How to get started smoking pipes

[Mister Moo]

Originally Posted by jkstewart1

...I feel that by getting back to basics - Carter Hall and a cob - and re-examining technique, pipe smoking is even more of a pleasure...

Zackly. Anyone who enjoys a pipe discovers proper filling, even lighting and effortless production of opaque clouds of rich smoke by SIPPING is the essence of easy smoking. It also reveals the most flavor from the tobacco. Like a well-oiled golf swing or the consistent clank of a horseshoe ringer, it isn't the easiest or most natural thing to accomplish in, say, the first three tries.

Carter Hall (and Prince Albert and Sir Walter Raleigh) tobacco endears itself to long time pipers and encourages new-to-pipe smokers. Besides the charming nutty taste and loved-by-all-downwind-aroma it has to be the easiest tobacco there is to fill and light evenly, the, most important, "sip" without overheating. After you get a handle on that, it's all gravy.

(WTF? Anyone who wants to smoke a pipe can get what they want and have at it. Me? I was a genius. I started out with these great smelling, super-moist Escudo coin-thingies in a BIG briar pipe. If I had stuffed 20 pipes with a pound of cheese I couldn't have plugged them up worse than I did with Escudo in a giant horn - too many variables for an idiot like me.

It would be cool to start right up with a $2000 Preben Holm goll-danged work of art perfect pipe and smoke the piss out of it and gnaw up the stem and char the rim and, maybe, burn a hole through the side of it. And then pitch the sonnofabich and start again. I wish I had that Emjaysmash kind of money. So why not one of those shiney sweet looking basket pipes or dragon-claw-demon-eye meerschaums for $30? Please.. the range of weird tastes, lacquered interiors, whistle-sounds, bad draws, gurgles and mis-drill issues create too many hassles to predict. Nossir. The cob is THEE low risk, low-variable entry that happens to match perfectly with OTC burley for a cool, dry easy smoke.

If you don't want to discuss cobs and OTC burley for rookies you have come to the wrong place. Now git. )