Do Pipes Really Get Better With Time?

[tennsmoker]

I used to let my pipes cake up to a scary thickness, so tight it was difficult to get a pencil eraser into the bowl.
Oh, I was in good company. Most of my old professors did the same, and that is where I got the idea.
I quit that foolishness when the pipes began to smell and taste like old tennis shoes. Now, I clean-ream-sweeten and keep a Harris-like dime's worth of cake in my pipes.
My meers have no cake. They are cleaned after each bowl, and they are tanning nicely on the outside.

 

[sablebrush52]

Can't say that they do, or that they don't. I've certainly never experienced a pronounced improvement in any pipe's smokability after the break in process. Most of my pipes are estates, and I do my own clean up before ever smoking one. So they're about all they're going to be. New pipes don't much change after break in. If it's a good smoker when I get it, it remains a good smoker years later.
What I do experience is better handling of a specific pipe, what blend seems to work better in a given pipe, that sort of thing. So my experience with my favorite pipes improves with time. But I don't think that it's the pipes themselves so much as my familiarity with them that causes the improved experience.

 

[instymp]

Mine all got better after time, & cake.

So.. always wondered this, after cake builds up (mine is about a dimes worth)then you are smoking baccy in cake right? So why does what kind of briar or whatever matter that much if cake is cake? Except for temp? I have a couple less expensive pipes that smoke as good as my 1964 Dunhill.

 

[jpmcwjr]

So.. always wondered this, after cake builds up (mine is about a dimes worth)then you are smoking baccy in cake right? So why does what kind of briar or whatever matter that much if cake is cake? Except for temp? I have a couple less expensive pipes that smoke as good as my 1964 Dunhill.

Cake breathes, as does briar. So, briar will still matter when there's cake*. That's my story and I am sticking to it.
* Less so after time, and after the briar is fully dried out from months of smoking.

 

[instymp]

So jpmcwjr, you agree with me. ::

 

[jefff]

Put me in the minimal cake category. A dime would be thick for me, perhaps half that thick is where I like it.
Just enough to do what cake should do but not enough to ruin the smoke.

 

[scrooge]

Yelp! Most of them.

 

[halfy]

46 years into this, I'm familiar with the break-in of green briar, and don't dispute what you say as a matter of general principle. But the pipe Todd Bannard made me in 2013 from some amazing Italian briar from Mimo he had put back tasted really good the first time, and hasn't fallen off since. People report the same of Castello and some others.
FWIW

Some of my Toku pipes with BN briar also tasted good from the first bowl. But even Lars' pipes take some bowls to break in, though the break in was flavorful and not that harsh. I tried many young carvers and mostly got pissed off about the greenishness of the briar ... It seems that only the old masters or famed factories have their own methods on curing and enough years of aging. I have stopped trying around ...

 

[onestrangeone]

Thank ya'll for your thought's, I am looking forward to seeing how my pipes develop over the next few years!

@Cosmic & Cigarmaster this sounds like an unresolvable difference of opinion, I suggest sledgehammers in five feet of water.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Harris won't like that idea. It's too much like taking a bath. ::

 

[sablebrush52]

This thread has certainly some strongly held and sometimes conflicting beliefs, like briar breathing or needing to be smoked to become dry, etc.
Most of what I smoke are estate Brit wood, and the top makers thoroughly seasoned their wood before finishing. So do artisan makers like Talbert. So it's news to me that there are pipes being fashioned with green wood. Seems like a terrible idea, one that makes for lousy joinery. Nor do I find it easy to accept the notion that smoking a pipe dries it, as smoking a pipe introduces moisture into the pipe. How introducing moisture into a pipe helps dry it out is a topic I'd like to hear explained.
As for breathing, I'm reminded of the images of pipe bowls that have been bisected to reveal their cross sections. Despite years of use and hundreds of bowls smoked, they revealed little seepage of tar, or other discoloration, into the wood. The worst damage seems to be charring and cracking from clueless smokers who smoke too hot. So I'm not too convinced about breathing, either, any more than with any other wood product.
Briar isn't some alien life form. It's wood, like any other wood. It expands and contracts from changes in temperature and humidity like any other wood. Its superior fire resistance is due to the presence of silicates in the wood, not any magic.
Having a thin cake won't hurt and whether it's the thickness of a dime, or a nickel, or less, it's still a thin coat. Cake doesn't help at all at the bottom where it doesn't build up, and where burnout from "smoking it to the bottom of the bowl" and getting every last shred of leaf burnt, super heats the bowl. Making a goal of "smoking it to the bottom of the bowl" is a dumb ass practice. More dumb ass when you consider that the flavor comes primarily from the tobacco surrounding the burning leaf, not from the burning leaf itself.
Whatever interaction between smoker and pipe is taking place, it would appear to be happening primarily at a very thin depth of the inner surface, not including heat dispersion through the wood. Keeping that thin depth in good condition would seem to be the critical factor in keeping a pipe a source of enjoyment.

 

[aldecaker]

But Sable, what about all my bowls that smoke to the bottom, leaving nothing but fine white ash? :wink:

 

[sablebrush52]

But Sable, what about all my bowls that smoke to the bottom, leaving nothing but fine white ash?

LOL. But check to see how much of that ash is briar.

 

[aldecaker]

It's okay. It only happens when I review tobacco!

 

[cigrmaster]

@Cosmic & Cigarmaster this sounds like an unresolvable difference of opinion, I suggest sledgehammers in five feet of water

No water, ballpeen hammers at 1 ft, that should be a bloody mess.
jesse, so having my bowls like molten lava at the bottom while I am chasing flavor is a bad thing? Who knew?

 

[stickframer]

Its superior fire resistance is due to the presence of silicates in the wood, not any magic.

I heard this guy, on YouTube maybe, he says his buddy heard from another guy that it is magic.

 

[sablebrush52]

LOL!

 

[didimauw]

I like what Sable said. None of my pipes seem to get cake at the bottom of the bowl. Up until reading his post, I always thought I was doing something wrong...
Mind blown...

 

[cosmicfolklore]

There is a guy who comes in my shop occasionally that is a hobby woodworker and at one time thought he was going to make pipes. So, he has these pipes made out of oak. Yeh... so he smokes these things, and while the aroma coming off of them leaves much to be desired, (can you imagine breaking that thing in?) it doesn't burn up. I've looked in the bowl, just caked like a briar. Yeh, I know, smoked regularly enough to cake, blech. But, damned if it didn't burn the wood.
I think that we over think all of this crap. Clay pipes don't breathe, which is the mother of all pipes. Pipestone, meerschaum, etc... why do we give briar pipes all of these properties that are just totally unnecessary? Was it that goofball Newcombe? Pipemakers? Did someone have to justify charging a thousand dollars a pipe?
Breathing, engineered drilled draft holes, it just seems like unnecessary BS to me. If I cannot blow through the side of my pipe, then air is not passing through it. Pipe smokers should not be so stupid. If we have to keep drawing on the pipe to keep it going, then we should know that air is not magically passing through the briar.
It's like people who spend a fortune on the most technologically advanced golf clubs expecting them to up their game, only to be dissapointed, and they blame the clubs. While there were Scotts playing the game with clubs they just hacked out with a hatchet. And, people playing awesome games with warped clubs bought at a thrift store. People don't want to admit that maybe they are just doing something wrong. User error. Plus, they have to justify spending $400+ on a pipe.

My theory is that the more an expensive pipe dissapoints someone, the more they rave about how good it is. Like my buddy who buys only Dunhill estates and has to relight the thing with a lighter with almost every puff, and how he raves about how damn good those pipes are, even though it is obvious to everyone that the guy just doesn't have a clue how to smoke, ha ha. All the money in the world want overcome poor smoking skills. And, the best smokers can take any old pipe and eventually smoke it like a Dunnie. My $0.02

 

[oldseadog]

Having a briar does need breaking in. The only pipe that in my opinion never needs breaking in is a meerschaum pipe and doesn't need a break like a briar. I never in my opinion smoke my briar every day its more like every other day. My meerschaum I smoke everyday same with my cobs.