Archive for the ‘Pipe Smoking’ Category
This Is Not A Pipe Elbow
Saturday, April 12th, 2008Windcaps / Windscreens
Sunday, April 6th, 2008Windcaps, or windscreens as they’re sometimes known, are small cap-like devices for your pipe. They fit right over the bowl. They serve two primary purposes. If it’s windy, it keeps the embers from blowing out of your bowl and it slows down the airflow to the bowl, so your smoke doesn’t become very hot and burn fast.
There’s four kinds of windscreens, but you’ll probably only want to know about two of them. The most common type of windcap looks like the image to the right. A round spring holds two clips to the interior of the pipe.
This is another type of windcap. To be honest, I’ve never actually seen one of these in person, but it looks pretty similar. I’d guess that there is a spring that holds the two buttons tight against the interior of the bowl. It would provide the same function as the windcap above.
Butz-Choquin has a Rallye series of capped pipes. To be honest, I know nothing about this pipe other than it’s capped.
Finally, some meerschaums come with decorative caps. I don’t have a picture of one here, but the caps are usually attached to the pipe itself with a small chain.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, it rains enough to put out the tobacco in your pipe, so a regular pipe with a windcap like the first two I discussed here, is handy to keep the water out of your pipe if you smoke in the rain.
This is my windcap story: My wife and I walk the dogs along the beach at Dumas Bay in Washington state. Because it’s so breezy, I usually have to have a windcap or risk embers blown into my face. This is not a good thing. So I have one of those pipe windcaps with the round spring, like the first windcap described here. We go for a walk in January, and when I get home and fish my pipe and lighter out of my pocket, I realize I’ve lost the windcap.
Now, I’ll grant you I’m frugal. Okay, I’m tighter than paint on a wall, but I was upset I lost the windcap. It wasn’t much of a financial loss, about $3-$4, but still I don’t like losing things. With multiple head traumas in the past, I’m worried I’m going senile when I can’t find something. Digging through my pockets and tracking my steps through the driveway and house, I still couldn’t find it.
For the next week, every day I went for a walk on the beach, I’d look for it. It was ridiculous of course. The tides coming in and out would either bury or wash away anything that light. So I gave up on it, and went out and bought a new one.
One day my wife walked the dogs on the beach without me. It was late March, two months after I had lost the windcap. She said, “Guess what I found?” No way, the windcap had washed back onto shore, and as she was walking along, she saw a glint in the sand. She walked over and saw the edge of the windcap and pulled it out.
It was rusty from the saltwater, but it was my windcap alright. I was so amazed, I put away my replacement windcap, and took a sander to take off as much of the rust as I could. I’ve become ridiculously fond of the miracle windcap that I won’t part with it willingly.
Of course, I could always lose it again.
Tampers
Friday, March 21st, 2008Today we’re going to talk about tampers. A tamper is a pipe tool used to compress the tobacco as you smoke it. You do this to keep the tobacco burning, and to keep it burning cool. Without tamping, the tobacco may become too loose to continue burning, or the tobacco aerates enough to start burning hot, which makes for a hot smoke, and your pipe may crack from the heat. If you don’t think it’s possible, I ended up cracking three or four pipes when I first started smoking, and that gets expensive fast.
A tamper can be something as simple as a nail. In my case, it’s sometimes my pointing finger, which makes me walk around with smudges on my face. Nothing says “adult” like a face smudged with ashes. Fortunately, most of the time I do use a tamper. I get tired of my wife pointing out that my nose has a black smudge on it.
A tamper can be a tamper alone, or it can be part of a set of pipe tools. Usually your first tamper will be the three tool Czech gizmo. It has a poker, a tamper, and a small spoon. This remains my most used tool, as I can use the poker to loosen the tobacco if I’ve packed it too tight, the tamper to tamp of course, and the spoon thing to move around the tobacco in the bowl, like closer to the draw hole if necessary. I’m not sure what that spoon thing is actually meant to do, but that’s what I use it for.
Tampers can also be a collectible classy instrument, like high end pens. There are tampers made from exotic woods, pewter, formed steel; pretty much anything that can be made with a blunt end to tamp down the tobacco. These runs from the double digits, to hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. I’ll add here that the Czech tool runs about $3 depending on where you get it. Back to the fancy tampers…
You can find tampers by just Googling them. My favorite tampers are from Catnip Hill Trading Company. The drawback is that they are pewter and soft, and can be broken if not handled carefully. I got the 
Calvinist tamper as a humorous gift, and I ended up breaking the tamper. There’s no fixing it. Even if you melt the tamper pieces back together, it’s never as strong as the original. So these make good collectable tampers, unless you’re a careful person, or pick a thick tamper or short tamper unlikely to break. I told you I’m a klutz.
Again, I’ve been known to use anything at hand if I’ve misplaced my tamper, from my finger, bolts, the back end of pens, keys (they don’t work very well), multiple burnt matches, a thin lighter (not the smartest of things to do). I told you, I get desperate.
Sometimes I think I should make my own goofy tampers, out of wood or something metal. If you’ve made your own unusual tamper, I’d love to hear about them. It’d also be fun to hear about anything you’ve used as a tamper in desperation.
Pipe Stuff
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008I thought I’d tell you about some of my pipe stuff. When you start smoking a pipe, it seems pretty straightforward. You need a pipe and tobacco. Well, you have to light the thing, but you can’t use an ordinary lighter, unless you want to singe the hell out of your pipe. So you’re going to need matches or a special lighter. I have one pipe that absolutely demands matches, so I carry “strike anywhere” matches in a waterproof match container. For the rest of them…well, I have a Zippo I’ve been carrying around since 1983. I hated to shelve it, so I bought a pipe insert for it. It’s like a regular lighter insert, but instead of an open flame at the top, there’s a “cage” at the top, with holes in the side. To light a pipe, you turn the Zippo on it’s side. I could buy a specialty butane lighter, but I’m mentally challenged when it comes to filling up butane lighters. Don’t ask me why, I just can’t fill them properly.
Okay, that’s everything. A pipe, something to light it, and tobacco. A little more than you wanted to spend, but that’s alright. After smoking for a while, you find that the pipe stops drawing correctly, and starts smoking hot. Some research, and you discover you need a pipe tamper. There’s custom tampers that cost a fortune, so you settle on the Czech tamper that’s indispensable, and it seems like everyone who smokes a pipe has owned one at one time at or another.
So now you have your pipe, something to light it, tobacco, and a tamper. The tamper doesn’t cost much, maybe $3 or $4 bucks, but it’s a little more than you wanted to spend. That’s alright. Oh, wait, you need something to clean your pipe. Pipe cleaners. Yeah, that’s it. The wiry things you haven’t seen since you were in grade school art class, making little pipe cleaner men. They’re not much, but you’re going to need a lot of them.
Now you have your pipe, something to light it, tobacco, tamper, and a bunch of pipe cleaners. Not much more than you wanted to spend, but that’s alright. You notice your pipe starts tasting funny, so you get pipe sweetener. This is a disinfectant and cleaner you use with a pipe cleaner, to run through your pipe stem. Wow, that tastes much better, even thought it means you’re now using more pipe cleaners. Better get more.
Pipe, something to light it, tobacco, tamper, more pipe cleaners, and pipe sweetener. Okay, that’ll be it for a while. After a bit, you start thinking about a nicer way to store your tobacco than in the bag it came in. I buy bulk, so my tobacco comes in a plain plastic bag. So you decide to buy a tobacco jar. These are air-tight and tinted so direct light doesn’t affect the tobacco.
Pipe, something to light it, tobacco, tamper, pipe cleaners, pipe sweetener, and a tobacco jar. This stuff is starting to take up some room. Better clear off a corner of your desk to make room for it. Time goes by, and somehow, without you doing a single thing, another pipe mysteriously shows up. And another. And another. So now you need someplace to keep these pipes, so you buy a pipe rack.
Now you own pipes, something to light them, tobacco, tamper, pipe cleaners, pipe sweetener, a tobacco jar, and a pipe rack. This has become a lot more expensive than you originally thought. Not that you’re complaining, just a little surprised when you reflect on it.
More pipe stuff begins to show up. A tobacco shredder for when you go through a flake tobacco phase. Shank brushes. Pipe spray, briar wipe, wax, polishing cloths. More pipes. Another pipe rack. Another thing to light your pipes. Cork knockers. The cake inside becomes too thick, so you get a reamer. You start custom making pipe stuff. Salt and alcohol, use to leach tar and tobacco out of your pipes. A sawed off toothbrush to scrub out your meerschaums. Better clean out a shelf to store all this stuff on. Q-tips, portable pipe stands. Wind cap. Somewhere to keep all the bags that your pipes came in.
Okay, so now you’ve spent hundreds of dollars on pipe stuff. Hey, at least pipe tobacco is cheaper than cigarettes. Another two or three years, and you’ll eventually offset your cost. Unless there’s more pipe stuff to buy.
My Pipe Is In!
Friday, November 16th, 2007My new meerschaum skull pipe came in. This thing is the size of my fist! I don’t think I’ll ever smoke it, but it’ll be on prominent display on Halloweens to come, I assure you.
Alas, poor Yorick!
