- I have a couple that I’ll break out when the weather turns nice, as I’m not allowed to smoke inside.
I use a cherry and Cavendish blend that I like to use.
Yep. I’m 30 and own maybe a dozen or so different pipes. A few of my friends smoke pipe as well. It is getting a bit more common here in Denmark than it was just a few years ago, but it’s mostly older folks who smoke pipe. [
Gitrdone59 - where on Earth do people pay 25 dollars for a corncob pipe? - Around here they cost between 5 and 10 dollars. They are pretty good, too, even though the quality varies a lot.
Another pipe smoker checking in. I have a few nice pipes, mostly bents, from Stanwell, Lorenzetti, Brigham, and Max Brandt. Plenty of good tobaccos too–and I agee there are better tobaccos than Captain Black.
I’m in a fairly good size city in the midwest and I rarely see anybody smoking a pipe.
I’m glad someone started this thread - I’ve been thinking of getting a pipe - just to have as a conversation starter since I don’t smoke, and don’t plan to start - but not for $20 or more! I’d rather not have a corncob pipe. Is there anywhere one could get a more reasonably priced pipe, perhaps a movie prop since it doesn’t need filters or whatever is normally inside?
Why does a person want so many pipes?
Depends on your view of “reasonable.” In my experience, pipes tend not to be under $20–reasonable-quality ones start at about $60-$75, and prices only go up from there. To give you a couple of examples from my own collection, my most expensive pipe was about $350; the last one I bought was about $225. Paying these prices for the quality and the appearance of the pipe itself is, to me anyway, reasonable.
My local tobacconist once said that “Pipes are works of art you can smoke,” and he had a point. Ultimately, they are very simple objects and there isn’t a lot of complicated doohickeys inside them–to accommodate a certain kind of filter, for example, the pipemaker simply bores a slightly wider hole in the stem than he might otherwise. Most of the cost comes from pipemaker’s design skills and craftsmanship in creating the “work of art” aspect of a pipe. Thus I believe your quest for a non-smokable “movie prop” or a new pipe at less than $20 would be fruitless, since you’re paying for the look anyway. If you’re not planning on smoking it, your best bet might be to look for “estate” pipes (i.e. used) at antique shops and flea markets, where the appearance of the pipe would be as it ever was, the smokability might be questionable, and the prices would be a lot lower than a new one would cost.
I don’t know really. Why do people collect anything? Once in a while I stumble across a new pipe that looks nice, and if I can afford it, I buy it. They are all different to smoke, and which one I choose depends on a lot of things; sometimes I like a short, straight pipe when going for a walk, a longer one with a bigger head while reading a good book, etc.
I do, occasionally, but only in private. I truly enjoy the experience, but don’t want people to think I’m trying to cultivate some kind of image. I smoke a bit of Frog Morton, but usually stick with Virginias. I really like McClelland’s Christmas Cheer.
Say what? I don’t ever remember seeing someone smoking a pipe when I was at university. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen anyone smoking a pipe for years, possibly decades.
I understand that you’re not supposed to smoke one twice in a row. They need to “rest.” I’m not sure why.
I had one a decade or so ago.
I have a good friend who smokes them regularly. He’s a fifty-ish hippie.
I do, but it was banned in the dorms. We usually put a towel under the door to prevent the smoke from escaping.
Sometimes the pipes had water in them.
If you don’t plan on smoking it, you could get one on eBay for cheep. But better than that, get a Dr. Grabow. They can be found in many drugstores (I know Rite-Aid and Wallgreens carry them). They are very inexpensive and if you should ever decide you want to try smoking it, they smoke ok. Not great, but ok.
Two reasons (well, 3). The first reason is that you want to let your pipe rest between smokes. Depending on who you talk to you can either smoke one pipe all day and then let it sit for a week or you can smoke a pipe once and let it sit for a day, but everyone agrees that you want to let the pipe rest periodically. Bad things happen to the pipe if you don’t. So, if you plan to smoke one pipe a day every day, you need at least two pipes. In a perfect world you should have three so you can give each pipe 48 hours to rest. If you smoke more than than you probably want more pipes.
Reason number 2 is that different types of tobacco taste different and some of the flavors can linger (or ghost) in a pipe. This is particulalry true of aromatic tobaccos, and tobaccos that feature latakia as a prominent player in the blend (These blends are called, very very generally and without getting into too much detail, Balkan or English blends.) You unquestionably do not want to mix and match latakia pipes with aromatic pipes. Then you also have blends that are more subtle in flavor, usually Virginia leaf blends. These blends will not taste like anything but the ghost if you smoke them in an aromatic or latakia pipe.
So, let’s say that you enjoy Latakia, Aromatic and VA blends. You need at least 1 pipe dedicated to each. And since you don’t necessarily know what you are going to want to smoke on a given day, and don’t want to lock yourself into just one style of tobacco per a three day period, you ideally have 3 pipes for each. Then maybe you have 3 pipes for blends that feature burley. Then maybe you decide that 5 pipes of each is better, because then you can just clean all the pipes you smoked durring the week at the end of the week and thats much easier than giving them all a clean every day.
And now you have 20 pipes.
And don’t forget about different pipe material. Metal pipes, clay pipes, Meershaum pipes, Briar pipes all smoke a bit differently and do different things to the character of the tobacco. So you throw in a handful of other materials and maybe a corncob pipe or 5 and now you have 32 pipes (I counted this morning). 
The third reason is that, pipe smokers seem to be inveterate collectors. If you are going to smoke a pipe these days it is usually because something attracts you to the pipe specifically. Like Spoons said, it’s art you can smoke. So you buy a pipe because a particular artisan carved it, or it is made out of an unusual rare material, or it is a unique shape or whatever reason. People end up with hundreds of pipes, some costing in excess of $600.
With pipe smoking, it’s not the nicotine that sucks you in, it’s the collecting. I have had no trouble not smoking for the past 2 months that my wife has been pregnant, but it has been very hard for me to keep from buying new pipes with the money we are setting aside for the baby.
I strongly disagree with the Dr. Grabow recommendation. I’ve tried a few of them, and they always seem to have paper-thin bowls that heat up to approximately the temperature of the surface of the sun.
“Irish Seconds” is your friend. They are “real” pipes that are essentially factory B-stock. Maybe the piece of briar it’s made from has a small void that must be filled. There’s usually something very minor wrong with them, but they are high-quality, and smoke great. You can find them at almost any tobacconist for $15-$30.
Yeah, but he isn’t going to smoke it and Grabows are easy to find.
Hell yes.
I’m an under-thirty pipe smoker. I’ve basically smoked pipes throughout my twenties. I’ve got five briar pipes and three cobs (handy for trying blends and camping/canoeing). Of the mid-range pipes, I think Stanwell is one of the best makers.
It took me a long time to find tobaccos that I really enjoy. I started with drugstore blends, then bulk blends at a local tobacconist, but now I’ve discovered great boutique blenders and euro blenders’ tobaccos can be purchased cheaply online. I can make recommendations all day, but in short I feel like one can’t go wrong with a blend from G.L. Pease. Pipe tobacco has a lot of similarities to the craft beer scene. There’s the old giants cranking out what grandpa smoked (a lot of this is the cherry or vanilla stuff that 95% of people associate with pipes), and then there’s the artisan blenders.
Here’s the sites I use most often:
http://www.frenchyspipes.com/ ----- mostly for pipes (nice deals, best customer service around)
http://www.smokingpipes.com/ ----- for tobacco and pipes
I want to second these. Frenchy is an awesome guy. I would also add pipesandcigars.com and marscigars.com as fantastic sites.
I’ll add that tobaccoreviews.com is a good site for general manufacturers’ information and consumer reviews on pipe tobaccos. It’s given me a lot of ideas as to what “new” (to me) tobaccos I might want to try.
Oh, yeah, tobaccoreviews is great. If we are going to plug other resources like that, I should plug smokersforums.co.uk as well. They are a fantastic resource in their own right, and a very friendly internet community.
Do any of the other pipe smokers use http://www.tobaccocellar.org to keep track of what you have in your cellar?