Do You Change Technique On Wide Bowled Pipes?

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aimlesswanderer

Starting to Get Obsessed
Jun 25, 2016
211
2
Three years into driving a pipe, I generally consider myself reasonably competent, and discarded the metaphorical L plates a while ago. However, you should never stop learning, so I'd like to throw out my experiences with wide bowled pipes, and see if anyone tells me that I've missed a trick.
Here's what's happening with me on the wider bowls, by which I mean more than 19mm (3/4" to those who still use the vintage system). This happens regularly in my Country Gentleman cob, but has happened on other bowls too.
I prep the tobacco, pack as normal, fire up and sit back to enjoy the smoke. As I fire it up I get most of the top aglow, and settle into it with gentle relaxed sipping, while my mind untangles it's knots and drifts with the smoke.
Occasionally, I'll touch the top of the ash with a tamp to ensure the coal is seated, blissfully unaware that as my stresses recede, so does the size of the coal. As time passes, I sip gently, and the coal gradually tunnels it's way through the tobacco, shrinking as it does so, until it finally fades out to nothing.
Puzzled, I'll lightly tamp the top of the tobacco and feel the ash solidly on the tobacco, and then tip out the ash to reveal the conical aperture reaching down into the depths of the bowl. A minute or so with the pick, and I've teased all the unburnt, both charred and uncharred, tobacco back across the full diameter, and tamped the mostly charred top, ready to relight the partially spent leaf, and resume a now slightly impared smoke.
Normally, when I deploy the Country Gentleman, this is no major problem. The reason is that I'm sat in the firelight of a roaring chiminea, accompanied by a bottle of whisky that hold considerably less than it did an hour or so ago. However, when driving the pipe sober, I can become slightly irked by this rather tedious behaviour.
So if I smoke the pipe properly, the tobacco doesn't burn properly, and the pipe only burns the tobacco efficiently across the whole bowl, when I'm futher down the aforementioned bottle, proper technique has gone out of the window, and I'm chugging on that thing like I'm trying to access all remaining nicotine in that pipe all at once. After all, any tongue damage won't be felt at the time, and will be masked by the aching head tomorrow anyway.
Maybe there's a technique to these wider bowls that I've not discovered yet. The first part of the smoke is truly idyllic, cool and bite free, and full of flavour. But I'd rather that happen with the whole bowl, and not just the third in that recurring conical burn.
So, learned bretheren, how do you guys get the full benefit of the wider bowl without burning briar or tongue, or is the conical burn just a part of the ride for you too?

 

JimInks

Sultan of Smoke
Aug 31, 2012
60,863
554,056
First of all, puffing like a steam engine is going to give you tongue bite much of the time, and you're only disrupting your cadence and senses instead of enjoying the smoke. Wider bowls need a little more care in the sense that you don't always gets an even burn. When I see that, I just relight the parts not burning, and go back to my usual ways. Always works for me.

 

toobfreak

Lifer
Dec 19, 2016
1,365
7
^^^ What JI said. I just measured my widest pipe and it is 27mm. You have to realize TWO things:
* The wider the bowl, the more the airflow is diminished. A 12mm bowl will have 4X the draw per given area than a 24mm bowl. You have to suck pretty hard just to draw the flame in to light it!
* The wider the pipe, the greater the disparity between the airflow gradient from the center to the edge. Narrow pipes have /some/ airflow along the walls, wide pipes have none.
You have to develop different techniques for lighting and staying lit than you do other pipes. I cup my fingers across the top to increase the vacuum and carburate the mix. You may have to more often stop to poke and prod and move things around-- bring some stuff in from the wall towards the center.
But wide bowls do a different job than narrow pipes and despite their challenges, I simply like their looks and find they smoke better for certain things. When things go out, just remove any significant ash, move things around a bit to bring the outer tobacco into play and give 'er a relight! :mrgreen:

 

murica

Starting to Get Obsessed
Jan 4, 2017
176
0
I just change what I smoke in them. I don't stuff flakes in my wider bowl (.830) but I'll rub out a cool smoking blend to fill it up. Thats the only way I have avoided the burn issues.

 

bigpond

Lifer
Oct 14, 2014
2,019
13
Hmm, that's interesting op. No, I don't vary my technique, so far as I'm aware, between my pipes which range from 16-24mm wide. As Jim mentioned, make sure you've lit evenly, and then tamp gently to level the surface.

 

jpmcwjr

Moderator
Staff member
May 12, 2015
24,570
27,078
Carmel Valley, CA
And, for me, no tobacco or type of cut works in a pot. It's simply that I don't like them. Many folks' mileage varies a lot from this tiny point of reference....

 

aimlesswanderer

Starting to Get Obsessed
Jun 25, 2016
211
2
Interesting spectrum of replies. I probably need to spend more time with the CG..... but sober....

 

fitzy

Lifer
Nov 13, 2012
2,937
27
NY
I seem to have that problem in almost every pipe I own. I usually try to light the unlit parts and if necessary pull the unlit stuff into the middle and relight.
Also if it's wide it's gotta be somewhat deep. I had a Sav bent pot that was unusable and eventually got traded in. It was so wide and shallow it made it impossible to pack and light.

 

toobfreak

Lifer
Dec 19, 2016
1,365
7
Fitsy, one of the reasons why I like gourd bashes is because with the hole drilled dead center on the bottom, I seem to get a far more even air flow all through the bowl and my widest pipe is a calabash. It seems that subtle changes to the shape of the bowl and how and where the draft hole is drilled may cause dead spots in the air flow. But I have a couple of bent bulldogs with very wide and shallow bowls that also smoke very even and well.

 
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