Good Smoker vs. Bad Smoker

[turtlehead]

I've heard people say a pipe was a good smoker, bad smoker or variations there of.

How would I know if a pipe was a good or bad smoker?

Are there brands that are better smokers than others? Luck of the draw?

 

[warren]

How would I know if a pipe was a good or bad smoker?

How long have you smoked a pipe? If a pipe delivers, in spite of the smoker's shortcomings, a dependably good smoking experience, I consider it a good pipe. If not, it's a poor smoker and into the trash bin it goes. It's a personl observation, dependant on what you consider a good smoking experience and whatever else you want to throw into the mix. It's subjective is what it is. Purely subjective.

 

[anotherbob]

good food bad food how can you tell? Same rules if you like it that is good if you don't that is bad. It is that simple really.

 

[rodo]

You might get more responses if you ask it the other way around: what is a BAD pipe?

 

[Chasing Embers]

The good smoker.



The bad smoker.



The ugly smoker.

 

[bullet08]

No such a thing as a bad smoker. I bet you can adapt to the tool. At the same time, poorly made piece of crap is still a piece of crap. All my pipes smoke well, and I enjoy them. But some stems are more straight than the others.

 

[reloader]

There may be a few things that could cause someone to call a pipe a bad smoker. Now matter how slow you smoke or how dry the tobacco is, it still gurgles. Same thing with getting way too hot no matter what you do. I've heard some say that no matter what tobacco blend they use the pipe just doesn't deliver the flavor they expect. I have pipes that gurgle, but its more than likely my fault. Packed too tight or smoked too fast etc. But I can get all of them to provide a good smoking experience as long as I do my part.

 

[sasquatch]

There are all kinds of poorly made pipes out there. Mis aligned drillings, pinched airways, bad tasting wood... but it takes a certain amount of time in the saddle to be able to determine if a pipe is in fact not so great or if one's smoking technique is to blame for any woes (failure to stay lit, or gurgling, or whatever). I think eventually a lot of us find a pipe that really works, a pipe that seems to smoke easier, taste better, just ... a better pipe in whatever way for what we want it to do.

I've had pipes that gurgled no matter what I smoked, no matter how dry, how slow, how I lit it, how I tamped.... and I can take the same tobacco, put it in a "better" pipe and have no gurgle at all. So, that's a problem with that pipe.

Some guys seem immune to this, the claim that all pipes smoke the same rings out, and I just... I don't understand it. I feel like they are doing something totally different than I am doing, seeking a different experience.

 

[sasquatch]

I'm working with (or maybe done with) a pipe from a pretty well known mid grade brand, Italian, long history, and ... the things smokes great, it's a great size, the bit is comfy. Never a gurgle. And it tastes awful. When I smoke it, I think "Oof I'm losing interest in smoking, this isn't pleasant." 20 bowls at least I've had in this thing. And I move back to a pipe I know is "good" and ... lo and behold, it tastes like I think it should, and I enjoy it. This thing's a bad pipe. Will it every improve? I dunno, I'm not going to grind through 500 bad bowls to prove it one way or another.

 

[btp79]

Totally anecdotal, but I shy away from any pipe that makes a whistling sound when I draw on an empty bowl.

 

[jiminy]

I'm gonna have to go with sasquatch on this one. There are some pipes that just don't smoke well for one reason or another. Now, I think changing techniques can help at times, but sometimes there are just lemons. I have more experience with that with regards to firearms, and the same thing applies. The model and caliber can be the same, but one gun will far outshoot another, even after tinkering with loads and mounts.

 

[verporchting]

I’ve had exactly one pipe that nothing tasted good in. This isn’t hyperbole, every single tobacco tasted like hot air and not much more, even very strong blends that I love. English, Lakeland, Kentucky, whatever. I messed with it for ages thinking it would improve once it developed a layer of cake. Nope. Reamed, cleaned, sanitized, salt & alcohol, nothing mattered. It didn’t taste foul or sour or ghosted, just blah and bland. Nothing ever overcame the incredible blandness. I gave up. It’s as if it were a tiny pipe shaped black hole of antimatter or something. Strangest thing. Meh, life’s too short but to this day I blame it on the piece of briar. That was emphatically NOT a good smoker.

 

[HawkeyeLinus]

So I have a pipe I love, but it always seems a challenge which I've put down to eagerness and not drying out the tobacco. Just in the middle of a test with same tobacco, dried exactly the same way, packed the same way between two pipes. Challenging pipe does have a smaller chamber, but don't have an issue with same size chamber in other pipes. The other pipe is one I have gravitated towards lately. I'm early into pipe number two with the larger chamber. It smokes noticeably easier, gently sipping now as I type. Something about the other one I guess I'm going to have to figure out and I will. It's not "bad" by any means, but I'm surprised by this admittedly one off test. Taste is just as good either way.

 

[turtlehead]

My take away so far....

I need to buy more pipes

 

[verporchting]

My take away so far....

I need to buy more pipes

Good man, you have understood the assignment.

 

[dunnyboy]

It's true, you often hear knowledgeable pipe smokers say that such and such a pipe is a good smoker. They will say it even of a pipe they've never smoked based entirely on the reputation of the pipe maker and the engineering/design of the pipe. I would say that a good smoker is a pipe that delivers a tasty, dry smoke at least one time. If the pipe can do that once, then any time it doesn't do that is on you. A bad smoker is a pipe that never delivers even one tasty, dry smoke no matter what you do. I've had one or two bad smokers but, in my experience, most pipes are good smokers.

 

[dunnyboy]

A quick anecdote: I gifted a bad smoker, a Sasieni 4 dot pot, to an experienced pipe smoker on another forum, figuring he might be able to figure how to make the pipe smoke well even though I never could. He emailed me back a few months later asking what was up with the pipe. It looked beautiful and the engineering was good but he couldn't get it to smoke well either. I felt bad for giving him a dud but relieved that it wasn't just me.

 

[mso489]

Most well-known brands who've been in business for fifty years or more have a serious vested interest in making good pipes. They want a good reputation for making quality pipes. There's no benefit for them making stinkers. They want good recommendations and repeat business.

Nearly every brand will make the occasional clunker, but your chances of getting a well made, properly drilled and finished pipe are close to ninety percent, in my opinion. That's about the odds I've experienced.

And some pipes will smoke well enough but just don't appeal for some other personal reason, an airway that's just slightly too restricted or alternately too airy. Unpleasing buttons. Plastic looking finishes. Sometimes you can correct the problem.

My take-home point is, your chances of getting a good pipe are pretty strong.

 

[FALaholic]

Totally anecdotal, but I shy away from any pipe that makes a whistling sound when I draw on an empty bowl.

I have a very sharp looking Comoy’s bull dog that whistles when dry too. I even tried opening it up by a very small fraction. Decent smoking pipe, but I find myself avoiding it because it whistles like a Spompngebob SquarePants toy.

 

[sasquatch]

Whistling "ought" to be a bad sign, it's literally cavitation, to use a physics term. If you want to create condensation, having an area in a pipe where the flow of the smoke stream is spinning and jumping is probably the best way you could do it, like a set of baffles. Inside the pipe the result of such a thing is that you are knocking out a bunch of moisture and a bunch of the big floppy molecules we detect as flavor - oils, esters, sugars. There are certainly pipes that offer up a very small whistle and still smoke okay, it's not a high pressure system where gas is moving fast after all. But it's unpleasant for the user and certainly won't make a pipe better in any way.