What would be the ultimate factor when deciding what to smoke in wich pipe? Almost every pipesmoker has his/her own opinion on wich pipe is suitable for a specific blend or type of tobacco. I'm trying to establish if there is any correlation between different opinions. Is it the size of the bowl, shape of the stem, size or position of the smoke hole, length of the stem, depth of the bowl................This could probably continue forever.
I hope I'm making sense here. I really want to pinpoint certain factors that is important for making the right pipe for the intended purpose and/or customer preferance. It would also be interresting to see if it's actually the pipe design that makes the difference or maybe simply a personal thing.
Form versus function.
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KurtHuhn
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This type of thing is largely personal preference. The shape of a pipe has little to do with how it smokes, personal preference for weight/balance/hang/etc aside.
What *can* affect smoking characteristics is the size of tobacco chamber, airway diameter, airway length, and mortis arrangement.
For instance, I prefer quarter or half bent pipes mostly, but do have a small collection of prized straight pipes. I smoke lots of cakes and flakes, and I prefer a wide bowl (.875" or larger) that is about 1.5" deep, though if I'm getting in the truck for a long trip, I like that bowl to be on the order of 1.75" to 2" deep. The airway, in my opinion, must be at least 5/32, and must be open enough that I can practically use it as a scuba apparatus.
I do have a few pipes with smaller diameter bowls, and I like to use those for ribbon cut tobaccos. Smaller diameters usually also mean shorter tobacco chambers, at least in my collection. Typically in the 1.25" range, though there are a few examples that are slightly taller.
Since the length of a pipe adds resistance to the airflow, you have to take that into account. If you have a churchwarden stem, it's rather imperative that you make that airway as open as you possibly can. This is a huge problem since most churchwarden stems are tiny, usually less than 1/2" in diameter, so they're quite fragile. You really need to be patient when making these.
What *can* affect smoking characteristics is the size of tobacco chamber, airway diameter, airway length, and mortis arrangement.
For instance, I prefer quarter or half bent pipes mostly, but do have a small collection of prized straight pipes. I smoke lots of cakes and flakes, and I prefer a wide bowl (.875" or larger) that is about 1.5" deep, though if I'm getting in the truck for a long trip, I like that bowl to be on the order of 1.75" to 2" deep. The airway, in my opinion, must be at least 5/32, and must be open enough that I can practically use it as a scuba apparatus.
I do have a few pipes with smaller diameter bowls, and I like to use those for ribbon cut tobaccos. Smaller diameters usually also mean shorter tobacco chambers, at least in my collection. Typically in the 1.25" range, though there are a few examples that are slightly taller.
Since the length of a pipe adds resistance to the airflow, you have to take that into account. If you have a churchwarden stem, it's rather imperative that you make that airway as open as you possibly can. This is a huge problem since most churchwarden stems are tiny, usually less than 1/2" in diameter, so they're quite fragile. You really need to be patient when making these.
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KurtHuhn
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- Location: United States/Rhode Island
If you do it right, not much. The secret is getting the holes perfectly aligned. Sometimes this means that you have to sacrifice what you want a shape to be in order to get everything lined up. Sometimes you have to ramp the airway at the bottom of the mortis in order to get it lined up with the stem airway.
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pierredekat
One of these days, I'm going to sit down and write out a unified theory on the Yin and Yang of pipe and tobacco. One of these days...
But in short, I think it requires trial-and-error on the part of the smoker. The reason being that each smoker's palate and each smoker's taste experience from a particular combination of pipe and tobacco are going to be different.
You start off with the concept of "destructive distillation", and you take that one step further with the concept of "fractional distillation".
Now then, for the sake of simplicity, let's just say that under ideal laboratory conditions, smoking a particular tobacco yields equal parts of the following flavors: cinnamon, black pepper, ginger, and orange peel. (Egads!)
But you put this same tobacco in a particular pipe, and cinnamon, black pepper, and ginger are delivered to the smoker's palate, no longer in equal proportions, but now in more pleasing proportions.
Meanwhile the orange peel flavor is basically filtered out altogether in the fractional distillation process, unique to that particular pipe.
So here's this particular smoker. He just hates the taste of orange peel, and if he knew that it was present in this particular tobacco, he would probably throw the stuff out.
But because that flavor was filtered out, this guy is sitting there thinking: "Wow, I didn't realize how good this tobacco was until I put it into this particular pipe."
If he only knew...
And then there's this other guy sitting there smoking this exact same tobacco in a nearly identical pipe, and he's thinking to himself: "Gosh, this tobacco would really be great, if only it had some of that wonderful orange peel taste."
Yeah, you could research this stuff as deeply as you want to go, but I think it's a whole lot easier just to think of it as being the magical and mysterious Yin and Yang of pipe and tobacco. Sometimes the two work together, and sometimes they don't.
They are Yin and Yang.
But in short, I think it requires trial-and-error on the part of the smoker. The reason being that each smoker's palate and each smoker's taste experience from a particular combination of pipe and tobacco are going to be different.
You start off with the concept of "destructive distillation", and you take that one step further with the concept of "fractional distillation".
Now then, for the sake of simplicity, let's just say that under ideal laboratory conditions, smoking a particular tobacco yields equal parts of the following flavors: cinnamon, black pepper, ginger, and orange peel. (Egads!)
But you put this same tobacco in a particular pipe, and cinnamon, black pepper, and ginger are delivered to the smoker's palate, no longer in equal proportions, but now in more pleasing proportions.
Meanwhile the orange peel flavor is basically filtered out altogether in the fractional distillation process, unique to that particular pipe.
So here's this particular smoker. He just hates the taste of orange peel, and if he knew that it was present in this particular tobacco, he would probably throw the stuff out.
But because that flavor was filtered out, this guy is sitting there thinking: "Wow, I didn't realize how good this tobacco was until I put it into this particular pipe."
If he only knew...
And then there's this other guy sitting there smoking this exact same tobacco in a nearly identical pipe, and he's thinking to himself: "Gosh, this tobacco would really be great, if only it had some of that wonderful orange peel taste."
Yeah, you could research this stuff as deeply as you want to go, but I think it's a whole lot easier just to think of it as being the magical and mysterious Yin and Yang of pipe and tobacco. Sometimes the two work together, and sometimes they don't.
They are Yin and Yang.
Firstly I need to apologize for not attending to this thread. I have completely forgotten about posting this. Thank you Kurt for the info on hole sizes. After some experimentation of my own I'm not far from the sizes that you are using except for the fact that my measurements are in mm and not inches.
Pierredekat, your explanation and the links makes a lot of sense. I read all about fractional and destructive distillation and suddenly a whole new world opened up for me. However I strongly believe that a good pipemaker should be able to "finetune" a specific pipe to a customers needs taking in concideration his specific tobacco likes and dislikes as well as his specific smoking style etc. All within limits of course. Different tobacco's should be "burnt" at different temperatures to obtain optimum flavour. There's so many factors that could play a role in this such as air-fuel (tobacco) mixture, compacting tobacco in the bowl, humidity, moist content of the tobacco, lighting method and temperature and above all..... Personal preferance.
I spent the past two weeks experimenting starting out with a very basic pipe and kept modifying untill it "peaked" as a great, cool smoking pipe that delivers all out aroma and smoking pleasure. Unfortunately at some stage I crossed the line between being on the spot and overdoing it. (according to my personal taste and preferance of course) .
What I ended up with was something closely conforming to Kurt's direction on hole sizes. The shape was a freehand Dublin sitter simply because I had the urge to try one. It worked great in the end except that I flaired the rim of the tobacco bowl as a final modification and messed up the pleasing characteristics by increasing the amount of air flowing into the bowl. After this the smoke was "diluted" and tasted like fresh air.
I came to the conclusion that pipe making (and smoking for that matter)should be seen as a science on it's own rather than only being a hobby or handcraft. But I have to agree, In the end is up to the Jin and Yang to determine if a specific pipe/tobacco combination appeals to an individual's personal taste or not.
Pierredekat, your explanation and the links makes a lot of sense. I read all about fractional and destructive distillation and suddenly a whole new world opened up for me. However I strongly believe that a good pipemaker should be able to "finetune" a specific pipe to a customers needs taking in concideration his specific tobacco likes and dislikes as well as his specific smoking style etc. All within limits of course. Different tobacco's should be "burnt" at different temperatures to obtain optimum flavour. There's so many factors that could play a role in this such as air-fuel (tobacco) mixture, compacting tobacco in the bowl, humidity, moist content of the tobacco, lighting method and temperature and above all..... Personal preferance.
I spent the past two weeks experimenting starting out with a very basic pipe and kept modifying untill it "peaked" as a great, cool smoking pipe that delivers all out aroma and smoking pleasure. Unfortunately at some stage I crossed the line between being on the spot and overdoing it. (according to my personal taste and preferance of course) .
What I ended up with was something closely conforming to Kurt's direction on hole sizes. The shape was a freehand Dublin sitter simply because I had the urge to try one. It worked great in the end except that I flaired the rim of the tobacco bowl as a final modification and messed up the pleasing characteristics by increasing the amount of air flowing into the bowl. After this the smoke was "diluted" and tasted like fresh air.
I came to the conclusion that pipe making (and smoking for that matter)should be seen as a science on it's own rather than only being a hobby or handcraft. But I have to agree, In the end is up to the Jin and Yang to determine if a specific pipe/tobacco combination appeals to an individual's personal taste or not.