Meer question.

[flytyer]

Ive heard not to smoke a meershcaum in cold weather to avoid cracking it , I was just wondering how cold is too cold? My first meer is on the way , and all my smokeing is done in the garage so was hopeing to get some input on this. Thanks.

 

[Kyle Weiss]

I brought up this question about my first meer recently, and from what I gathered there's a variable "comfort zone," folks have when it comes to the question of "how cold is too cold?"

Some alluded to the fact it is the simple shock and temperature difference that does it; others seemed to focus on the "above freezing," notion due to the moisture content. Others still have a better-safe-than-sorry mantra, which suggests not going out when it's cold at all (but then again, never said what temperatures).

My conclusion: I'm going to smoke it above 50°F temperatures. I have plenty of other pipes than to risk it.

 

[monbla256]

Ive heard not to smoke a meershcaum in cold weather to avoid cracking it , I was just wondering how cold is too cold? My first meer is on the way , and all my smokeing is done in the garage so was hopeing to get some input on this. Thanks.

How cold does your garage get? Are you able to maintain the SAME temperature in it as you do inside your house? If not I would NOT smoke it in the garage in the winter, save it for more temperate times or surroundings. I've three meers that I have NEVER smoked outside unless it was ABOVE 68 degrees saving them for those "easy chair" moments in the house

 

[Rusty]

I think the fear that the meer will suffer from thermal shock and crack or explode is nonsense. Meer would never have become a good material for pipes if that were true. The proliferation of briar for pipes started in about 1850. Before that meerschaum and clay were king. There was certainly exploration into cold regions preceding that and the explorers certainly had meerschaum and clay pipes.

But let's look at the fear.

The idea is that the gradient in temp across the chamber material can be so high that the material breaks up due to thermal shock and that the ambient temp plays a significant part in this.
The temp in the ember of the burning tobacco in a pipe is approx 500 C. The outside of the meer is warm to the touch, certainly warmer than a human body, but that suggests there is a gradient over at most a couple cm. of something on order of 450C. Ambient temp doesn't substantially change this. When we go from house at 20C (68 F) outside in winter to 0C (32F) or even colder it adds a small amount, say, 20 C which is very little to the gradient that is an order of magnitude larger anyway. Plus the bowl surface is still warm to the touch. It's not as if we immerse the pipe in ice cold water. So the range of ambient temps we experience doesn't matter very much.

If they were sensitive to thermal shock they would break the first time we lit them no matter what the ambient temp. I was browsing the web to see if more info about meerschaum's thermal shock resistance could be found. Meerschaum is a sepiolite and interestingly there were many refs to the same patent that suggested adding sepiolite to clay for firing because of sepiolite's good thermal shock resistance capabilities. Shouldn't surprise meerschaum pipe smokers.

I live in Canada and I've smoked my meer pipes outside at temps well below 0 C. No cracks and I still have them all. You guys forget that there are young canuck newbs on the forum that most likely smoke outside so you're scaring them off of meerschaums. But... out of camaraderie for the brother hood I must warn those of you that smoke in very hot weather (I have no experience). It is fraught with danger. Say, you step outside your heavily AC'd 65F DFW house for a few seconds into 105F heat, maybe to get to your car. The risk is extreme because apparently micro Black Holes form right on the surface of your meer and they drag your pipe and you down into the abyss of a singularity, from which there is no escape. I'll leave the tensor mechanics to the reader as an exercise. 8)

Do you want to know about the perils of cake with meer pipes? Or can you guess the answer?

Relax and enjoy your pipes. They're much more robust than you think. They've been through a couple of hundred years of testing in just about every condition on the planet - all for your pleasure.
Don't drop a nice Turkish meer though. Impact shock is far worse. That one is no myth - it's real.

BTW there is an est. of the temp of the ember inside your pipe here:
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/16/6/490

The secret lies with Charlotte...

 

[williamcharles]

I think the fear that the meer will suffer from thermal shock and crack or explode is nonsense. Meer would never have become a good material for pipes if that were true.

One winter evening a pal was sitting just inside the door of a cabin smoking his meer. Another pal opened the door but didn't step inside immediately. That cold wind was nasty and my pal and his meer were in its direct path. Two of the guys closest to him heard a sharp cracking sound. That meer had split down the side of the bowl when that cold air hit it. Once you've seen it happen.......it makes you wonder what is nonsense and what isn't.

Smoking a meer as hot as he liked to smoke is nonsense. Smoking any pipe that hot is nonsense but that's the way he liked it. He liked his tobacco dry and his smokes hot. Meers and clays. He wouldn't have a briar if it were offered free of charge.

Believe what you will, but from that day on I chose to smoke my meers where it's warm and away from sudden extremely cold drafts OR I smoke my meers outside in the winter if I'm going to be staying outside and have never had a problem. I've never smoked a meer in Canada but I have in Alaska and the meer survived.

Gradual temperature changes don't appear to be the problem. From cold to warm or vice versa is ok as long as the change is gradual. You can cook in a clay pot. Dunk that hot clay pot in a pool of cool (doesn't have to be cold water) water and watch what happens to it. I've seen that happen too.

Smoke your meers and enjoy them. Just avoid sudden, extreme temperature changes and your pipe should be just fine.

 

[Rusty]

I think the fear that the meer will suffer from thermal shock and crack or explode is nonsense. Meer would never have become a good material for pipes if that were true.

One winter evening a pal was sitting just inside the door of a cabin smoking his meer. Another pal opened the door and didn't step inside immediately. That cold wind was nasty. We all heard a sharp cracking sound. That meer had split down the side of the bowl when that cold air hit it. Believe what you will but from that day on I chose to smoke my meers where it's warm and away from sudden extremely cold drafts and will continue to do so. Smoking a meer as hot as he liked to smoke is nonsense. Smoking any pipe that hot is nonsense. Sudden cold will crack a hot meer. Once you've seen it happen.......it makes you wonder what is nonsense and what isn't. Like I said, believe what you will.

I smoke my meers outside in the winter if I'm going to stay outside. Gradual temp changes don't appear to be the problem. From cold to warm or vice versa is ok as long as it's a slow change.

How cold was it outside? The temp gradient across the bowl wall is likely much larger than any change in temp that can be applied by us. Staying out doesn't make a lot of difference. The biggest change the pipe experiences is when we first light it. So I think none of this holds water.

How do you know it wasn't coincidence?

 

[williamcharles]

I think the fear that the meer will suffer from thermal shock and crack or explode is nonsense. Meer would never have become a good material for pipes if that were true.

One winter evening a pal was sitting just inside the door of a cabin smoking his meer. Another pal opened the door and didn't step inside immediately. That cold wind was nasty. We all heard a sharp cracking sound. That meer had split down the side of the bowl when that cold air hit it. Believe what you will but from that day on I chose to smoke my meers where it's warm and away from sudden extremely cold drafts and will continue to do so. Smoking a meer as hot as he liked to smoke is nonsense. Smoking any pipe that hot is nonsense. Sudden cold will crack a hot meer. Once you've seen it happen.......it makes you wonder what is nonsense and what isn't. Like I said, believe what you will.

I smoke my meers outside in the winter if I'm going to stay outside. Gradual temp changes don't appear to be the problem. From cold to warm or vice versa is ok as long as it's a slow change.

How cold was it outside? The temp gradient across the bowl wall is likely much larger than any change in temp that can be applied by us. Staying out doesn't make a lot of difference. The biggest change the pipe experiences is when we first light it. So I think none of this holds water.

How do you know it wasn't coincidence?

I don't know how cold it was outside. No one expected that pipe to crack so no one ran outside to take the temperature or to calculate the wind velocity or wind chill before that guy opened the door and let that wind into the cabin. Hells fire and damnation!! We didn't even take the temperature of that pipe bowl! Good grief, but we were irresponsible!

How utterly careless of us! Of me especially. Gosh Rusty, if I known that someday I'd run into some self styled expert who has to resort to calling a stranger a liar in order to support his own bullshit theories I may have done that. However, I seriously doubt that I would have. I had other things to do.

The dogs had dug into the snow, their whitefish was frozen and exposed flesh was freezing almost immediately. It was cold.

As things stand I'll go with the reality of what happened. You go with your theories. We'll both be happy.

I don't need your permission or blessing to guard my meers against sudden, extreme temperature changes.
AHHHHH! Ain't life grand?

 

[Bowtie]

I think the fear that the meer will suffer from thermal shock and crack or explode is nonsense. Meer would never have become a good material for pipes if that were true. The proliferation of briar for pipes started in about 1850. Before that meerschaum and clay were king. There was certainly exploration into cold regions preceding that and the explorers certainly had meerschaum and clay pipes.

But let's look at the fear.

The idea is that the gradient in temp across the chamber material can be so high that the material breaks up due to thermal shock and that the ambient temp plays a significant part in this.
The temp in the ember of the burning tobacco in a pipe is approx 500 C. The outside of the meer is warm to the touch, certainly warmer than a human body, but that suggests there is a gradient over at most a couple cm. of something on order of 450C. Ambient temp doesn't substantially change this. When we go from house at 20C (68 F) outside in winter to 0C (32F) or even colder it adds a small amount, say, 20 C which is very little to the gradient that is an order of magnitude larger anyway. Plus the bowl surface is still warm to the touch. It's not as if we immerse the pipe in ice cold water. So the range of ambient temps we experience doesn't matter very much.

If they were sensitive to thermal shock they would break the first time we lit them no matter what the ambient temp. I was browsing the web to see if more info about meerschaum's thermal shock resistance could be found. Meerschaum is a sepiolite and interestingly there were many refs to the same patent that suggested adding sepiolite to clay for firing because of sepiolite's good thermal shock resistance capabilities. Shouldn't surprise meerschaum pipe smokers.

I live in Canada and I've smoked my meer pipes outside at temps well below 0 C. No cracks and I still have them all. You guys forget that there are young canuck newbs on the forum that most likely smoke outside so you're scaring them off of meerschaums. But... out of camaraderie for the brother hood I must warn those of you that smoke in very hot weather (I have no experience). It is fraught with danger. Say, you step outside your heavily AC'd 65F DFW house for a few seconds into 105F heat, maybe to get to your car. The risk is extreme because apparently micro Black Holes form right on the surface of your meer and they drag your pipe and you down into the abyss of a singularity, from which there is no escape. I'll leave the tensor mechanics to the reader as an exercise. 8)

Do you want to know about the perils of cake with meer pipes? Or can you guess the answer?

Relax and enjoy your pipes. They're much more robust than you think. They've been through a couple of hundred years of testing in just about every condition on the planet - all for your pleasure.
Don't drop a nice Turkish meer though. Impact shock is far worse. That one is no myth - it's real.

BTW there is an est. of the temp of the ember inside your pipe here:
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/16/6/490

The secret lies with Charlotte...

Your logic is sound. I think that it is a myth. This should be submitted to Mythbusters for the real test.

Jeff..

 

[mark]

Any of you guys put olive oil on the stem of your vulcanite stemmed meerschaums to eliminate oxidation?

Sorry guys, I felt the need to stir the pot a bit.,,,, :evil:


Look, there's no cheap way to test this idea,,,I'm not even sure you CAN obtain reliable results because you're dealing with an imperfect material. Too many variables.

 

[Kyle Weiss]

Sounds like a BoB version of "Mythbusters," needs to finalize this drama. 8)

 

[Richard Burley]

Nevertheless, to paraphrase Galileo, the meerschaum cracked--unless williamcharles is an outright liar, which I don't think is the case. The only thing I've taken from this discussion is not to smoke your meerschaum rectally, unless that's your thing, in which case, do it.

 

[Kyle Weiss]

Nevertheless, to paraphrase Galileo, the meerschaum cracked--unless williamcharles is an outright liar, which I don't think is the case. The only thing I've taken from this discussion is not to smoke your meerschaum rectally, unless that's your thing, in which case, do it.

If I see one video posted here of a guy sitting on a pipe and blowing smoke out of his mouth, I'm quitting pipe smoking. That'll just about signal the end for me. :lol:

8)

 

[Richard Burley]

Don't give anyone ideas--especially here. :lol:

 

[Kyle Weiss]

I'm going to add various elements to this to either support or denounce any facts that have been brought up so far, by bringing up things that haven't been brought up:

Sepiolite (meerschaum) has a specific density, porosity and possibly even flexibility, as do all materials. Things considered when discussing thermal shock. For you egg-heads that know how to use this information:

http://www.mindat.org/min-3621.html

With that in mind, we could compare it to other materials of a similar nature and make assumptions.

There's one problem with it: there is no distinction between block meerschaum (a naturally-forming product) and simple "sepiolite," which could be or could not be processed, details be damned.

Since what we're likely discussing here is the "natural" form of this material, carved from a mined product that started out as a nodule in the ground, what needs to be considered is, this "natural formation" process is NOT perfect. Like briar, I suspect there's hidden defects and flaws in meerschaum that just might add a considerable amount of variable(s) to this whole "cracking in the cold" debate, which is bordering on nonsense in and of itself. The quality of the carving, place from where it was mined and the care that was taken in all aspects from the pipe's humble beginnings in the earth to being sparked up while in one's hand all come into play.

Chuck isn't a liar, he very well likely did experience with his friends the actual cracking of a meerschaum due to cold. I 100% believe him

Meerschaum might also be just dandy at dealing with the cold, too. I 100% believe this, too.

Therefore, everyone might actually be quite correct.

* Your favorite meerschaum pipe, in particular, may not hold up to cold as well as another--are you going to risk it?

* Your favorite meerschaum pipe may be free of any major natural defects and may as well be smoked perfectly in the dead of a winter night in either the North or South Poles. Are you going to deny yourself a smoke in that case?

No one is exactly wrong, it's just a matter that no one is exactly right either.

This session of common sense has been brought to you by the Third-Party of Sensible, Uneducated Dropouts.

As you were.

(...and I'd still love to get a test going, which should be easy to perform, if someone's willing to sacrifice a few meers in the process...)

8)

 

[Zeno Marx]

a man in need of a borosilicate glass and meerschaum hybrid. funny stuff.

 

[mark]

Any of you guys put olive oil on the stem of your vulcanite stemmed meerschaums to eliminate oxidation?

Sorry guys, I felt the need to stir the pot a bit.,,,, :evil:


Look, there's no cheap way to test this idea,,,I'm not even sure you CAN obtain reliable results because you're dealing with an imperfect material. Too many variables to be considered.

The only thing I take outside is a cob,,,end of problem.


Although I have been looking at pyrolytic graphite as a pipe material,,,,basically pure cake (carbon) without fissures or faults and high temp tolerant as a replacement for meerschaum. I don't want to do a highjacking here, just thought I'd throw that out for discussion.

 

[Kyle Weiss]

Mark, I hear olive oil goes great on "The PIPE" and "The SMOKE"-- I don't think those crack in cold weather, either.

 

[monbla256]

Mark, I hear olive oil goes great on "The PIPE" and "The SMOKE"-- I don't think those crack in cold weather, either.

Works best as a "topping" for the tobacco. Gives it an "all natural. organic" taste and aroma. The only bad part is you have to wear Birkrnstocks with white socks when you smoke it

 

[Stackle2]

Its been quite cold here in KY lately. I was gifted 2 neer meer's in the last week (uploading pics as we speak), & I too had heard to avoid smoking in cold temps due to the risk of cracking from temperature fluctuations & uneven expansion of the porus meerschaum.

Well, having imbibed maybe just a bit too much one night, I decided to smoke, & seeing as we were at a non smoking friends house, I smoked outside. There were no ill effects such as cracking or anything, but the cold weather/humidity did make it a rather damp bowl.

 

[williamcharles]

As I have already stated I smoke my meers outside in winter too. I avoid sudden extreme temperature changes. Subjecting a HOT meer to SUDDEN EXTREME COLD is the problem. I believe it because I saw it happen. As all of you know, you are free to believe what you will believe. I've stated that before too. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind about anything. I meerly (pun not intended) stated what I saw happen to a meer.