Each day I seem to discover something new about about pipes and tobacco, and I’ve been smoking since 1972.
My latest used Lee Three Star Lovat came earlier this week, and using a very sharp pocket knife I was able to scrape all the cake from the chamber leaving nothing but brown briar.
I dipped a few pipe cleaners in 190 proof Everclear and cleaned the shank and the stem, twisted a paper towel and cleaned the chamber, and fired it up.
The first few bowls tasted off, not good at all.
Sometimes a pipe will need the sea salt and Everclear treatment, but I hate doing that. You can crack a good pipe, and I seem to be able to taste salt for long time afterwards.
In preparation to give my new Lovat the salt treatment I dipped a pipe cleaner in Everclear and when I put it in the shank it came out dark black. I’ve used almost a full sleeve of pipe cleaners and the cleaners still don’t come out white, but tinted brown.
My pipe had formed a cake of rancid carbon inside the shank. Smoking it and letting the alcohol soak freed that rancid cake up, and now I’m removing it.
When you see lava all over the top rim of a pipe that was caused just by smoke. Nobody burns tobacco on the rim of their pipe. They might scorch the rim, but not form a cake on top by contact with burning tobacco.
That same cake, caused only by smoke, forms inside the air chamber of the shank.
There is a night and dad improvement in the taste of my Lovat after cleaning the shank, and I’m not done yet.
A pipe needs smoked some, to free up the cake inside the shank.
It’s obvious, after you think about it.
My latest used Lee Three Star Lovat came earlier this week, and using a very sharp pocket knife I was able to scrape all the cake from the chamber leaving nothing but brown briar.
I dipped a few pipe cleaners in 190 proof Everclear and cleaned the shank and the stem, twisted a paper towel and cleaned the chamber, and fired it up.
The first few bowls tasted off, not good at all.
Sometimes a pipe will need the sea salt and Everclear treatment, but I hate doing that. You can crack a good pipe, and I seem to be able to taste salt for long time afterwards.
In preparation to give my new Lovat the salt treatment I dipped a pipe cleaner in Everclear and when I put it in the shank it came out dark black. I’ve used almost a full sleeve of pipe cleaners and the cleaners still don’t come out white, but tinted brown.
My pipe had formed a cake of rancid carbon inside the shank. Smoking it and letting the alcohol soak freed that rancid cake up, and now I’m removing it.
When you see lava all over the top rim of a pipe that was caused just by smoke. Nobody burns tobacco on the rim of their pipe. They might scorch the rim, but not form a cake on top by contact with burning tobacco.
That same cake, caused only by smoke, forms inside the air chamber of the shank.
There is a night and dad improvement in the taste of my Lovat after cleaning the shank, and I’m not done yet.
A pipe needs smoked some, to free up the cake inside the shank.
It’s obvious, after you think about it.