I wrote this as a review of my recent pipe experiments. Feel free to share anything you've done differently that works.
As pipe smokers, we all love a fresh smoking pipe. Over time though, our pipes can become sour from excessive wet smoking and the oils deposited in the cake and briar by burning tobacco. Thankfully, a gentleman by the name of Jim Beard, who hangs out on the net on the forums of pipes.org, has come up with a brilliant way to correct this. He has posted his method, the Professors Pipe Treatment, on the internet at http://pipes.org/Articles/PipeSweet.html where many hundreds, perhaps thousands of people have been able to take advantage of his process. In his article outlining his process, Jim encourages people to experiment to achieve the best results, which is what I have done in this overview. If you haven’t used this method before, it’s a wonderful way to keep your pipes smoking cleanly whenever they become sour. It’s also an excellent way to clean a pipe for when you want to change a pipe from one type of tobacco to another, for example when switching a pipe from an Aromatic to an English. This process is especially helpful when committing a pipe to Virginia flakes only since Virginia flakes can be more susceptible to picking up the flavors already in the pipe.
Recently we moved into a new house. I thought I would use some of my down time at night to break in my new workshop area by refreshing a number of pipes using Jim’s method - what many on the net just call the Salt/Alcohol treatment for sour pipes. Jim recommends experimenting with different types and levels of alcohols and drying times. I did just that. What’s nice about this treatment is that none of the steps are time sensitive and since you aren’t working against a stop watch, if you have several pipes that need the treatment, you can do them all at once. I should state up front that this process is very, very easy even for a complete pipe novice but does requires require time and patience. I found for me, it takes a good 7 days from start to finish to do this process right. Don’t let that time frame seem daunting since you actually only need to do a few minutes of work on 2 of the days to refresh your favorite pipe. The rest of the time is spent waiting. If you are going to go through the trouble of doing this process, take the time required and don’t be in a rush to smoke the pipe too quickly. In the past, I’ve gone too quickly and ended up having to do it all over again. You will need a few supplies to complete the treatment, but luckily the list is small and consists only of:
• Non-iodized salt (I use Morton’s Kosher Salt)
• A few packs of bristled and fluffy pipe cleaners
• Q-tips
• Paper towels
• High alcohol content alcohol – Everclear preferred
• Pipe sweetener
• Eyedropper
• Canned air (optional)
• A lot of patience (not optional)
The first step in the Professor’s Treatment is preparing your pipe(s). It is essential that you start with a clean, dry pipe. The pipe needs to be free from any remaining dottle and any moisture from your last bowlful should be dried out first. I don’t see any point in refreshing a wet pipe since it just means that the treatment has to clean out the excess moisture as well as the oils fouling the pipe. To me, this is like changing the oil in your car and then leaving the existing dirty filter in place. Start with a clean pipe and the salt and alcohol will have less work to do.
When I know I am going to be performing the treatment, I’ll take all the pipes I want to refresh and move them into my workshop. The only area where I significantly differ with Jim on his process is on is reaming the cake. Jim recommends leaving the cake alone but since I am cleaning out the pipe, it makes sense to me to give the pipe a simple reaming to make sure the cake is even and not too thick. My thinking is that cake “grows back” and I may as well get the freshest pipe possible by forming new, unsoured cake. If you want to leave the cake on, you can but remember to let the cake dry even more at the end of the process.
For reaming, I use a combination of a Butners reamer for most pipes and a Klean Ream for those that need it. Blow out any remaining cake dust and run a compliment of pipe cleaners (both bristle and fluffy) through both the stem and the bowls. Keep running the pipe cleaners through until they come out dry and clean. Next, I clean out the mortise using a Q-tip dipped in pipe sweetener or Everclear. You want to try and remove any gunk that may have built up in the mortise area. I’ve found that some tends to seep in there over the course of a few months, particularly on pipes where the mortise/tenon fit isn’t perfect. My theory is that if the mortise isn’t kept clean, gunk will build up and that can contribute to a shank cranking. When the cleaning work is done, wipe out the mortise and the inside and outside of the bowl with a paper towel and then blow any dust out with the canned air.
Once the pipes are clean on the outside, I give the bowl a quick buffing. It may seem odd to buff the pipes before performing the treatment but I like having that extra coat of wax on the bowl in case I spill some alcohol on them to protect the finish. The extra wax may only buy me an extra few seconds to wipe up the spill but a few seconds is a few seconds. Besides, it gives me an extra reason to run my buffer!
The last step in the prep stage is to prep the area where your pipes will sit. You want to make sure your pipes will be sitting in an area with good ventilation so the alcohol evaporates over the course of a few days. Since you’ll be filling the bowl(s) with salt and alcohol, you need to have an area the pipe can rest on without risk of the bowls tipping over. Since we just moved, I found taking some left over bubble wrap sheets and folding them over layers 3 deep made a great platform for my pipes to sit on. I place a small box in the middle of the bubble wrap for the pipes to lean against. You just want to make sure your pipe won’t tip over and that the alcohol won’t drip out of the mortise or bit, especially on to the pipes finish. Most pipes use an alcohol based stain and the alcohol used for this treatment will remove the finish if it is allowed to stay on the finish for more than a few seconds!
Once you have your pipe(s) prepped, its time to start the treatment. Here is where the two variables – salt and alcohol - really come into the process. You can choose any kind of salt you want – though Jim recommends non-iodized. I found that Morton’s Course Kosher Salt works the best. The grains are noticeably larger than standard table salt (but still small enough to work into the shank) and I believe this helps in the evaporation and leeching process. When I used regular table salt, the results didn’t yield as deep or dark crust at the end of the leeching process. Some people have used cotton balls to fill the bowl instead of salt. Next you have to choose a pipe sweetener or alcohol and Jim recommends using a high alcohol content alcohol. Many will use their favorite drinks such as rum or vodka. Since I have about 30 pipes that I actively smoke in my smoking rotation, I decided to take them and experiment with some different alcohols and sweeteners. These were my results:
• Pipe Sweetener – I tried this treatment with Tinder Box Pipe Sweetener. I’ve read or been told that pipe sweeteners are mostly alcohol so I thought I would give it a shot. While the pipes smelled sweet when the process was done, I didn’t find that they smoked that much cleaner tasting, though they did have a minty quality. Unfortunately, minty isn’t what I am looking for in a pipe. I also noticed that the sweeteners didn’t leech nearly as much sour oil as did the next group. My advice is to leave the pipe sweetener for periodic use with pipe cleaners.
• Rum and Gin – Both the alcohols I used were medium in alcohol content. Nearly the same results occurred as with the pipe sweetener though I did find they did a slightly better job of leeching the sour oils. Naturally, you’ll find a slight rum taste with the first few bowls of any pipe treated with the rum.
• Everclear – The master alcohol of the treatment! Everclear does a fantastic job of leeching all of the sour oils from the pipe and is neutral tasting when the treatment is over. It leaves the pipe clean and completely refreshed. Based on my experiments, a 5th of Everclear will treat about 50 to 80 pipes.
While you can do the treatment with the stem still on the pipe, I’ve found it’s best to take the stem off and plug the end of the air passage with pipe cleaners or a Q-Tip. The problem with pipe cleaners is that they act as a wick to leech the alcohol and oils and ended up getting some of the gunk inside the mortise, which I then had to clean again. Hands down, the Q-Tip is the best way to plug the air passage. Once it’s in the air passage, the Q-tip should hang straight out of the back of the air passage without touching the inside of the mortise. You may have to manipulate the cotton so it fits inside the air passage but make sure it effectively “corks” the passage. I use a small set of needle nose pliers to work the Q-tip in until the cotton ball end is completely inside the air passage.
Next, take your salt and fill the bowl half way and then tap the side to make sure the salt works its way inside the air passage of the bowl. Much of the sour taste is from sour oils trapped in the shank so you want to make sure both salt and alcohol work their way there. Using an eye dropper, saturate the salt with the Everclear. Now fill up the rest of the bowl with the salt and again, saturate it once more with the Everclear. Take special care to wipe up any spills on the finish of the pipe or it will eat away at the finish. If it does, you’ll have to send your pipe out to be refinished which can be expensive! Once it’s done, set the pipe on your resting area so that no alcohol drips out and repeat this process on the rest of the bowls.
Now comes the hard part, waiting until the alcohol and salt have done their work! What you’ll find is that over the next 12 to 24 hours a hard, dark crust will form on the salt. This is exactly what should be happening. These are all the oils and tars that are fouling your pipe being carried up by the alcohol as it evaporates. I’ve found that usually 48 hours is enough for the Everclear to completely evaporate from the pipe but I give it an extra day or two once I think it’s done just to be sure. Another benefit of the Q-Tip is that if you use a Q-Tip with a paper rod; it too will leech the tars and oils and provides a good gauge for how well the treatment is working. You can see the rod turning a deep brown or black as the process is working.
Use your waiting time to give the stems the care and attention they deserve by cleaning them inside and out. On the inside of the stems, pull out your pipe cleaners and sweetener and swap the air passage clean. Again, keep running pipe cleaners through the inside of the stem until the pipe cleaners come out as clean as they went in. If you own a buffer or just some stem compound, now is a good time to polish them (remembering not to polish to close to the end that connects to the shank so you don’t round out the edges).
About three to four days after you poured in the salt and alcohol, its time to remove them and allow the pipe to air dry completely. Working over a trash bin, poke a hole in the dark, hard salt crust. Even with the dirtiest pipe, the crust will only be about a ¼ to ½ of an inch thick. The rest of the salt underneath will have turned a light tan color. Pour out the remaining salt and gently wipe away any grains that stick to the inside of the tobacco chamber. If you’ve chosen to leave the majority of the cake on, don’t wipe out the bowl just yet. The cake will have absorbed some of the alcohol and will not yet have returned to its hardened state. Let the pipe sit for a few more days to let the cake completely dry. Once the cake is dry, then clean the inside of the pipe one more time using paper towels to wipe out the inside of the bowl and use your pipe cleaners to clean the air passage and mortise. Make sure all of the grains of salt are gone. You do not want to smoke them! After the cleaning, I use the canned air to blow the insides free of dust and again leave the pipe to dry even further, usually 3 days. This is my own preference but I know some smoke them the moment they are emptied of salt but I like to make absolutely sure the pipe is completely dry and give the cake a chance to reharden.
At the end of the week (assuming you started on Sunday) reassemble your now clean pipes, polish and enjoy the fruits of your labors! You’ll notice that your favorite tobaccos taste richer and are more flavorful than before with no sour taste! As you sit back, relax, and watch the white swirls of smoke make their way up to the ceiling, I believe you will find that the time performing the Professor’s Pipe Treatment was time very well spent indeed!
