Confessions of a Pipe Seller

             Before you all get excited thinking that the pipe worlds trade “secrets” are about to be spelled out, sit back and relax.  This little missive is more along the lines of the old adage that the shoe maker’s children always have shoes with holes.

             Over the past few weeks I have been having some rather strange, or lack there of, pleasures from my pipes.  At first I thought it was just an off batch of my blend of choice, or possibly it was a tad dry, or maybe moist.  Maybe I have been puffing to hard. Could it be that as I am getting older my palette is changing?  I tried a few bowls of another blend I enjoy only to find it had left a sour after taste, which it had never done previously.  Understand that I have been smoking these blends in well smoked, very well broken in pipes.  I was at a total loss as to what was going on.  I had even started to question my dedication to continuing my pipe smoking.  I mean if it isn’t pleasurable why carry on?

             No I haven’t quit, nor shall I any time soon!

             This past week a good friend bought a pipe from me.  We exchanged emails about the pipe and he commented on it having a “sweet” taste as he smoked it.  Sweet here as in, smoked with aromatic tobaccos sweet.   I was taken aback.  The previous owner smokes ONLY straight Virginia tobaccos.  No aromatics. As we chatted it dawned on me that I have purchased a different alcohol for the internal cleaning of stems and shanks. As my nose has been plugged due to a cold and allergies I had not detected any aroma in the fluid.  He asked IF I might have wiped the bowl interior, which I had not as it not a practice used by me in cleaning pipes.

             In our next emails he related how the sweet essence was now gone and the second bowl was much better.  Due to this I am pretty sure I had figured out the culprit in the equation for the pipe.  To test out my theory I decided that since all the pipes for the site had been cleaned I should probably do some of mine.  So to the “pipe room” / “man cave” ( my sanctuary) I headed with 8 pipes in hand.  I began by removing the stem from each pipe and laying all my tools out for the job ahead.  First thing I noticed was the ends of the tenons were filthy with tobacco residue.  Each needed to be dipped and thoroughly scrubbed.  The air passages were equally as bad.  As I prefer a fairly wide open draw using a single pipe cleaner to clean an air passage is not adequate.  In most cases I twist 2 and sometimes 3 pipe cleaners together and these dipped in alcohol are used to really scrub the interior of the air passage.  I was stunned at all the crud I was removing. I used at least 3 bundles of 48 cleaners on the 8 pipes!  After scrubbing till the cleaners came out a light brown I started on the stems. Also here 2 cleaners twisted together are used to scrub the insides.  Single cleaners may pass through too loosely and not really get all the crap out.  

             When all the scrubbing ( including the mortises with Q-tips ) I lubricated each tenon and re inserted the stems.  A few minutes on the buffing wheels and before me I had 8 great looking pipes.  These I allowed to dry over night and chose one for my mid day pipe today.  I chose my normal blend of choice and low and behold it smoked great! No off taste. No sour after taste. However I did detect the slightest hint of sweetness, which should not have been in the blend. Not that the blend is not sweet, but this was a different hint of sweetness.  So indeed the different brand of alcohol cleaner has some essence which my previous liquid did not.  Not a big deal as it dissipates quickly, but I will revert back to my old brand.

             The HUGE lesson I learned through this is that I NEED to take better care of my pipes.  They have not been taken care of due to the number of pipes coming in to go to the site.  So like the shoe maker and his kids with holey shoes, the pipe seller has the least clean pipes.

             Regards

            Michael J. Glukler

          Oct 09, 2007