LOL All this time I was going by a picture of the pipe I bought and thought the Dental stem needed replaced, got it today and it just has crap on the sides where I thought it had long cracks on both sides of the mouth piece, the thing is fine, just have to clean it up! Anyone ever clean a pipe using a Sonic cleaner? I would think it would be OK for a Falcon pipe as long as you didn't put the bowl in there??
I know we had this topic somewhere before, maybe even in here BUT who uses Isopropyl Alcohol if they don't have any 190 or other drinking alcohol? I know they use it in cleaners you buy from stores, they add salt to it and call it pipe cleaner and say it is the best on the market. lol
@PappyJoe and who ever else might have a suggestion.....I have two bowls off of two Falcon pipes that have VERY BAD odors, I tried alcohol, I tried Rum, I tried Distilled Water I even tried Coffee grounds over night and they still have a stench I don't like! One smells a cross between sweet flowers and cow shit! The other has a harsh burnt meat and burnt tree bark smell to it! I think the pipe stems and mouth pieces are OK but if I put the bowls back on them they start to stink again! I left the bowls off this time and darn it the stems are smelling again.....what can I do?! I hate to soak the bowls in alcohol because of the wood and coating on outside of bowls, I have reamed the crap out of the bowls so this odor is in the wood, the stems I think I will soak for a day or two in alcohol but the bowl???? Should I just soak them as well and re-coat the darn things or will that even help? I really don't want to have to buy 2 new bowls and what if the stems cant be cleared of that smell? Pipe cleaners are coming out spotless on both stems and mouth pieces so not sure what the same heck is going on??
@PappyJoe funny you say that, I decided not to wait to long for an answer and pulled out my dremmel tool and put on the drum sander and then the coarse scrubbing wheel and went at it (Inside bowl only), then I heated up some honey and soaked them in it, most of smell is going away but still has a faint smell, I think what I am smelling now is on outside, might have to strip it down and stain it again and then wax it up real good. Has that rough cut in middle between smooth lower and smooth top on both bowls so can't sand the outside but sure can strip it down and start over, if that doesn't do it they will be on a rack for display only and I will have to buy 3 bowls instead of 1. Might bite the bullet and buy 6 bowls, 3 Briar and three Meerschaum or Meerschaum lined bowls.
For the life of me I just can't figure out what the heck the could have smoked in them to give them that odor?! One almost smells like death, just wonder if the guy died while smoking it and wasn't found for a week? Both came from estate sales..... The other I have NO CLUE.
OH and the Stems and mouth pieces are soaking in an alcohol and Charcoal Bath, going to let the soak for a day and them let then air dry, not even going to rinse them with water for several days. After the Bowls sit with honey on them for a day I will wipe the outside off put a fresh coat of honey inside the bowl and put Activated Charcoal in them, that should.....Should help....I hope!
OK One stem has no smell to it at all now, put them both in baking soda for a few hours and that did it for one of them, also had the bowls in baking soda over night, one is pleasant now but decided to take all smell from it so now I am pasting it up with baking soda and alcohol mixture. The other one is still in just a dry baking soda filled bag while the stem is airing out to see if that is good enough or if I need to make a mixture of baking soda, activated charcoal and alcohol to soak it in. The one bowl that is covered in the alcohol baking soda mixture is turning the mixture brown, I am sure the residue was not just inside the bowl so going to have to refinish both of the bowls now......
OK Best way to get bad smell out of pipe without trashing it.....drum roll......with this method you will have to put a new finish on it...kind of....but not always.....get some 180 proof rum, baking soda and activated Charcoal and mix it up in a dish (nothing you want to keep!) and let it soak for at least 12 hours. might leave a dark color to the pipe but looks OK, but afterwards you could sand it and put new stain on it and then wax it or coat it with olive oil. Warning will leave your dish with a BLACK stain! I also sanded the inside of bowl completely down to wood so this is an extreme odor cleaning. Sanded bowl to wood, scrubbed bowl with old tooth brush and still had an odor that is why the extreme mixture and soak. As for the stem and mouth piece I left them in alcohol and Baking soda and that did the trick on them but again they are metal.... The bowl (wood) had the odor on inside and outside and would not come off with just alcohol and baking soda but refused to give up on it. lol
Might just make a video on this extreme cleaning since the best cleaning video I could find was called Deep cleaning and it was a basic after smoke cleaning....so sad....
Now to clean up bowl, finish the out side, coat the inside with honey and charcoal, let it sit for a week and then burn it in and have it ready to enjoy some good Aromas.
@xDutchx lol No it isn't the tooth brush, the pipes and bowls stunk before I even got them out of the package they were in, both came from different places and a couple days apart. One smelled like cow crap and flowers and the other burnt meat and tree bark. Smell wouldn't come out for nothing even after I took it down to the bare wood. Soaked in my own solution and that seems to be helping. If I can get it to a very faint odor I will be OK to load it up and smoke it. I honestly wonder if they both came from where someone died.
@Wolf41035, it flabbergasts me sometimes, the abuse that some pipes have been subjected to. The one that makes me cringe the most I think, is where someone took a pocketknife or something similar and gouged out one side of the bowl, taking it out of round. Makes me wonder why they didn't ream the other 3 sides of the bowl, to match the first. I would hate to give them the task of trimming bushes!
@xDutchx oh that makes me cringe, I have had to use a knife to scrape a little crap off my bowl in the past but was very careful with it, I hated using a dremmel tool with a drum sanding bit in the bowl of these two pipes but reaming them was going no where, I was very careful to evenly sand it down! Got both Falcons smelling fresh and ready to smoke but going to let them rest from all the activity they have been through...lol....might fire one up later this week or over the weekend if weather permits. As for them people trimming bushes...um....NO! LMAO
@PappyJoe and everyone else....lol I got my Kirsten in the mail today, good clean pipe, no bad odor, not to dirty, bowl only had a very small amount of caking if you even want to say that, so little a wet Q-Tip cleaned it to wood without even applying pressure. Going to clean it up, polish it up and try it out next week! Already easier to clean than the Falcons! Them darn things had such an odor I thought I was going to have to throw them away! lol They are good now. Anyway I think I am going to like this Kirsten Pipe.
Kirsten came apart and cleaned up so nice! Going to let it sit until Sunday or Monday before I try it out. I got out my Falcon, yes one that had a bad odor and took everything I had to get it clean and not throw it in the garbage, I cleaned it up after days of work on it and let it rest a few days after I finally got it clean and no bad odor from it, took it out today and loaded it up, very nice smoking pipe! Glad I took the time to work on it, can't wait to try the other falcon.
OK, I've perused this thread looking for an answer to a burning (no pun intended) question I have. When we break in a pipe, we are actually charring a layer of the briar (or other wood if that is what the pipe is made of). Correct? The "cake" is not a deposit of oils, etc. from the tobacco, it is actually the burnt surface of the pipe wood. Or is it a combination of the two? I'm breaking in a new pipe, and definitely taste something other than the tobacco. I don't want to ruin the pipe, but don't mind minimal briar charring. This would be akin to burning the inside of a whiskey barrel, no? Thanks for your help in this matter.
@Wolf41035, I remember having the same interest a few years back, but if I remember correctly, they are pricey. It would be great to come across one at a yard sale.
@mfresa, IMO it's not necessary at all to char the briar, but it is definitely possible to do so if you smoke the pipe too fast. I have many pipes that obviously have been smoked, due to heat discoloration of the interior of the bowl, however I keep the cake to a minimum, and rarely ever have any pitting of the briar.
Sometimes though, briar can have soft spots that are not detectable by the carver. This is what can be a contributing factor in a burnout.
I have found that if my smoking cadence is too fast, the flavors become muted, so I will simply sit the pipe down and allow it to cool before I resume smoking. When I approach the process with a mentality of barely keeping the pipe lit, the possibility of a burnout is almost zero, and building cake thickness isn't a necessity in order to prevent burnouts.
I keep my pipe cake to no more than a Nickel's thickness and I start my pipe out with a coat of Honey thinned with Whiskey and a dusting of cigar ash. IMHO that makes them smoke sweeter.
@mfresa a lot of good advise for you and the part from Woodsman is a good idea that I even use, sometimes I use Honey and other times I use Maple syrup but instead of cigar or pipe ash I use activated Charcoal which you can buy in most stores that have vitamins and supplements, they come in capsules, you break them apart and pour the charcoal inside pipe after you coat it with honey or syrup, roll it around or shake it. Make sure you do this over newspaper or paper towels and cover both ends first! That charcoal is messy! Building a thin cake or pre-treating your pipe like this helps from burning the wood, I pre treat and also leave thin cake after smoking it in a couple times, it works great. I would say the cigar or pipe ash would work I just didn't want that ash instead of charcoal. As also said if you smoke slow and cool you should be OK, it is your preference. I pre-treat because I buy estate pipes and completely ream them out and clean the pipe completely, when you do that you basically have a new pipe!
@xDutchx yes but the cost is going down and I am sure it will keep going down, I am saving up to buy both and a few types of alcohol so I can keep all my pipes in great shape that and I have been picking up a lot of estate pipes.
@Wolf41035 -- In truth, there are many such videos out there, some by really well informed individuals. I'm sure yours would be excellent, but coals to Newcastle, ya know.
@motie2 I have yet to find an extreme cleaning video that is for very dirty and pipes with bad odors, I looked like crazy and most the videos were of basic cleaning, some more thorough than others but all basic cleaning, nothing about cleaning built up scum and residue and how to ream your bowl or sand it down to wood again, nothing on pre-coating the inside of the bowl, nothing about getting odors out of the stem or wood of the bowl. If I do a video it will be extreme cleaning for estate or pipes that were not cleaned, left in a box and forgot about. I would hope if I did one like that people would appreciate it and maybe learn something????
Comments
Anyone ever clean a pipe using a Sonic cleaner? I would think it would be OK for a Falcon pipe as long as you didn't put the bowl in there??
One smells a cross between sweet flowers and cow shit! The other has a harsh burnt meat and burnt tree bark smell to it! I think the pipe stems and mouth pieces are OK but if I put the bowls back on them they start to stink again! I left the bowls off this time and darn it the stems are smelling again.....what can I do?! I hate to soak the bowls in alcohol because of the wood and coating on outside of bowls, I have reamed the crap out of the bowls so this odor is in the wood, the stems I think I will soak for a day or two in alcohol but the bowl???? Should I just soak them as well and re-coat the darn things or will that even help? I really don't want to have to buy 2 new bowls and what if the stems cant be cleared of that smell? Pipe cleaners are coming out spotless on both stems and mouth pieces so not sure what the same heck is going on??
H E L P !
For the life of me I just can't figure out what the heck the could have smoked in them to give them that odor?! One almost smells like death, just wonder if the guy died while smoking it and wasn't found for a week? Both came from estate sales..... The other I have NO CLUE.
After the Bowls sit with honey on them for a day I will wipe the outside off put a fresh coat of honey inside the bowl and put Activated Charcoal in them, that should.....Should help....I hope!
The one bowl that is covered in the alcohol baking soda mixture is turning the mixture brown, I am sure the residue was not just inside the bowl so going to have to refinish both of the bowls now......
I also sanded the inside of bowl completely down to wood so this is an extreme odor cleaning. Sanded bowl to wood, scrubbed bowl with old tooth brush and still had an odor that is why the extreme mixture and soak.
As for the stem and mouth piece I left them in alcohol and Baking soda and that did the trick on them but again they are metal.... The bowl (wood) had the odor on inside and outside and would not come off with just alcohol and baking soda but refused to give up on it. lol
Might just make a video on this extreme cleaning since the best cleaning video I could find was called Deep cleaning and it was a basic after smoke cleaning....so sad....
Now to clean up bowl, finish the out side, coat the inside with honey and charcoal, let it sit for a week and then burn it in and have it ready to enjoy some good Aromas.
I honestly wonder if they both came from where someone died.
As for them people trimming bushes...um....NO! LMAO
Anyway I think I am going to like this Kirsten Pipe.
I got out my Falcon, yes one that had a bad odor and took everything I had to get it clean and not throw it in the garbage, I cleaned it up after days of work on it and let it rest a few days after I finally got it clean and no bad odor from it, took it out today and loaded it up, very nice smoking pipe! Glad I took the time to work on it, can't wait to try the other falcon.
I'm breaking in a new pipe, and definitely taste something other than the tobacco. I don't want to ruin the pipe, but don't mind minimal briar charring.
This would be akin to burning the inside of a whiskey barrel, no?
Thanks for your help in this matter.
@Wolf41035, I remember having the same interest a few years back, but if I remember correctly, they are pricey. It would be great to come across one at a yard sale.
@mfresa, IMO it's not necessary at all to char the briar, but it is definitely possible to do so if you smoke the pipe too fast. I have many pipes that obviously have been smoked, due to heat discoloration of the interior of the bowl, however I keep the cake to a minimum, and rarely ever have any pitting of the briar.
Sometimes though, briar can have soft spots that are not detectable by the carver. This is what can be a contributing factor in a burnout.
I have found that if my smoking cadence is too fast, the flavors become muted, so I will simply sit the pipe down and allow it to cool before I resume smoking. When I approach the process with a mentality of barely keeping the pipe lit, the possibility of a burnout is almost zero, and building cake thickness isn't a necessity in order to prevent burnouts.
I keep my pipe cake to no more than a Nickel's thickness and I start my pipe out with a coat of Honey thinned with Whiskey and a dusting of cigar ash. IMHO that makes them smoke sweeter.
Building a thin cake or pre-treating your pipe like this helps from burning the wood, I pre treat and also leave thin cake after smoking it in a couple times, it works great. I would say the cigar or pipe ash would work I just didn't want that ash instead of charcoal.
As also said if you smoke slow and cool you should be OK, it is your preference. I pre-treat because I buy estate pipes and completely ream them out and clean the pipe completely, when you do that you basically have a new pipe!
I would hope if I did one like that people would appreciate it and maybe learn something????