I feel like I get the best smoke and taste out of a looser packed pipe .
Empty pipe
- Thread starter Rossi320
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Looser packing is the cure for what ails most pipe smokers. That and smoking the pipe more slowly.
^^^^
You can always correct a bowl that is packed TOO loosely with light tamping
Sounds about right, a looser packed pipe should burn better as well.
But the thing is, everyone's experiences are different.
But the thing is, everyone's experiences are different.
Tight isn't always the best. 
I feel like that kinda gets repeated ad nauseam around here, all that 3 step method and frank method are setting new smokers up for failure. Even the word "packing" is deceptive. Filling your pipe as opposed to "packing" it will result in better smokes. As @Chasing Embers said, gravity fill works wonders! The codger scoop works well for things that are resistant to gravity filling like ribbon cuts.
With a looser filled pipe I right now feel and find myself tamping with more force to pack it tighter but I need more relights...I guess I need to break away from this habit and try tamping lighter
It does take a lot of experimenting, or "fiddling" if you prefer. Lighter tamps, you can always tamp it again if you need to.
Empty pipe even smokes better! Light the fire and it's done!
As Mr Moo used to say "you load a bowl, you don't pack it" as i recall that was a trigger phrase for him and other FOGs
You can correct a tight pack by slapping the open end of the chamber against your palm.^^^^
You can always correct a bowl that is packed TOO loosely with light tamping
I find gravity works well for flakes and plugs. But not so well for ribbon and shag. The latter, for me, needs tighter packing, lest it go up like so much tinder.
This is true for me too, and with dry burley like 5 bros or c&d dark burley, I pack tighter still
I want to address something that I realized I was confused about and also make a suggestion for a packing tool. I was for a while overpacking, but also sometimes underpacking. I came to see that it’s more about uniformity. I also came to see that several techniques (including Frank method; three stage method; and upside down palm fill) are actually addressing this issue of uniformity. Let me explain. I was getting confused by the term “gravity fill” and actually believed you just want to let gravity alone accomplish the initial bowl fill. But the fact is that tobacco is too light weight to fill the bowl in its own. Thus the so-called “baby touch” for the first fill. But I never got that. I was always still too light in the initial fill. What I realized is that you need a weight of about 80-100 grams to push the tobacco to the bottom of the bowl. Gravity is doing the work but with the aid of a weight or a certain amount of pressure. If you can do that intuitively, that’s great. What worked for me was at first using the smooth back of a butter knife as a tamping device, but only using its own natural weight. The knife weighed about 80 grams. I then had an idea and bought some scale balancing weights that would fit in my pipe bowls. It was just an exercise, but in the long/short run I learned what was needed to pack the bowl uniformly. So now I “gravity” fill with a weighted tool (again, just about 90 grams) to about 3/4 bowl or higher. Then I finish off with a plug using a swirling motion like with the palm method and things have been perfect. One thing that threw me off for a long time was those skimpy Czech tamping tools which weigh nothing. I NOW realize the benefits of a tamping tool with some weight (again, maybe 80-100 grams). Then just let the weight of the tamper do the work, with the help of gravity. I will now search online for a weighty tamper.
Excluding tapping the pipe's heel against my palm, that's exactly how I fill my pipes.
The point I was making was that gravity alone with either flake or ribbon tobacco will leave way too much empty space. I’m NOT saying to force things, just to let gravity be aided by a very slight weight/pressure. (85 grams is not that much.) I’m not saying to force it, just to let that weight remove the air pockets.