Please Maintain Your Cake or This Could Happen to You!

[shaintiques]

Here is an example of poor cake maintenance. There was recently another thread going around about cake build up and maintenance. This is an example of poor cake maintenance. Cake should be roughly as thick as a dime inside your bowl. You can maintain it with reamers or just the right pocket knife, but you have to be careful not to remove too much. Some people think that you should never wipe out your bowl and that doing so will inhibit cake formation, but I for one do wipe my bowls out and still build cake. The reality is that cake builds while you smoke and as long as you aren't scouring out the inside of your bowl, it will build. The pipe in this photo is the flip side however, this is of a pipe that was probably never cleaned. As a restorer of pipes I often come across pipes with so much cake that they are almost smoked closed. I know they are your pipes and maybe some of your will be buried with your pipes, but for the future generation of pipe smokers and restorers for that matter please clean your pipes and maintain your cake or this could happen to you!

 

[voorhees]

I see pipes like that and wonder how the hell they even put tobacco in it.... :crazy:

 

[neverknowsbest]

I know there is a prevailing consensus on "keep it a dime to a nickel's thickness", but I eliminate, with extreme prejudice, any little bit of cake I see building up in my tobacco chambers. Briar is good because it's briar.

 

[phred]

Part of me can't help but wonder if the previous owner misunderstood the "dime's thickness" instruction, and was attempting to achieve "dime's radius"... 8O

 

[gwtwdbss]

That is a serious amount of cake!

 

[moses]

Part of me can't help but wonder if the previous owner misunderstood the "dime's thickness" instruction, and was attempting to achieve "dime's radius"...

Diameter? Sorry.. lol

 

[jndyer]

Wow, that is a lot of cake in that pipe. I too have wondered how a pipe like that even takes any tobacco.

 

[brewshooter]

I received a meerschaum pipe from my father-in-law that was closed up even worse than that one. I don't see how you could smoke it closed, but he manage to do it. I initially started going at it with a reamer and realized I would be hours at that rate. My trusty Dremel and a steady hand made short work of it.

 

[ciderguy]

That cake is out of control! I figure when I see a crazy cake that the pipe must have been a good smoker.

 

[crazypipe]

That looks like a sweet smoking pipe to me. ::

 

[phred]

Diameter? Sorry.. lol

Heh - that was actually my first thought, but then I saw the size of the thumb in the pic and revised it down a little... :D

 

[thesmokindragon]

Ah, WOW!

 

[gnatjulio]

A case of having your cake and heating it too?

:lol:
One of my GBD estates was like that. Could barely put a pencil in there.

 

[uberam3rica]

I had a few pipes I got in a lot off ebay that were had a ton of cake. they cleaned up nicely though.

 

[latbomber]

Disgusting!

 

[rayje589]

O_O H...how would you even load that with tobacco?

 

[cigrmaster]

Pipes like the one showed is what some of the old timers do to their pipes. They smoke them till they cannot fit any more tobacco in them, and then throw them out.
neverknowsbest, you might want to try letting your cake build to a dime and you may notice you get a cooler more flavorful smoke that way, I have always found it to be true. The cooler you can smoke the pipe, the better tobacco will taste. Having a cake provides a cooler smoke.

 

[kris]

I'm hoping you at least attempted ONE smoke out of that bad boy before going to work on it?!!?!

 

[pipinho]

I hope he didn't put that thing in his mouth

 

[lordwolf]

I had an older gentleman that came into a tobacco store I worked at awhile back and he asked me about some good smoke and we stuck up a convo. We proceeded to light up our pipes and I watched him very carefully sprinkle some baccy into his pipe. Intrigued, I asked what he was doing and he said he always had trouble getting baccy into his pipe. The damn thing was so compacted with old cake that the hole was no larger than a small ice pick. I was so amazed at the state of the pipe I told him to meet me back at the store tomorrow and I brought my own pipe reamers so I could help this old dog out.
CLEAN YOU PIPES. Please. For us youngins. We want your pipes. :D