This past Saturday I took out my home pipes (as opposed to my office pipes, which tend to be of a higher quality) and gave them a good cleaning/sweetening. I'm not very good at cleaning regularly besides running a pipe cleaner through the pipe before I smoke, and occasionally afterwards.
One of the pipes I ended up giving its first thorough cleaning to (it's been unsmoked since I received it with several other pipes) was an old Kirsten, which you can see below. I ended up having to use pliers to pull everything apart.
Falcons and Kirstens always make me feel as if I were smoking something illegal. And this particular Kirsten whistled. Oh, well...
One of the pipes I ended up giving its first thorough cleaning to (it's been unsmoked since I received it with several other pipes) was an old Kirsten, which you can see below. I ended up having to use pliers to pull everything apart.
Falcons and Kirstens always make me feel as if I were smoking something illegal. And this particular Kirsten whistled. Oh, well...
I don't clean often. I hold no delusion that my pipes will last forever (and I'm not certain that I would want them too). I get serious about it perhaps three times a year. Take everything apart, rub it down with alcohol and put it back together. It's fun sometimes, but I can't bring myself to be fastidious about it. Actually there is very little that I can bring myself to be fastidious about!
ReplyDeleteI only smoked my pipes for a short while. When I did though, I really smoked them. Going through a rotation of perhaps 15 in a day, maybe two days. There would always be smoke breaks between classes as my friend and I would sit in one of our cars.
ReplyDeleteI have only used a reamer once, because of my mainstays was a MM corncob. I smoked that thing to death, reamed it once, and then ended up burning out the bottom. Typically I would run a pipe cleaner through it after I smoke. Sometimes I would smoke back to back bowls, but never having much of a "technique" down, I would occasionally notice troubles with the smoke. Then perhaps once a month, right after a smoke I would run a bristled pipe cleaner. I can't say I ever used the sweetener other than when I first bought it. I would typically let the pipes sit out in the sunshine for an afternoon and that would be all the sweetening necessary.
The only pipe I was crazy about cleaning was my meerschaum, but because of the cleaning, I did not smoke it very often.