Cake Maintenance Method?

[whiderwarde]

I'm a fairly new pipe smoker and some of my ideas/methods have been real bummers, but this one seems to be working so far, tell me what you all think:

My first "real" pipe, the one to which I gave the cake any attention at all, came out very lumpy and I ended up chipping certain parts out (trying new things with the cake and all) because little flecks of tobacco and ash stuck out from the inside of the bowl. I've since patched those cake-holes up with ash-and-spit cement, which came out nice.

However, to prevent such a thing happening with my better pipes, now after every bowl, I empty out the ash, then loosely fold a pipe cleaner in half so it makes a springy sort of loop about the size of the bowl width. I gently push the loop into the bowl and bounce it up and down while turning it, so it rubs around the entirety of the inside of the bowl. This swabs out all the fine loose ash and tobacco and leaves behind only the dark carbon left behind by combustion...I think. That's the theory anyway. So far, the cakes of my two other pipes have been looking nice and clean and smooth.

Anyone else do this after smoking? What do you all think of the method? Is it sound or silly?

 

[flytyer]

I dont know if its the ''right'' thing to do....but i do the same thing you do after every smoke.

 

[innovador]

Whiderwarde, I do exactly the same thing you do with your cleaner after each smoke. But I think you would have to use a reamer after a few months anyway. Actually the building of the cake is the hardest part of learning to smoke pipes. At least that was for me. I really started to enjoy smoking pipes after buying some state pipes at ebay that had the cake well maintaned for some others more acquainted pipe smokers.

 

[Jack Straw]

I do basically the same thing. First I lightly scrape the walls with a pipe tool, then I swab the bowl out with a pipe cleaner just folded in half rather than looped.

 

[Natch]

Once I have the first cake built up (a dozen or smokes with a light smear of honey between the first few) I clean my bowl with a napkin or paper towel. I "spin" it into a spike, push it in rather tightly into the bowl, and twist it a dozen or so times in each direction. It slows additional cake buildup so depending how often I smoke that pipe, I don't have to ream that often. Once the first, good cake is set, I believe there are many options to keep it at the desired thickness, and probably no single "correct" way?

Natch

 

[Diesel]

I do the same and it works well for me!