Who among us are PIPE smokers?

Just getting to the point I can keep my Cob going without relighting more than 3 times. Any suggestions on an affordable briar pipe to go to next?

currently I rotate between three cobs. Seems like prices are all over, looking for something mass produced that smokes well and won't break the bank.

DillyJamba said:

Just getting to the point I can keep my Cob going without relighting more than 3 times. Any suggestions on an affordable briar pipe to go to next?

currently I rotate between three cobs. Seems like prices are all over, looking for something mass produced that smokes well and won't break the bank.

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Affordable all depends on what your budget is. If you want the least expensive briar, Dr. Grabow is about rock bottom. Prices go up from there.

Whitworth said:

Thanks Bucolic Buffalo and Uncle Miltie, I"ll give it a try.

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I placed my Ben Wade in a baggie and put it in the freezer for a couple of hours and the stuck stem came right out. Thanks for the tip fellows

Haven't smoked now in decades but have a tale to tell. At an unclaimed freight type operation we scored for cheap on many pounds of a boutique coffee blend that had those same cherry highlights in the aroma as Borkum Riff did long ago. We recently enjoyed the last of the coffee so now it's just a fond memory.

James Kopp said:

Who here is also a pipe smoker? Not necessarily int he traditional sense....but enjoys a good pipe and tobacco after a day of shooting. .I would love to know what your are smoking (pipe) and what is your favorite blend....For me I smoke a few pipes, but my go to right now is a Missouri Meerschaum Dune Cobbit pipe, and I love County Squire Tombigbee......

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got an old kaywoodie 5oo and an mearschaum pipe. just smoke prince albert. codger tobacco!!

Jaeger said:

So....are corncob pipes and meerschaums period correct for the 18th and 19th centuries?

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Corn cob may have been used but we can’t document it till the war between the states. Meerschaum began to be used for pipes in the 1720s. It’s not known to have been imported to America till mid nineteenth century.
A British is officer may have had one in America, and an American ships captain may have bought one overseas. Its possible an American could have had one, however we are looking at cr 1900 for them to become popular
Spanish were making brier pipes by the eighteenth century. Contact with Spanish holdings was limited to most Europeans and Americans. Again it’s possible an American had a brier pipe in colonial and early federal days but rare
Clay pipes were the rage. They came over in barrels from the UK, Netherlands and German states.
They were cheap
Washington regularly purchased a gross at a time
German porcelain pipes were being imported by Gold Rush days, but had limited use except in areas of high German population, they are great smokers but an ‘all day’ smoke

Semi-regularly smoke cobs from Missouri Meerschaum. Their factory is not too far from where I live. They offer a grab bag of random factory seconds at a discounted price which I generally buy. They smoke just fine and only have a few cosmetic flaws. I have a beautiful Nording and some other briars but seldom use them.

Just finished a bowl of Peterson 965 and rotate through this, Capstan, Early Morning Pipe and Old Dublin, anything English really. Not averse to Captain Black and Carter Hall though at all.

DillyJamba said:

Just getting to the point I can keep my Cob going without relighting more than 3 times. Any suggestions on an affordable briar pipe to go to next?

currently I rotate between three cobs. Seems like prices are all over, looking for something mass produced that smokes well and won't break the bank.

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I like Vikings. Don't recall the price other than they are usually mid-range. I have a bent Dublin, I think. Works well but is prone to wet pipe if I smoke it too fast.

I used the pipe to get disconnected from a 37 year Copenhagen addiction. On deployments we lived on caffeine and nicotine! I have an old Peterson pipe and a few Missouri cobs. My favorite tobacco is a tie between Durbar and Samuel Gawith 1792 flake, both almost impossible to get now. I actually preferred to chew hickory twist more than anything, but company closed. Basically anything I truly enjoy will disappear or be outlawed so I quit all of it in protest. Probably better for my health anyways, but I do have a stash tucked away for emergency use.

I smoke pretty much every weekend. I also smoke cigars. I have several historical correct clay pipes I used during my reenacting days. A nice small one for F&I and Rev war. And one with a reed stem for Civil war. There's just something about after a hard day, laying around the fire puffing away on some of your favorite tobacco, contemplating the days activities! As far as blend, I'm very partial to Squadron Leader by Samuel Gawith.

tenngun said:

Corn cob may have been used but we can’t document it till the war between the states.

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This is one of the great examples of the tech and materials being right there in front of folks for decades if not more than a century, but either nobody put the stuff together long enough for the idea to spread, or they simply didn't think to do that. They had reeds to make pipe stems, and used them later not only on corncobs but also on clay bowls, and they had the corn cobs too.

One reason they may not have done so was the size of the smoking chamber in the cob. The specially large cobs bred for use in modern corncobs were not around back then, so the pipe smoke in the 19th century (or earlier) got a shorter smoke than the relatively cheap clay pipe. The cob though was much less fragile. Still when clay first was used the pipes were quite small as tobacco was quite expensive.

IF one is going to use a cob (I am one myself) then the best way is to use one of the small, unfinished novelty corn cob pipes (sometimes you find the cannabis smokers using these) and cut off the commercial stem, and then use your own long, cane stem.



Novelty cob pipe showing cut location


LD

A very good book, if you're into Civil War history is; "Tobacco and Smoking Among the Blue and Gray" by Ben Rapaport. I have it and I highly recommend it if you're at all curious about the subject.

I smoke a Peterson. I’ve been gravitating to Capstan here recently, but I usually enjoy any good straight Virginia or vaper. HH pure Virginia is a great smoke for those who like sweet Virginia

At one time I smoked a pipe regularly and have six or seven of them. My very favorite is a clay pipe my late FIL made for me in '64. the bowl is clay (he worked in a brick yard) and the base & stem is hand carved wood with an old ebonite bit. It smokes as smooth as my leather wrapped meerschaum or Missouri meerschaum. Tobacco what ever blend happens to be handy.

I grew up in east Tennessee, we started out with rabbit tobacco in our homemade corn cob pipes and gravitated to stuffing our pipes with remnants of cigarette butts that we picked up off the side of the road. I started smoking Lucky Strikes or Camels when I was 12. At 16 I was a pack a day smoker. We bought all of our cigarettes out of the vending machines that were everywhere. One day the price went from 25 cents a pack to 27 cents, you put 30 cents in ln the machine that didn't make change and the pack of cigarettes would have 3 cents inside the cellophane the pack was wrapped with, this was back in the 63-64 era.

When I saw that the price had gone up, I said to myself, "that is outrageous, I am not paying for that" and quit smoking for good. Sounds silly now but made sense back then because I worked very hard for every penny I had.

The next time I smoked tobacco out of a pipe was in Germany, the guys in our company just back from Nam were well versed in illegal substances. I walked into a large bedroom in the barracks one evening and these guys were passing a pipe. I had never seen dope before, turns out they had mixed hash with tobacco to cover up the smell. Naturally I gave it a try, strange stuff but not something I would seek out. I tried it a few more times in the following days and went back to my favorite drug of choice which was alcohol and lots of it. Common sense got the best of me when I was 40 and I quit booze as well, for good.

The thing that surprised me was how addictive tobacco was, a few hits for a few days in a row and I started craving cigarettes again. After this wake-up call I never touched tobacco again.

I have a couple 30+ year old briars, and a century + old meerschaum. Can’t find decent, let alone good pipe tobacco in my area. I’ll smoke cheap (Backwoods) cigars at SASS gatherings. The heavy hitters always offer me good cigars, but since I can’t afford to reciprocate…
Going to grow my own this next year. Have Virginia, Connecticut and Cuban varietal seeds.

I started as a kid. When I was old enough to take a single shot .22 to the woods, I'd leave the house after breakfast with that old Winchester and not come home until it was too late to shoot. My secret was a harvested cornfield 'twixt me and the big timber. That was before harvesting was done with machines and I had my pick of fat cobs to choose from. Then not far away was a brushy field with plenty of milk weed plants. The stalks were hollow. With materials in hand I entered the woods and would sit for hours shooting at squirrels and making pipes using my Boker pocket knife. A good stem to bowl fit allowed no air thru the joint. My favorite stuff to smoke was corn silk. Absent that I used partially dried grass and leaves and even shredded bark. My folks never knew. Once I cut a branch from a wild appletree and hollowed out a piece that was about one and a half inches long. With just the pocket knife it took days and days to form a bowl. Used a bamboo stem. Fast forward 60 years: my latest pipe cost me $85 but somehow I wish I were back among those big oak and hickory trees puffing on the corn cob. Sadly, the vast majority of kids now grow to adults in urban areas and their secrets are many times more awful than what a country child gets into.

SeaBee133 said:

I have a couple 30+ year old briars, and a century + old meerschaum. Can’t find decent, let alone good pipe tobacco in my area. I’ll smoke cheap (Backwoods) cigars at SASS gatherings. The heavy hitters always offer me good cigars, but since I can’t afford to reciprocate…
Going to grow my own this next year. Have Virginia, Connecticut and Cuban varietal seeds.

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bought virginia bright seeds going to try growing some also. if I get 4 plants to produce I'll be happy

I like petersons with macbaren Navy Flake.

or my boswells churchwarden (Chambersburg, PA) with W O Larsens signature.

camo