Resting of Savinelli pipe

[Briar Lee]

A pipe smoker can buy the cheapest briar on the display in the drug store, and smoke that one pipe every day, all day, for maybe a year or a little longer.

By then it will have either burned up, or else even he can’t stand the smell of it.

The best practice is to have enough pipes to rest each pipe a few days, preferably a week, between each smoke. We can say that’s the pipe sellers selling pipes, but Harry Hosterman had maybe a couple of dozen pipes, and he’d never smoke one more than a day without resting, and usually had several in his pocket or in his truck, to rotate.

Sixty years on I can still smell his Prince Albert when I pass by my father’s Grade A milk barn, where in my memory he’s still squatted on his haunches outside, laughing and visiting with the other men.

Rotate your pipes.

Children are watching you.

 

[Chasing Embers]

A pipe smoker can buy the cheapest briar on the display in the drug store, and smoke that one pipe every day, all day, for maybe a year or a little longer.

By then it will have either burned up, or else even he can’t stand the smell of it.

That's not actually true. For the first 15 years I smoked I only had two Dr. Grabows and a Big Ben. Thirty-two years since the beginning, one of those pipes were lost, and the other two are in fine condition.

 

[pappymac]

Pipe smokers started this idea of rotating pipes ... or using certain pipes for a particular blend or style of tobacco as a justification for their PAD or to get approval from the missus ...

Pipe sellers did that.

The whole concept of pipe rotations and letting your pipe rest for 24 hours was created by pipe manufacturers and retailers like Chasing Embers said. It's just like the jewelers telling you how much you should spend on a wedding ring, florist pushing flowers for Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, etc.

I remember by grandfather would smoke the same pipe all day long. The only reason he had more than one pipe at a time was because someone gave him a new pipe. He had four pipes when he passed in 1979. Hell, he didn't even have a cellar of pipe tobacco - he just went to the drugstore and bought a 14 or 16 oz. tin of George Washington or Carter Hall when he was running low.

 

[Briar Lee]

That's not actually true. For the first 15 years I smoked I only had two Dr. Grabows and a Big Ben. Thirty-two years since the beginning, one of those pipes were lost, and the other two are in fine condition.

I used to know several old men who’d buy a pipe and smoke that pipe to death, then buy another.

And Harry Hosterman was among his pipe smoking peers, in a minority of one. Not only did he rotate between a couple of dozen pipes, he’d clean the ones he smoked each night using Everclear and kept them in neat racks. The others were far more casual about maintenance.

Harry even had Velvet, Sir Walter Raleigh, Half and Half, Carter Hall, and Middleton Cherry Blend in pound sized cans at home. On the go he smoked Prince Albert, at home he must have enjoyed his pipes.

I think that’s the key.

Harry enjoyed his pipes. Each one were like Nona Fern and Alva, one of his children. He’d fiddle with them, use olive oil on them, ream and polish them.

The other men smoked tobacco, except instead of hand rolling it they used a pipe. They had no concern for their pipe at all.

Harry got away with it all. There’s no estimation of how many widow makers he dodged, saws that kicked back, leaners that almost hit him. He was nearly ninety when Mama called one day and said Harry had taken a load of stave bolts to Lebanon and on the way home wasn’t right and Alva drove him on home to Spout Spring Hollow.

The next morning, Wilda Mae tried to wake him, but he’d passed over the bar to Judgement.

Well done, faithful servant, welcome home.

His saws were all sharp and pipes all clean, you know?

 

[BriarBrook]

Pipe smokers started this idea of rotating pipes ... or using certain pipes for a particular blend or style of tobacco as a justification for their PAD or to get approval from the missus ...

***IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER*** EVEN THOUGH ROTATING/RESTING IS A MYTH, WE MUST KEEP THIS MYTH ALIVE IN ORDER TO JUSTIFY MORE PIPES!