Morning smoke: Pulled the same trigger as I did yesterday,
Captain Black Cherry Cavendish in my 2nd
McQueen Miniature Barrel Rider. (I have two of these, the other dedicated to Mad Fiddler). Same delightful over the top cherry with my morning coffee, as I said yesterday, like having a fruit drink and coffee for breakfast. Looks like my rotation is going to change to a shorter aromatic in the morning. Life is weird, eh?

However, it is the 2nd photo in this post that is the real subject for today, and a
Skippable Drivel you may actually want to read, especially if you're a cheap jerk like me who, on a limited budget and poor availability of tobacco, might want to stretch your larder to the max.
Skippable Drivel: A TALE OF TWO PIPES

Skippable Drivel:
As mentioned yesterday, I'm re-aligning my pipe collection, and I've never made any secret of my top 3 favourite tobaccos, Black Frigate, Mad Fiddler and Bengal Slices, all in rather short supply. Each of these tobaccos has two dedicated pipes, a miniature for short smokes up to 20 minutes or so, and a medium pipe for leisurely smokes of at least twice that length for (usually) afternoon puffs. The subject of this verbose discourse is Black Frigate, and how to stretch the rubber band.
First of all, have a backup or two of similar tobaccos so you don't run out and have an acceptable substitute to "stretch" the rubber band. I have one jar, and one unopened tin of this magnificent Navy style tobacco, and two excellent backups of a similar nature.
Secondly, determine the capacity of your pipe in the manner that you pack and smoke it. I took the full jar, packed the pipe from it as I usually do, and removed the tobacco from the pipe. Put it into a measuring spoon, and it came to almost exactly 1/2 teaspoon of BF. That's not much. It's a tiny bowl.
Now, as there is 24 teaspoons by volume in a 2 ounce jar (and I get 2 full jars of tobacco from each tin), that gives me roughly 48 smokes per jar in the miniature. For whatever reason, BF gives me no less than 20 minutes in the McQueen pictured above, and if I smoke very slowly, I've achieved 30 minutes. And for most times, those are great smoke lengths for me.
If I want a longer smoke from Frigate, I go to the larger pipe.
Now here was the surprise. I've mentioned before that this little
Ropp J05 is a quirky little bugger. I found out why. It's chamber width is almost exactly the same as the McQueen miniature, but a little deeper because of that tallish bowl. It's total capacity is just a shade more than the McQueen, with a capacity I measured twice to make sure using the same method as described above. It's just a hair more than 5/8ths of a teaspoon. So it burns the tobacco in pretty much the same manner that the McQueen does, and in a much different manner than my other wider bowl Ropps or other pipes do. And it tastes exactly the same as in the McQ. Win-win!
This gives me a full 40 minutes of Black Frigate if I do my part right, using the loose 2-pack gravity feed that the Cap taught me to do with this tobacco in his instructive PM a few months back. Salute, my friend!
I've used this measuring system on all of my pipes that have been dedicated or genre-dedicated, so I know exactly (or with reason) how many smokes I can get from my remaining stock. It is a huge help in planning rotation with protected species.
Do I do this with all my tobaccos and pipes. Oh, heaven's, NO. I'm anal (I prefer precise) but not daft, ADD, Asperger's, autistic, or any of the like. There are tobaccos I've got lots of, are available to me, and, really, I'd rather smoke a pipe than fiddle and fart around like the madness described above with every known pipe in my universe!

