On smoking a pipe…
I’m no expert on pipes, but this has been my experience, and maybe you can benefit from it.
I switched from cigarettes to a pipe about a year and a half ago. Smoking a pipe is much different than smoking cigarettes.
First, you don’t inhale, unless you enjoy being wracked with coughing fits. Second, between cigarettes, cigars, and pipes, pipes are the least harmful of the three. Third, it’s relaxing watching the smoke curl up slowly and thickly. Kind of Zen. Fourth, smoking a pipe is like joining a cult, or so my wife says, and she’s right.
Not many people smoke pipes anymore, so you tend to stand out from others. It requires more doodads than a cigarette or a cigar. There’s the tamper, wind cap, special lighters, cork knockers (don’t go there), tobacco pouches, pipe cleaners, pipe sweetener, stands, jars for your tobacco, reamers and more stuff than I can remember at the moment. To make up for this investment, tobacco is much cheaper than either cigarettes or cigars.
Tobaccos vary as much as wines do. Instead of red or white, there’s aromatic or non-aromatic. I’m smoking a very nice aromatic Cavendish at the moment. It tastes nice, and it smells nice too. I know I had the smell right, when people started coming up to me, telling me how nice it smells, and brought back fond memories of their grandfather or father smoking a pipe. There’s some serious nasty shit out there. I tried on type of tobacco and not only did it taste like smoking wood shavings, it smelled like it too. Blegh.
By the way, that remains my favorite pipe smoking experience. When someone comes up to you and tells you how much it reminds them of a grandfather or a father. Pipes tend to be used predominantly by men, although a few women smoke them as well. Very few.
‘Scuse me while I tamper my pipe. You use a tamper to push down on the tobacco so it remains burning and keeps the smoke cool. When I started using a pipe, I puffed like a steam train, I’d burn my tongue, and my bowls would get so hot they’d actually crack. I went through three or four pipes before I figured it out. You can’t burn a Meerschaum pipe easily, but they’re heavy. I did find a couple of briar pipes lined with Meerschaum, which look nice in the traditional wood pipe manner, but have the benefits of the Meerschaum. Meerschaum pipes seem to be a cult of their own. Being a smoker and less of a collector, I’m not really into Meerschaum. Oh, that big pipe of Sherlock Holmes is a gourd lined with Meerschaum. It’s a special type of pipe, but I don’t remember the name at the moment.
Speaking of collecting pipes, it’s hard to use just one. You tend to collect them and rotate them. I’m currently rotating four pipes. I have more, but one turned out to be really cheaper than it initially looked, another a Meerschaum which, like I said, was too heavy. There’s a Doctor-somebody or another, that’s smaller but is designed for a filter, and why buy filters? Finally, I have a very small Meerschaum, but it looks like it’d be used for crack or pot, so it’s kind of embarrassing. Bought it on a whim.
I’ll end this with lighters. You could use a standard lighter, but you have to hold them upside down, which isn’t too safe. I have a pipe inset for my Zippo, which you hold sideways. I also have a Sportsman’s Plug, which is a sort of tube, that you pull apart, which lights the wick. Then you hold it directly over the bowl. Finally, I also use matches. There’s a lot of pipe purists that have issues with one kind of lighter or another, and it’s initial effect of the taste, but hey, you have butane, sulphur, or whatever goes into a Zippo. I seem to be forgetting a lot of stuff tonight. Anyway, they all have a taste that affects the initial puffs.
So if you’re thinking about starting smoking a pipe, choose a $20-30 pipe. Odds are you’ll ruin it, but you won’t be ought of $50-whatever price you’d pay for a finer pipe that you’d still probably ruin. Get good tobacco. I get mine from outwesttobacco.com, and smoke BCA at the moment. That cheap crap in the drugstores taste just like that: crap. You don’t have to buy a tamper right away. You can use a nail turned upside down. Pack the tobacco so the pipe draws like you were sucking a semi-melted shake up a straw. Pack about three pinches or parts of a bowl. Pack the first loose, the second a little harder, and squish down on the third. Smoke slow. Don’t overclean you pipe with a reamer. Let it build up a “cake” about the thickness of a dime before reaming it a little. The “cake” makes the smoke more mellow. Once you get it mastered, you’ll end up buying a few pipes. A friend of mine bought a $300 pipe. That’s just nuts. It smokes the same as a $20 pipe, if you can find a good one. Oh, and consider a dead man’s pipe down the line. You can get great, fancy pipes for much cheaper than new pipes. Check out deadmanspipes.com to see what I’m talking about.
Well, that’s my pipes blather. I hope you enjoyed it.