Hardness of Cake

mfresa

Just spent an hour scraping cake out of a pipe.  Didn't realize how hard the stuff is.  Like concrete hard.  Guess I'll be buying a reamer in the near future.  Don't want to repeat that experience.

PappyJoe

@mfresa - 

Stuff cotton balls into the bowl. Soak cotton with alcohol - it doesn't really matter if its 190 proof grain alcohol or the 91% Isopropyl from the drugstore. Let it set for about 8-hours.
Remove the cotton and rinse the bowl under running water, the cake should have softened enough for you to easily scrape it out. Once you finish scraping, wrap some sandpaper around your finger and rub it around the bowl to smooth out the remaining cake.

RockyMountainBriar

     It's interesting how different cake can be.  I have restored around 400 plus pipes so far, and there have been just a few (maybe 5-10) with super crazy rock hard cake.  I think they were all created with the same tobacco, as the smell was the same...all a bit sweet, a tobacco I would and maybe do enjoy?  As a guess, I think it is probably one of the Old Codger Blends, it is very distinctive.  So I am thinking Velvet, Sir Walter Raleigh, or Half and Half.  I have not taken the time to sit down and really figure it out.  To go one more step, I think I would guess Velvet.  Has anyone smoked enough Velvet in a single pipe to maybe verify my hypothesis if the cake that it forms is indeed a very tight pore rock solid cake?  I just have not smoked enough of it myself, but I do enjoy it.  If it did not have the Velvet "ghost" (it's not unpleasant to me anyway), I would think this would be the very best cake to have in a pipe.  It would be like having a porous ceramic lining in the bowl to protect it, just my $0.02....that should probably adjusted to $0.05 for inflation by now  
     The softest, dirtiest, most nasty cakes have all been Latakia.  Did I mention, I really dislike Latakia?  Especially as a pipe restorer everything about it is rank, yuck!  They tar a shank something awful too.  Kudo's to those that can smoke and enjoy Latakia   Maybe someday I will come around to the Dark Side of Latakia   But not today!
     Me, I use a reamer, to be more specific, several reamers depending on the pipe bowl shape and the cake formation.  I have 8-10 different style reamers, sandpaper included.  After reaming, if there is still nasty tar, I use 100+ proof bourbon and non-iodized salt to soak the bowl and shank.  I also use a retort with Everclear to clear the nastiness even more.  Normally I clean the chambers with bourbon and use Everclear in the shanks.  I don't like the "ghost" that Everclear, leaves in a pipe bowl, that is why I use bourbon.  I think Isopropyl would even be worse.  I have used @PappyJoe's method of damp coffee grounds to de-ghost pipes on occasion before I made my ozone chamber, coffee grounds work very well if an ozone source is not available. I know you might think I should not be able to tell the difference between Everclear, Isopropyl and Bourbon, but I have moderate "super taster" taste buds and great olfactory senses...sometimes it's a curse.  I smell and taste things that most people don't.

mfresa

@RockyMountainBriar , @PappyJoe , thanks for the advice.  I will give the soaking method a try next time.  By the way, the reamed pipe performs 10 times better!!