To Wipe or Not To Wipe...That is the Question.

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64alex

Part of the Furniture Now
May 10, 2016
596
417
[Everclear and salt or cottonballs is the method of choice for exorcising ghosts or a really skunked up pipe. But should be used very sparingly. Alcohol is not particularly friendly to wood.
Far better is to rinse the chamber and airway with hot water, then dry with a paper towel in the bowl, and a pipe cleaner in the airway. Qtip in the mortise every now and then.]
This is exactly what I do with my briars and clay pipes. I have now a new morta with bamboo stem and I am wondering if I can do the same. For the morta I think it should be ok given it stayed for thousands of years in water and I don't think a 30 sec rinsing in hot water is going to do any harm. I am a little bit more uncertain about the bamboo. Any experience with this?

 

jpmcwjr

Lifer
May 12, 2015
26,264
30,356
Carmel Valley, CA
No bamboo experience, but keep in mind that the airway is exposed to more moisture— at least a lot longer—during the smoke. And it's moisture at temperature. So, it should be fine.

 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,211
60,640
I'm with workman. I scoop the ash and wipe out the bowl with part of a paper towel or paper napkin. It maintains an adequate thin carbon layer, and no cake means the chamber remains its original size. A number of my pipes are decades old, and I don't own a reamer. Some people count cake-building as a major enjoyment in pipe smoking, and I definitely think they should do it. But I like this method, and so do a number of Forums members.

 
I’ve never had lint left behind from a paper towel, even when I wipe it dry. But, I have been using John’s water cleaning method, since he proposed it in another thread, and I still get a very hard cake build up. It just doesn’t’t build up as fast, but there is still Cake. It’s about the consistency of linoleum, and I have to trim it down with a very sharp knife. My pipes are always fresh smelling and look as new as the day I bought them.

But, some guys just like those crumbly soft cakes, so YMMV.

 

jackets

Starting to Get Obsessed
Oct 11, 2017
111
300
Like many of you I give a bent cleaner a couple of twirls in the bowl after a smoke. It keeps the cake compact and hard, it also reduces the amount of unburned tobacco in the chamber.

 

cigrmaster

Lifer
May 26, 2012
20,248
57,309
67
Sarasota Florida
Using leftover ash to try and build a nice hard cake is an old wives tale. I wipe out the bowls of my pipes using a doubled over soft pipe cleaner. I do it either after letting the pipe cool over night or sometimes 4-5 hours after smoking.
All of my pipes have a nice hard cake that I keep to a dime's thickness. In my experience pipes with a dimes worth of cake smoke cooler and more flavorful especially when dedicated to certain blends and categories of blends.

 
Jan 28, 2018
14,065
158,682
67
Sarasota, FL
I have been breaking in my new Larryson by wiping the bowl clean of ash after smoking each bowl with a doubled up pipe cleaner. After 9 or 10 bowls, it is building a nice cake.

 
Jun 27, 2016
1,280
127
I go with the "MSO system" as I like to call it, since I noticed him talking about it the most, but I still sometimes need to use a reamer to shave back burnished-down build-up and the occasional piece of leaf stuck to the cake-slick on the walls.

 

jazz

Part of the Furniture Now
Feb 17, 2014
813
66
UK
I tend to use the horseshoe-shaped pipe cleaner method. It goes in and gets cranked firmly a few times. Cake builds slowly and is pretty hard. I like a little of this but not a lot. I will sometimes use a paper towel but it is mainly a cleaner.

 

9mmpuffer

Might Stick Around
Mar 1, 2018
90
27
I wipe a paper towel and sometimes a little alcohol.
My best smokers have an ultra thin shiny cake lather, that's the more desirable IMO.

 

echambers

Starting to Get Obsessed
Nov 21, 2017
118
4
Like others, I take a bent pipe cleaner and run it around the inside of the bowl. And of course pipe cleaners through the stem as well with one of the bristle ones ever few bowls.

 

artificialme

Can't Leave
Mar 15, 2018
323
38
Indonesia
Don't know yet about cake build, but i received my pipe in estate condition. in 1 month of usage, I'd never shake the ash after a bowl of smoking. just wait a bit after it burned out and tapped it on the ashtray.

 

mikefu

Lifer
Mar 28, 2018
1,976
10,506
Green Bay
I’ve been experimenting the last few days with a couple new pipes, and I can say with a fair amount of confidence that the shaking the ash around for even distribution before dumping doesn’t build cake, as it just wipes out after the pipe has cooled, and the condition of the chamber is indistinguishable from one that has just been smoked and dumped out with no shake. That being said, I like the no ash taste a lot more. I think I’m a convert to wiping after dumping! :D

 

curl

Part of the Furniture Now
Apr 29, 2014
722
463
I don’t wipe.

That would just slow me down.

I use my Brigham pipe reamer every once in a while to scrape away the stuff that builds up in the bowl.

 

paulfg

Lifer
Feb 21, 2016
1,632
3,115
Corfu Greece
A question for you cake builders

I wipe my pipes with a screwed up piece of printer paper every so often.

In some of my pipes it comes out sort of oily black as if the cake is not drying,in others its just a grey ashy colour

Any ideas as to the oily pipes?

 

mikefu

Lifer
Mar 28, 2018
1,976
10,506
Green Bay
What kind of tobacco are you smoking in the oily black residue ones? I get that sometimes if I smoke an aromatic that is particularly goopy (very seldom do I have these) or if I haven't allowed it to dry out properly (more common). Any correlation there?

 
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