Smoking the Rotation

PappyJoe

Coming soon to a pipe forum near you....

I was sitting at my desk and looking at all the pipes I have hanging on the wall or sitting on shelves and realized it's been a long time since I've smoked some of them. 
Where some pipe smokers would rightly say, "It's time to thin the herd.", I've decided to take a different tack. Starting on Friday, Oct. 1, I am going to smoke every pipe I own (this will exclude the 18 clay pipes in my possession that were donated to the New Orleans Pipe Club as door prizes.) 

I have:
9 Meerschaums
5 Clays
5 Corn Cobs (Missouri Meerschaums)
1 Gourd Calabash
2 Pear Root
42 Briars.

I will start posting photos on Friday.

vtgrad2003

@PappyJoe
Are you going to smoke them in any particular order or just go with the 'mood' that day?

PappyJoe

@vtgrad2003

Yes.

Well, maybe a combination of the two. I'm probably going to intersperse the non-briar among the briar. 

vtgrad2003

@PappyJoe
Sounds like a plan! I'll be looking forward to seeing your collection (in action)!

Scottrw

    That is what I do,  I have them lined up on the wall and I work through them. I also have pipes on racks underneath That I smoke less often but my favorites are on my rotation shelf. I like them to rest, don’t know if that’s nonsense or not but that’s what I do. 

vtgrad2003

@Scottrw
Rest pipe good, using same pipe bad! 
Seriously though, my personal opinion is that once the resin (and/or cake) gets saturated with slobber/spit/condensation, the pipe simply doesn't smoke as well nor does it taste as good. Cobs are even worse as the cob itself can get soggy. I generally rotate out my cobs every couple of days, but may go 3 or 4 days with my briars. 

RockyMountainBriar

I have so many pipes I could open an estate pipe store, and I should.  

I could pick a pipe from the myriad of pipes I have and smoke a different one everyday for nearly two years.  There are some I return to, to work on building a nice cake.  I admit, I don’t smoke four bowls a day.  Heck, I’m doing good/bad? smoking four bowls a week.  Truthfully, I don’t want to smoke much more, and since I work full time (not retired and can’t smoke at work), I don’t have the time anyway.  I have been getting in a two hour bowl nearly every evening lately and have smoked the first bowls in several pipes I have had for “awhile”.  I’m looking forward to the day I have a pipe with an actual cake I created.  I have only been smoking for about nine years, still no significant cake in any pipe🙁, just too many pipes and not enough concentration and focus by me.

PappyJoe

@vtgrad2003

I am going to politely disagree with your "Rest pipe good, using same pipe bad!" theory in part because my grandfather smoked the same pipes repeatedly throughout the day. He had maybe four pipes and smoked all four everyday. I guess that might be resting the pipes though. Of course, he only smoked George Washington until the stopped making it. 

As for the cake getting saturated with slobber/spit/condensation, that's why the pipes I smoke all get a good cleaning at least once a month to keep them fresh. I've never had a cob get soggy but then again when they get "bad" I just throw them out and buy new ones. 

vtgrad2003

@PappyJoe
You are absolutely correct! My father never had more than a few pipes either, so your point is spot on. 

vtgrad2003

@PappyJoe @RockyMountainBriar
I guess that's probably where my comment comes in...I smoke probably 5 or 6 bowls a day and slobber like a stuck pig, LOL, so for me, rotation is really the only option to make sure they dry out properly.

PappyJoe

@vtgrad2003
I often think that the inventor of the "only smoke a pipe once and then let it rest for at least 24 hours" theory was a pipe shop owner looking to sell more pipes. Sort of like the jewelry stores that tell men they should spend the equivalent of three months salary on an engagement ring or you don't really love her.

RockyMountainBriar

I have no qualms smoking a pipe back to back to back, when I get the time.  Which mostly happens either when fishing or sitting around a fire somewhere with friends.

Balisong

I think it depends on the pipe, the type of tobacco, tobacco moisture, and, relative humidity. I find cobs dry out faster, tobacco with a lot of humectants leave a bowl moist for days and high humidity will make a perfectly dry bowl damp. I always feel the inside of the bowl before loading it up.

Scottrw

If I smoked 1 pipe it would be considered resting.  I usually only smoke 3 to four bowls a week in the evenings and occasionally on a Sunday morning. Yet I need a excuse for my sickness of buying pipes every time I step in my local tobacco shop. So I call it resting every time I buy another one the others get to rest a little more. 🤪

RockyMountainBriar

@Scottrw
Right there with ya buddy🙂

AnantaAndroscoggin

Just talked to our new mailman for the first time, and he commented on my Missouri Meerschaum t-shirt. He smokes his pipe when he's fishing, and knows about the reputed bug-repellent properties of English blends. He also likes the Backwoods cigars, apparently.

PappyJoe

@AnantaAndroscoggin
I smoked a lot of Backwoods during my active duty days when "deployed" for hurricanes or oil/chemical spill response. I knew one guy that bought Backwoods and then cut them up for chewing. 

PappyJoe

@Zouave
Decided to start a day early! 
After responding to @Zouave on another discussion, I chose this Bruyere Garantie pipe I found in an antique shop five or six years ago for $30.
Bruyere Garantie was stamped on a lot of French and German pipes in the 50s and 60s. The research I have done makes me think that the ones made in Germany were basically low cost pipes made for the tourist market and resembled the pipes popular in the Bavarian region before World War II. This particular model is what some call a "Hunter" but I've also seen ones with long cherrywood stems and a separate bowl called a Hunter.

vtgrad2003

You could fit a bus in that bowl! Nice pipe!

motie2

@PappyJoe

I understood that Hunter style pipes originally had porcelain bowls. Is that not so?

PappyJoe

@vtgrad2003
Nah. It's not that big. It only holds about two good pinches of tobacco. It lasted about 50 minutes before I dumped the ash.

@motie2
I've always seen the porcelain bowl pipes called Bavarian or Hungarian. Most of the pipes found with porcelain bowls were actually made for U.S. military personnel and tourists after WWII but the style may actually dates back to Hussars Light Calvary of the mid-15th century. There is conjecture that the long pipes were used by the cavalry so they could smoke a pipe without getting off their horse. The rider could just lean over and his servant could remove one bowl and replace it with another filled with tobacco and then light it. Some believe that these were the origin of churchwarden pipes also.

This article calls them "Traditional German Porcelain Pipes" https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/more-furniture-collectibles/collectibles-curiosities/tobacco-accessories/collection-13-traditional-german-porcelain-tobacco-pipes/id-f_16346742/#:~:text=A compositional long stem pipe having a porcelain,down to a small tube at the base.

Here's another informative article from the Southeastern Antiquing & Collecting magazine. http://www.go-star.com/antiquing/porcelain-pipes.htm

Reborn Pipes calls them Tyrolean pipes. https://rebornpipes.com/tag/german-tyrolean-pipe/

motie2

@PappyJoe

As always, thank you for sharing your knowledge. 

PappyJoe

Here’s pipe two. The bowl is briar, the stem is cherry. The bit is some type of plastic or vulcanite. The bowl is 7/8 inches wide and 1.75 inches deep. 

It’s loaded with the last of my HU Chinas Heaven. 

PappyJoe

@motie2
And just to confuse us more, one article on pipedia.org shows a photo of a similar pipe by Bru-Bru (a Swiss company that went out of business in the 1970s) called.....

A Swiss Style.

motie2

@PappyJoe

Curiously complex family of old world pipes…..

Zouave

So far I have heard of them being refered to as Jeager pipes, Tyrolean pipes, Austrian pipes and or German pipes. I think I'm seeing a theme here.

PappyJoe

I have a Friday with nothing to do and the weather is reasonably nice. We've already reached the forecast high of 84f and the humidity is 48% with a light breeze.
First up is not really a pipe in my rotation but a small clay I like to use for sampling. I opened a tine of KK Meistermischung Nr. 22. There's not a lot of information I can find on the blend, but it is a Danish aromatic of black cavendish and golden Virginias flavored with cherry. 

The first bowl was in a small Marken clay pipe.

PappyJoe

Second bowl of the morning. This is a Mr. Brog No. 21 Old Army made from Pear Wood. The shape is related to the one I smoked yesterday.



While a lot of pipe smokers tend to look down on pear wood pipes, Mr. Brog makes some nice one. The bowl doesn't get overly hot to hold and it's light weight enough for easy clenching. The reason I don't smoke it often is that I don't particularly like the thinner stems. 

PappyJoe

The next pipe in the rotation is also the oldest pipe in my collection and one I have only smoked one or two times. It is a silver-banded Salmon & Gluckstein pipe that has the hallmarks on the band dating to 1896. I found it collecting dust in an antique shop in Beaumont, Texas. I paid $35 for it. Salmon & Gluckstein was founded around 1860 In London. There were 140 locations in England when it was sold to Imperial Tobacco in 1915. 

I’m smoking some Poultry Winslow Nr. 1. 

PappyJoe

Pipe number four for the day. My Missouri Meerschaum Cobbit. Loaded with the Nr. 22 Cherry I opened this morning. 

pipeman83

I don’t have a rotation per se, I smoke whatever I want to that day, I smoke some more than others, I recently sold about 25 of them and used the money to buy more at the Columbus show.