Pipe Myths

[Boognish]

Myth: if you drop meerschaum and it breaks, that means it’s pressed not block.

 

[Puffaluffaguss]

I normally take one pipe with me in the morning for work. They rotate through a 7 day pipe rack weekly. I keep a backup meer in my lunchbox. I run about ten bowls through it driving my route. I do use a pipe cleaner periodically. I clean them properly once a month. The flavor is more pronounced later in the day. Never had an issue.

10 bowls on 1 route, you must be driving Hella miles. I average about 2 pipe bowls and 2 cigarettes a day on my route. Which is rural and alot of driving, about 70 miles a day depending on if im heavy or light. Before I found the pipe I was going through about half a pack of cigs a day. Now when I wake up I don't have as much flegm from smoking so much.

 

[Puffaluffaguss]

Nonsense. Of course pipe smoking is unhelathy. Any smoking is unhealthy, and unnatural. But I enjoy pipe smoking and don't need to lie to myself or be a hypocrite about it to enjoy it. I've done a lot of things that were unhealty and just accept it as some of my life choices.

I think smoking a pipe is healthier then joining a forum at this point lol.

 

[Puffaluffaguss]

To this day, the United States of America puts a cold half pint of milk beside the lunch plate of children in a hundred thousand schools every school day, thanks to a farm boy from Lamar named Harry S Truman.





Harry Truman was a member of my Masonic Lodge.

All presidents, since good ol George was a member of some sort of "order, lodge, temple, Secret society, or fraternity".

 

[Briar Lee]

I don't know what the formulation was, but supposedly it did contain honey. Whether it was sprayed, dipped or brushed on, it appears that it did what it was supposed to. I have Yello-Boles that still have remnants of the coating in them after decades of use. And it made for a good ad campaign and probably sold a lot of pipes.

I’ve used a little dab of honey, applied with the tip of a finger, inside the bowl of every brand new pipe, briar cob or meerschaum I’ve bought in my entire half century of pipe smoking.

Why?

Harry Hosterman showed me how, years ago.

New pipes (other than Lees) usually taste bad the first few bowls. A dab of honey helps sweeten the first bowl or two.

It might help building cake, or a resin deposit.

It might help prevent a burn out.

I’ve always done it that way.


In my experience I can count on a brand new Danish freehand pipe being a booger to break in. On those I use honey until they fully break in, maybe a couple of dozen bowls, on others only a few bowls.

I even use honey the first bowl of a new old stock Lee, although it’s not necessary.

While discussing myths, I’m completely convinced a new briar is broken in by the extreme heat of the ember further curing the briar. Until broken in fully a pipe should be smoked until the bitter, hot end down to the draft hole.

One reason I believe that is I take every used pipe I buy (that it’s possible) down to a bare, brown briar

No honey is necessary to break one in again, unless the bottom of the bowl has never been heat cured.

 

[telescopes]

I can think of nothing more Freudian than either smoking a cigar or a pipe. Even more so a pipe. There are soooo many more choices one has to make subconsciously when smoking a pipe rather than a cigar.

And on this site, angst of many types gets discussed throughout the threads.

 

[Zeno Marx]

I used to use straight honey on a fingertip. I found it to create a weak and spotty cake. The cake was neither dense nor with integrity. A good cake is hard and uniform, and honey produces a cake of neither of those qualities. For a lack of a better way to describe it, a honey cake is brittle and possibly foamy under a microscope. Though, that's just a guess as to why it so readily crumbles off the bowl wall. It would easily crack off in spots and in chunks, ultimately making for a spotty cake, which I eventually realized I did not want. It took me longer than it should have to catch onto this, but then I did stop doing it. Now, I prefer to build a cake with a good, cool-burning, burley-based blend. I find Stokkebye's 41 to be great for this.

 

[Briar Lee]

Harry Hosterman, and the little booklets that came packed inside E.A. Carey and Dr. Grabow pipes, unanimously advised building a cake “about the thickness of a dime”.

I used to do that, but quit maybe forty years ago in favor first of a thinner cake, and then for just enough dark resin in the bowl to call it a film of a cake, as little as possible.

For an active outdoorsman in windy conditions a dime thickness cake helps prevent burn out.

But to me I get a better flavor from a whisper of a cake.

A twisted paper towel soaked in Everclear is my reamer.

 

[Zeno Marx]

A little more thought about this honey cake...

I called it foamy, or seemingly foamy. If you've ever made caramel, or watched it being made, sugar long bubbles in a heated liquid state. Because it is so thick (viscosity) when it bubbles, it holds those bubbles longer, resembling a foam. All nerdy speculation here, but I think the honey being cooked, and in a similar state as making caramel, is why it lacks density and strength. You push your tamper down the wall, and you're basically popping carbon-coated bubbles.

 

[Chasing Embers]

I used to use straight honey on a fingertip. I found it to create a weak and spotty cake. The cake was neither dense nor with integrity. A good cake is hard and uniform, and honey produces a cake of neither of those qualities. For a lack of a better way to describe it, a honey cake is brittle and possibly foamy under a microscope. Though, that's just a guess as to why it so readily crumbles off the bowl wall. It would easily crack off in spots and in chunks, ultimately making for a spotty cake, which I eventually realized I did not want. It took me longer than it should have to catch onto this, but then I did stop doing it. Now, I prefer to build a cake with a good, cool-burning, burley-based blend. I find Stokkebye's 41 to be great for this.

You applied it too thick. Wipe it away until there's no tack left and it blackens and hardens just fine.

 

[PipeIT]

Interesting. You dont think brands matter?

Have you read the article, ‘The Myth of Brand and Maker in Pipesmoking’, by Dr. Fred Hanna?

https://www.greatnorthernpipeclub.org/_files/ugd/17b259_acdce5ca70354ca7a5f64775f95ae600.pdf

 

[Briar Lee]

Have you read the article, ‘The Myth of Brand and Maker in Pipesmoking’, by Dr. Fred Hanna?

https://www.greatnorthernpipeclub.org/_files/ugd/17b259_acdce5ca70354ca7a5f64775f95ae600.pdf

Yes, I’ve read that and he has a good argument.

This freehand was made in Italy for E.A. Carey.

It’s about the ugliest pipe I own. Someday I’ll finish trying to strip off the horrible varnish that was on it.



But since it’s branded E.A. Carey the contract called for only the finest grade of plateaux aged briar.

Therefore, it’s a dynamite smoker.

Brands matter because the grade (not the superficial quality of it) of briar matters a lot.

Careful makers use better briar.

 

[Briar Lee]

A brand new Missouri Meerschaum Country Gentleman arrived today.

Cobs really don’t need broken in, but I do it anyway.

A little dab of honey on a fingertip, rub evenly inside the bowl, fill half way with cherry cavendish and smoke slowly.

Mmmm, mmmm, delicious!

 

[J-Evverrett]

10 bowls on 1 route, you must be driving Hella miles. I average about 2 pipe bowls and 2 cigarettes a day on my route. Which is rural and alot of driving, about 70 miles a day depending on if im heavy or light. Before I found the pipe I was going through about half a pack of cigs a day. Now when I wake up I don't have as much flegm from smoking so much.

I start my day with two Parodi kings and the big 1/2 a pot yeti tumbler of black coffee. Then I smoke a pipe constantly. Smoke more pipes, you won’t regret it on your deathbed lol.

 

[J-Evverrett]

How much oxygen deprivation would be considered good for your brain? Any medical/scientific studies around which provide such an amount?

To smoke is simply a selfish decision we smokers have made. Rather than trying to justify such a decision, load your pipe and simply enjoy your wee stab at rebellion. That's what many of us do, live with the risks and enjoy the pipe which can only be defined as a selfish decision. Weigh the risk versus the reward, self-satisfaction, and enjoy your tobacco while watching your moneys waft gently skyward. That's what I do when I'm smoking and not working.

I’m not big on doctors and scientists telling me what I ought to be doing. They change their minds a lot on all sorts of things. Death rate is still 100%.

 

[mingc]

When I was in Tunisia last summer, an older man, maybe in his 80s, noticed I was smoking a three star Lee. He spoke some English and asked me if I was enjoying my pipe. I told him I was, very much. We talked some and then he asked me if I was Italian. I laughed, and said not likely. When I asked him "why?" he proceeded to tell me that back in the late 40s it was not uncommon to see Americans who were with the Mafia, running various "goods" out of Italy and through Tunis and then to America. He said these men often smoked Lees and that the number of stars indicated their stature in the organization. A one star meant a non Italian, a two star a made man, a three star a Capio, and a fourth star higher up. He said only five stars were smoked by the very top men who you rarely saw. He asked to see my pipe. It was a first generation seven pointed star. He told me the points stood for the various vices and these were what the men preyed on to make their money. I offered him my pipe for the good story and he thanked me, laughed, and went on his way saying now, finally after all these years, he was a made man.

He didn't say anything about Kaywoodie.

What a great story! Do you think he made it up on the spot? I mean how common were Lee pipes in Italy and/or Tunisia?

 

[jpmcwjr]

A myth is often popular, but untrue. I.e., if it's true, it's not a myth.

There are things such as Bigfoot and Nessie which are indeterminate, but many say they are myths and many say they're true.

Paul Bunyan is a myth, and there must be dozens more not coming to mind at the moment.

 

[Briar Lee]

What a great story! Do you think he made it up on the spot? I mean how common were Lee pipes in Italy and/or Tunisia?

One shouldn’t automatically discount those stories as the exaggerated or fabricated memories of a wizened old Italian who’d only been a small boy in 1946 when Richard Lee mysteriously came up with what might have been the only ocean freighter on the planet earth loaded to the gills with aged Mediterranean briar.

Lee did somehow, get briar in early 1946.

It’s not so far fetched to imagine he might have had certain contacts in Italy or Sicily that in return for providing pipes greased the skids for the export of certain articles not on the essentials list.

It’s all lost now, buried under the sands of time.

 

[mortonbriar]

A myth is often popular, but untrue. I.e., if it's true, it's not a myth.

There are things such as Bigfoot and Nessie which are indeterminate, but many say they are myths and many say they're true.

Paul Bunyan is a myth, and there must be dozens more not coming to mind at the moment.

Paul says the big bunion on Nessies foot is no myth.

 

[shermnatman]

A thousand degrees?

Does anyone know how hot it gets inside a smoking bowl on average?

The only temperature numbers that I have heard come from Dan Chlevbove of Gabrielli Pipes, and, Russ Ouellette of P&C, a match burns at approximately 600 degrees, a soft-flame lighter burns at approx 800 degrees. Pine wood burn around 650 degress; whereas, Briar burns at nearly 1300 degrees. Ouellette and Chelevbove on Pipe Burn Outs

That tells us something; but, doesn't answer something I would like to know as well. - Sherm Natman