Pipe 101

How to Break in Your New Pipe:

• Begin by wetting your pipe bowl with a mixture of water and honey.
• Fill your bowl with either a full or partial load of tobacco.
• We at Tinderbox.com recommend a full load of tobacco. This will eliminate the possibility of scorching the inside of the new bowl with a lighter or match.
• Important – smoke the tobacco all the way to the bottom.
• SMOKE SLOWLY.
• Tamp and relight as often as necessary.
• If your pipe gets too hot, let it rest awhile. Tamp the ash and relight.
• You can test if the pipe is too hot by placing it against your cheek – be careful.
• A carbon cake in the heel (bottom) of your pipe is the desired goal.
• The carbon cake will act like a grate in a fireplace to improve the draft and insure complete combustion.

Common Pipe Problem – Tongue Bite:

• Tongue Bite is caused by one or more of the following issues:
  • Improper cake, or no cake in the heel, causes a briar pipe to “smoke hot”.  Hot smoke causes tongue bite.
  • A poor-quality, uncured varnished and/or painted pipe. A poor filter system will trap bitter fluids in the shank of the pipe.
  • The tobacco is too tightly packed in the heel. This leaves no air pockets for good combustion.
  • Low quality, commercially packaged tobaccos containing preservatives and other artificial ingredients. Artificial flavoring agents congeal in your pipe, leaving a damp mass in the heel.
  • Not tamping evenly or often enough.
  • Smoking or puffing your pipe too fast. Cigarette smokers tend to smoke quickly when initially switching to a pipe.