Pipe cleaner every time and only recently started wiping bowl out with a paper towel to slow cake growth. Ream as needed. If a pipe has clogged a bit I'll use very hot water dribbled into the bowl, let it sit a spell and then work on it with a shank brush and dig around the draft hole with a paper clip til it's cleared. Only when that doesn't do the trick-seldom-will resort to iso alcohol, which will make an even bigger mess in the sink than water.
Why Not Clean your Pipe After every Smoke?
- Thread starter Lucashly
- Start date
I think this cleaning pipes is getting a little obsessional but as always a matter of personal preference. Daily might be appropriate if you are a heavy user of one pipe, I mean you wouldn't wear the same under pants or socks two days in a row? If you did you might wind up with quite the skid mark collection especially if you had an exotic diet or friends asking if you have been blowing smoke rings out of your arse. I clean my pipes once a week since I will smoke one or two meerschaums in the course of a day and then toss them in the bowl to be cleaned on Saturday. Cleaning for me involves soft pipe cleaners and the removal of the Philt pad and a gentle ream of the bowl and wipe with a damp rag.
Pipe cleaner each smoke for sure and I usually bend a cleaner in half and and run around the bowl. Deep clean once the pipe turns sour and I use a damp paper towel to wipe down the outside of bowl and shank.
Often times I just blow back down through the pipe if I don’t have one on me. Meers almost never get a pipe cleaner cause I want those juices to help it color.
I treat all of my pipes how you treat your beater pipes essentially. Once the gnar is too real I clean it.
Most burn out is smoking too hot. I have taken the time to prove that cake is not necessary. I had a commission that the first drilling revealed a pit that ran to the outside of the bowl. I decided to keep this pipe for myself and make a new one. It is one of many now that I smoke with no cake, showing that none of these pits cause burn out when smoked at a proper cadence. As a fun parlor trick, I can blow smoke through the pits while I am enjoying a bowl. YMMV.You need cake, if you have a sand pit inside your pipe it will burn out and give you hot spots and will wreck your pipe bowl, I know this from experience.
Define “a good cleaning”
Running water removes rather than spreads debris around.
When the water runs clear and paper towel comes out clean and white rather than yellowish brown…
And you see what still comes out with a good rinse “after” using just pipe cleaners you may be surprised.
But… there’s no right or wrong here.
Some choose to build up a thick cake and enjoy their pipes that way.
As a Packers fan since the Lombardi days, I hope the iced tea is for mindless tv shows and beer for the game. I’m old school and can’t imagine iced tea for games. Especially in December.
I have over 50 years of smoking a pipe, I don't smoke hot and I know that Briar is never perfect, learn about Briar.
I've been a Packers' fan a wee bit longer than that but, I'm not consumed by it. I'll look up from my chores or book of there is a rise in crowd noise indicating a replay but, only the final score matters and, not all that much. I'm no longer as much of a fan as I was back in the day. A win or a loss is simply a win or a loss. I'm a fan of the team but, so much of today's game.
Are you telling me to learn about briar? Thank you, but I do, every single day. I have made hundreds of pipes, sold thousands, and smoked hundreds. I am sorry if my opinion bothers you, but I am telling you that I explicitly smoke pipes with pits in the chamber and they do not burn out. My experience is that if you smoke slowly, pits will be fine.
So you should know about burn outs and should know about pits inside a pipe bowl can cause hot spots and a possible burn out, happened to me recently and I mainly smoke flake and smoke very slow, this was on a new Peterson and the shop it was bought from replaced it with no argument and said that they have had this many times lately and they have reported it to Peterson. This was only the second time it has happened to me but friends in my pipe club have had it happen before. You must be very good at picking quality Briar so I commend you sir.
I clean after each smoke, once the pipe is cold, I clean it and wipe it with a rough paper napkin. I don't rinse the corn pipes with water, only with alcohol when it is a cleaning to erase some ghost. Sometimes yes, with hot water, to the few briar pipes that I have. It is a way to avoid a big cake in the future.
I wipe the bowl and run a pipe cleaner until it comes out clean. No alcohol or any deep cleaning. I just try to get any moisture or dottle remnants out.
Come to think of it, I can't remember the last time my pipes underwent a deep cleaning.
Come to think of it, I can't remember the last time my pipes underwent a deep cleaning.
