Kyle Weiss
Well-known member
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2011
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I have a hard time building cake, usually due to the fact I have a neurotic need to keep my pipes meticulously clean. At first, before I knew, I took advice from my original "pipe instructor" Lloyd, after every smoke, to lightly ream the bowl out with some newspaper or a paper towel. I found no cake was being built, and the moist edges of the bowl were even being scoured to the point where it didn't affect the briar, but it was an "anti-cake" method with a new pipe, or worked only in pipes that had already had a normal cake built into it.
These days, my pipes rest for a day, and then I take them apart, swab them out with a only-slightly-damp pipe cleaner, and use a dry pipe cleaner to "dust out" the bowl. It's worked much better. However, the cake (especially in breaking in a new pipe) has been a bit too slow going for me.
I tried two things as a two-month long experiment (which has concluded):
Method 1: With a new pipe, don't mess with the bowl post-smoke, and simply "smoke in" the ash and very minor dottle after finishing. I would get out the big chunks by a ever-so light prodding with a pipe nail, dumping the ash, and blowing out the excess, but other than that, I left it alone (besides the rest/clean cycle described above). After a month of smoking, a chunky, uneven (but fast) cake would develop. Sometimes when gently scraping excess dottle, a larger piece from a smoke some time ago would simply carbonize and leave a big hole, resulting in this somewhat uneven (but effective) cake. The smoke was fine, but the crevices liked to fill with dottle, and occasional uneven burn happened mid-smoke.
Method 2: With a (different) new pipe, at the end of each smoke, I would take my pipe nail and scrape down the stuck pieces of dottle, then scoop up the ash and "paint" the sides of the bowl all the way to the top. I'd then blow out the contents that didn't stick. After a month of smoking and doing this, the cake was about half that of Method 1, but the sides were nicely managed, even, and a crystalline structure of cake was building. The smokes were as good as Method 1, but very little attention needed to be paid to reaming and evening of the cake in the bowl.
This "Method 2" worked well with pipes which I only wanted half a bowl, without developing a thicker cake at the bottom leaving the top without. I've continued on with this "scoop the ash up the walls of the bowl post-smoke" with other pipes now, and I'm finding a huge improvement in the "right" kind of cake I was hoping to build.
All of this was (and still is) based on theory, because in the long-term, I have no idea what will happen. I simply know I'm not the "smoke it and forget it" kind of fella, I care about my pipes (perhaps to dotingly) and think of this as a way to have the best of both worlds. Cleaning a pipe down to OEM surfaces seems just as extreme as those pipes that have cake built up so much you could barely put a pencil down the bowl.
Hopefully what I'm doing is building a faster "slow cake" of smaller ash particles rather than just a regular "fast cake" which comes from many layers of tobacco, ash, carbon and whatever else. It (so far) seems denser, tougher and easier to manage with Method 2.
Just thoughts, might as well fiddle around with things since I have the chance. :lol:
8)
These days, my pipes rest for a day, and then I take them apart, swab them out with a only-slightly-damp pipe cleaner, and use a dry pipe cleaner to "dust out" the bowl. It's worked much better. However, the cake (especially in breaking in a new pipe) has been a bit too slow going for me.
I tried two things as a two-month long experiment (which has concluded):
Method 1: With a new pipe, don't mess with the bowl post-smoke, and simply "smoke in" the ash and very minor dottle after finishing. I would get out the big chunks by a ever-so light prodding with a pipe nail, dumping the ash, and blowing out the excess, but other than that, I left it alone (besides the rest/clean cycle described above). After a month of smoking, a chunky, uneven (but fast) cake would develop. Sometimes when gently scraping excess dottle, a larger piece from a smoke some time ago would simply carbonize and leave a big hole, resulting in this somewhat uneven (but effective) cake. The smoke was fine, but the crevices liked to fill with dottle, and occasional uneven burn happened mid-smoke.
Method 2: With a (different) new pipe, at the end of each smoke, I would take my pipe nail and scrape down the stuck pieces of dottle, then scoop up the ash and "paint" the sides of the bowl all the way to the top. I'd then blow out the contents that didn't stick. After a month of smoking and doing this, the cake was about half that of Method 1, but the sides were nicely managed, even, and a crystalline structure of cake was building. The smokes were as good as Method 1, but very little attention needed to be paid to reaming and evening of the cake in the bowl.
This "Method 2" worked well with pipes which I only wanted half a bowl, without developing a thicker cake at the bottom leaving the top without. I've continued on with this "scoop the ash up the walls of the bowl post-smoke" with other pipes now, and I'm finding a huge improvement in the "right" kind of cake I was hoping to build.
All of this was (and still is) based on theory, because in the long-term, I have no idea what will happen. I simply know I'm not the "smoke it and forget it" kind of fella, I care about my pipes (perhaps to dotingly) and think of this as a way to have the best of both worlds. Cleaning a pipe down to OEM surfaces seems just as extreme as those pipes that have cake built up so much you could barely put a pencil down the bowl.
Hopefully what I'm doing is building a faster "slow cake" of smaller ash particles rather than just a regular "fast cake" which comes from many layers of tobacco, ash, carbon and whatever else. It (so far) seems denser, tougher and easier to manage with Method 2.
Just thoughts, might as well fiddle around with things since I have the chance. :lol:
8)