I got a fancy corn cob looking pipe..I like the way it looked..
Everything taist bad out of it. There anyway you break the things in or..
Yes.
It's not a lot of fun at first but if you don't do it this way, you won't build up the carbon cake on the interior walls of the pipe that make it smoke cool with little or no bite. When you first start smoking the pipe fill it no more than 1/3 way fool (tamped down). Light it and smoke it until there is nothing left to re-light. Do that for at least a week presuming you smoke it each day. Then fill it about 2/3 of the way up for another week and smoke it until there is just ash in the bottom of the pipe. Finally, fill it up and smoke it all the way down for at least another week. This will give you the start of a carbon cake that covers all of the bowl and not just part of it. If you don't do this, when you get to the part without the carbon build-up on it, the pipe smoke will get very hot and "bitey" (is that a word?).
You may need to take these steps for two weeks at a time but if you do it, you will start to get a build up of carbon all the way down to the bottom of the bowl of your pipe. Do NOT ream out the pipe after smoking it. You can tap it out when done smoking it and even use your pipe cleaning tool to remove any remnants but do NOT scrape it or you will remove that carbon coating you are trying so hard to build-up.
***Warning*** when you tap a pipe to get any plug or remnants out of it, hold onto the back of the bowl. If you hold onto the stem and tap out your pipe a little too forcefully, you will break the stem -
ask me how I know...
After you have built that carbon cake up, try to be sure you don't just smoke it half-way repeatedly or you will get a bump of carbon around the rim and not below it. 1-16th to 1/8th of an inch of carbon is OK around the inside of the bowl. 1/4" thick carbon cake is excessive and should be reamed back - careful you don't ream it all out. Meerschaum is about the only material that doesn't require a carbon build up to smoke well. The clay pipes we use at reenactments are a close second, but not durable. I have one pipe called "The Pipe" that came with a carbon insert built into the bowl of the pipe and I clean that one well whenever I use it because building a carbon cake up on it is just redundant and gives me less room for tobacco.
When I used to smoke a pipe a lot, I used that "The Pipe" because I didn't need to break it in. Now days, I'll smoke a clay pipe at a reenactment or my Calabash or Meerschaum pipe at home on the back porch while sipping an appropriate liquid, although that is a rare occasion.