Clean a clay pipe?

[Audubon]

The tip-breaking thing is a myth. Tavern pipes were washed and dried by the fire. That's why they had forged iron pipe drying racks.

When pipes get thrown away, they usually break into little pieces. Some of the people who dug up the little pieces of tavern pipe stems thought up that story.

Long stem pipes give a sweeter smoke. Short stem pipes were called sporting pipes back in the day. They were easier to carry around but give a hotter smoke...

Thanks for posting this. I has been a pet peeve of mine for a while. We pick up or excavate hundreds of stem shards a year and they are somewhat uniform in size, which might lead one to believe that they were broken on purpose. I have never seen a primary source for breaking and sharing. Ivor Noel Hume, the dean if American Archeology has attempted to dispel this little myth for decades. In talking with several dozen dietary archaeologists and anthropologists I leaned that most cultures have an aversion to placing rough or sharp,thick,clunky edges in their mouths such as the edge found on a broken stem.

Hume states that:

...There are thousands of pipe fragments found in Williamsburg. An early explanation for their ubiquity had it that in colonial-era taverns pipes passed from mouth to mouth, but that in the interests of hygiene the previously lip-gripped section was broken off and thrown away. There is no documentary support for that notion, but it is known that used pipes were placed in iron cradles and heat cleansed in bake ovens before being issued to the next round of smokers...
http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Winter03-04/pipes.cfm

 

[crockett]

Maybe I should change my name to Just Thumbs.

 

[pichou]

Nah. Clay just doesn't work for you. The reed stems were pretty common in the SE, and the "MicMac" style was made in Quebec for the fur trade. Both are Native styles that were adopted by Whites and mass-produced.
:v

 

[Stumpkiller]

Clean a pipe? Heresy. Clay or otherwise. That's a travesty akin to washing a coffee pot with detergent or putting milk in a beer stein.

If it's thick enough - scrape it out. If it ain't thick enough to scrape it ain't dirty yet.

 

[2172]

Stumpy, back when I was a pipe smoker, I regularly smoked a clay. A goal was to change its color from white to black, shiny black...there's even a passage in Kipling's Soldiers Three where Mulvany hands the author a pipe he's been breaking in for Kipling, having given it a final rub on his (oiled) hair...the tobacco juices do the coloring, and clays smoke dry because the clay soaks up juice, but even so, it is possible to get a clay to where it is so loaded that some drying out is needed. As I said earlier, my gr grandmother would put hers into the hob, I would guess on the edge of the fire to dry it out.
I haven't smoked anything for 27 years, but still can barely walk past a pipe shop. I've promised myself that, on the way home from the doctor's office when he gives me a terminal diagnosis, I'm stopping and buying a good corncob an some strong burley..Hank

 

[Audubon]

A few pipes and other goods...
http://www.ezrabarnhousegoods.com/products.html

 

[2172]

:surrender: CRUEL, CRUEL..hANK

 

[Robert Egler]

That's a travesty akin to washing a coffee pot with detergent or putting milk in a beer stein.

Earlier in life I was a professional fire fighter (we were still called "firemen" back then). Each man in the station had a specific thing to clean each morning, which rotated. On my first assignment to kitchen cleaning I looked in the old coffee pot, and thought it was terrible! So I scrubbed and scrubbed, really worked at it, and got the inside of that pot shiney clean. And then I caught hell for it!! :redface: I don't drink coffee, so I didn't know it was a good thing to be that dirty.

 

[viking_1066]

Its' easy to clean a clay pipe. just bury it in the coals of your fire at night, then in the morning it will be all whitey again ready for a puff with coffee. Done this a hunnerd times - they don't "explode". you can pre-warm it if you want to.
Just today I cleaned my watchman's pipe by takin a torch to it.

 

[tom deinek]

Somewhat OT.

I recently started smoking tobacco pipes as an appetite suppressant. I've got 3 briars pipe my dad & grandad used; I also bought a corncob pipe with one of those cardboard filters inside the stem.

My grandfather never replaced nor used those filters. Do those Dr.Grabow filters really do anything?

 

[Pigman]

As a hardcore pipe smoker - I find the filters just make the pipe wet. Most fine pipes do not use a filter.

 

[TANSTAAFL]

I clean my clay pipes by lightly scraping bowl internal, then give a good scrubbing with water and stiff brush, rinse with clear water and dry in the AZ (AKA very hot) sun.

For the long stem ones, I clean with the 12" white chenille stems (cheap pipe cleaners) from Wally World, (100 for a couple of bucks) I cut in half for short stem pipes.

 

[Thomas Dermako]

...still can barely walk past a pipe shop. I've promised myself that, on the way home from the doctor's office when he gives me a terminal diagnosis, I'm stopping and buying a good corncob an some strong burley..Hank

Hear, hear!
Quit smoking cigarettes a few years ago cause it was killing me. If I could only stick to just the pipe...
I digress - I had luck with my clays by putting them in a gas oven on the self-clean cycle. Came out nearly new; I believe the term is "vitrified". If you have access to one of these it might do the trick...or get yourself a "seven-day set".

 

[wwpete52]

I'm joining this thread late and haven't read all of the comments. I've cleaned clay pipes many times. You just place it on the hot coals of a fire. It will come out as white as the day you bought it and totally clean.

 

[graybeard]

Thanks to everyone. I managed to break the pipe that was most saturated with tobacco tar, but I have another I'll chunk in the fire pit soon. Since posting the question, I read in a pipe book that they put them in the oven to clean them in the old days. graybeard

 

Anytime I need a good cleaning, I take a nice hot shower or jump in a creek.

 

[graybeard]

How much char buildup do you allow before jumping in the crick? Is the crud in the pores from Virginia or burley tobaccos? graybeard