It Must Have Been Expensive to Learn How to Smoke a Pipe 100+ Years Ago

[anotherbob]

Just came in from a nice bowl of Charing Cross. Was actually thinking about this, sorta. Not the cost, but how they smoked. I did get a lot of help from the forum when I first started out. A lot of try and error thing. Would the people from way back when looked for proper technique? Or just puff away like cigarettes and cigars? Now days I don't really thinking about what I'm doing. It's like smoking cigarettes now, automatic action. If they had father or uncle, would they really mentor new pipe smokers?

you ever hear the pot term toking? Comes from pipe smoking back in them olde times. Toking was what token smokers did. People who smoked to be cool and hence puffed away instead of slowing down like a real pipe smoker. So my guess is proper cadence has been a thing for longer then people think it has been. That said clay is less likely to bite but the flavor will go flat if you "toke" away at it. By the way a lot of pot terms came from old pipe terms.

 

[seagullplayer]

Here in the Midwest US I don't think it would have been too bad. Many a farm was paid off with a tobacco base.
Just in the drying barns when I was a kid you could pick up enough discarded tobacco leaves in five minutes to last you five years.
When you factor out pipe collecting and the availability of a 1000 different blends things get a bit more resonable.

Dedicated forums on any subject just fuel the fire for spending money today.

 

[judcole]

I would suggest that pipes had small bowls because they were carried in your pocket, with your flat tin of Prince Al (or whatever), and you smoked it when you felt like it/had an opportunity.
It wasn't a hobby, or something you did to be "manly". Most smokers didn't have a lot of pipes - oh, I am sure that some did, but they were the exceptions that proved the rule - and most of them only smoked one blend. They were smoking as part of their day, not sitting down for long periods to listen to the radio (or whatever).

 

[mikethompson]

Good points.

Wouldn't be the first time I was way off base.

 

[Grangerous]

How can a pipe having a 1.5” depth and an inside diameter of better than 3/4” be considered small?

A leisurely 45 minute to an hour is the norm for a pipe of this size and era. A standard billiard.

When did fashion dictate that tobacco Pipes, like wrist watches, golf club heads, motorcycle pistons and other life accessories, grow to such mass?

Look - trying to piss outdoors through 6 inches of winter clothing with 3 inches of dick... that struggle is real. But there comes a point where I believe we’re simply wasting tobacco. If your unsmoked dottle could fill a standard sized pipe, you need to ask yourself some questions.

 

[anotherbob]

Hmmm, if you are basing your presumption that tobacco was expensive solely on the size of the bowls, that may not be enough evidence. Because pipe tobacco smokers of old, used to mostly smoke heavier burleys that would make limp wristed, pencil necked Virginia smokers of today die immediately of overdose. Small bowls were all that was needed, because the tobacco was more powerful.

That is not to diminish the idea that tobacco was expensive, because it very well could have been also.

for example if you smoke semois in a smaller pipe you'll get about the same nic hit as if you smoke a virginia in the more contemporary pipe size.