So in my experience at best they do nothing and at worst they ruin a bunch of smokes. ?
Bingo! A coating isn’t a deal breaker but I strongly prefer an uncoated chamber.
What's the Deal with Bowl Coatings?
- Thread starter Sloopjohnbee
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Bingo! A coating isn’t a deal breaker but I strongly prefer an uncoated chamber.
Ditto. Not really an issue to me.
Sykes Wilford of Smoking Pipes responded to one thread here and pointed out the economics of having to deal with returns, coated vs. non-coated.
This is generally my exact method. Sometimes I'll skip the honey, though. And if I do coat in honey, I'll heat it up first so it's a VERY thin coating.
I have a couple of Rossi pipes that came with bowl coatings. The first I tried to smoke straight up and it tasted poorly for months before the aftertaste leveled off. The second I managed to remove the coating first and had better results. I'm not sure if my results are representative but I'm not a fan of coated bowls.
When you are smoking a naked bowl and you begin to taste briar towards the end that is a good sign to let the pipe go out.
The Danes are famous for their water glass coatings which taste like total dog shit. Every commission I have had done I said no bowl coating. People who like them probably like rubbers on their dicks and softy bits on the stems of their pipes. Be a fucking man and go natural. Fuck it if you get the clap or aids, you won't die. lol
The Danes are famous for their water glass coatings which taste like total dog shit. Every commission I have had done I said no bowl coating. People who like them probably like rubbers on their dicks and softy bits on the stems of their pipes. Be a fucking man and go natural. Fuck it if you get the clap or aids, you won't die. lol
I have a Savinelli St. Nicholas pipe that I recently purchased. It has the coating in it, but after a few bowls (Virginias) I can't say I've noticed any difference in the taste.
I'm in the "don't care either way" camp. Of the couple pipes I've bought new over the past few years, I've had one Peterson with the coating and one uncoated Savinelli. The bowl coating made the Peterson smoke like it was already broken in (i.e. no briar taste or other taste aside from what you'd expect when smoking a bowl). As to uncoated bowls, I do not like the woody briar taste that comes with the first few bowls, but that problem rapidly disappears after a few bowls, so no big deal.
I also don't mind if they are coated. Aside from not being able to taste much burnt briar, I can't really tell a huge difference between coated or uncoated.
The past few pipes I've gotten have been new from Tom Eltang. I don't know what he uses to coat his bowls. To me, there is a slight aroma of honey for the first smoke or three. I can't see it being maple syrup, but who knows.
Then it's gone, never to come back. It was never unpleasant.
With his experience in pipe manufacturing and design, which is unquestionably vast in the pipe world, I just assume he has a reason for doing so. Maybe it's out of tradition, or maybe it's practical.
Someone should ask him sometime. He's absolutely one of the most experienced carvers in the world and it may be interesting to hear why he coats his bowls.
The past few pipes I've gotten have been new from Tom Eltang. I don't know what he uses to coat his bowls. To me, there is a slight aroma of honey for the first smoke or three. I can't see it being maple syrup, but who knows.
Then it's gone, never to come back. It was never unpleasant.
With his experience in pipe manufacturing and design, which is unquestionably vast in the pipe world, I just assume he has a reason for doing so. Maybe it's out of tradition, or maybe it's practical.
Someone should ask him sometime. He's absolutely one of the most experienced carvers in the world and it may be interesting to hear why he coats his bowls.
It could be alcohol you’re tasting. It’s not uncommon to clean up wood with alcohol, especially before applying a coating of some type. And it does have a sweet taste for the first bowl or two when I clean a chamber with alcohol. ?
I just started smoking a pipe I bought last week. Was made by Phillip Trypis in Canada. It was an unsmoked estate, had a red clay coating in the bowl. First couple smokes tasted like I slid into second base face first
I think bowl coatings are mostly the industry's defense against new pipe smokers who puff like a steam locomotive and would burn out most new pipe bowls. I give high esteem to pipes that arrive without the coating on the basis that they are pitched to experienced pipe smokers who aren't going to smoke a tin in fifteen minutes, or try. I haven't found the coatings to taste bad or present any problems. I just wish they weren't there since I don't need them.
My guess would be that you're right about this.
I suppose from the pipe maker's point of view, they have no idea about the experience level of any of their customers and may want to protect against this.
Take Tom Eltang, for example. It seems like the majority of his output is in the $400-$700 range or so. If a number of those come back in a year with "burnouts" that might not otherwise occur if he has a coating, I wonder how much that impacts his income.
Offset by the number of people who would refuse to buy a pipe from him because it is coated, and I'm not sure it would be worth it not to coat a bowl. If it even is a problem.
Maybe it's enough to err on the side of caution and slap a little protection in there to protect his side of things from "inexperience".
I would like to know how many burnouts there actually are. Only manufacturers could give insight there, and those with higher volume of output don't seem to publish that information.
It's an interesting problem. The coatings seem to exist for a reason. Whether that is tradition or just a lot of experience from getting pipes back from burnouts is something I would like to hear about. I'm genuinely interested because I've never burnt out a pipe, coated or otherwise.
That's interesting. Maybe so. It kind of smelled like that Manuka brand honey. I seriously doubt that is what it is, but my brain said honey.
Would not be at all surprised if it was alcohol. My brain is misleading quite a lot of the time.
I've had one pipe where it was a problem. It was a artisan pipe and it got all in the shank because the pipemaker used too much of the stuff . I cleaned the pipe with Everclear a few times, but it had a sour taste for a few weeks.
Discussions about bowl coatings couldn't be more useless due to carvers' intransigence. They simply will coat bowls over any objection.
I think, as many have stated, the coating is so you don't have to worry about the possibility of a burnout while you're getting your carbon layers built up to form a proper cake.
Do you need a coating? Not really, it's more of an added protection and the risk of burnout is rare even without it. But I put it on every single one of my restorations because I sometimes lend those out to friends who don't really have their cadence down yet.
Do you need a coating? Not really, it's more of an added protection and the risk of burnout is rare even without it. But I put it on every single one of my restorations because I sometimes lend those out to friends who don't really have their cadence down yet.
I've always thought that some pipe makers apply a coating because a new pipe with a brand new, bright interior looks kinda funny.
I think I tasted the coating on one of my Petes but I might have imagined it.
I can't tell if coated ones smoke better when new. I've never had break-in issues, and I'm not a real stickler when it comes to break-in procedures. Ymmv of course.
I think I tasted the coating on one of my Petes but I might have imagined it.
I can't tell if coated ones smoke better when new. I've never had break-in issues, and I'm not a real stickler when it comes to break-in procedures. Ymmv of course.
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