hardwood pipes tend to have a longer lifespan than their cobs? I've heard they smoke quite well, so I figured it was worth asking to see if a few hardwood beater pipes might save me the yearly process of having to replace and break in new cobs.
