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Ok, so I have been doing tons of reading and there are a few things which I haven't got fully figured out yet. One of them is that I have read that you should rest a pipe for at least 24 hours after using it. My question then would be, does that mean everytime I smoke a bowl full from my pipe that I have to rest it for a whole 24 hour period? I seem to remember that people who smoke pipes use and refill and reuse several times a day. Should I have multple pipes, so I can use a new one for each time I light up?
I do have several pipes coming and I was going to devote one for each type of tobacco that I try until I find some favorites. Now this information leads me to think I may need a couple or few pipes for each type. I'm confused.
I do have several pipes coming and I was going to devote one for each type of tobacco that I try until I find some favorites. Now this information leads me to think I may need a couple or few pipes for each type. I'm confused.
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http://pipesmagazine.com/forums/topic/rotation#post-112672
It has a lot to do with the wetness, of the tobacco and how wet your pipe gets, so it varies. I usually only smoke once or twice a day, so it's rarely an issue. There are times, however, when I'll smoke one pipe two or three times in a day, or as J.S. does, a few days in a row with just one pipe. Doing so, eventually the briar gets wetter, and doing so too much eventually becomes dank and foul, and will require a more thorough cleaning and longer rest.
During the break-in period, I'll often smoke the same pipe a few times in a day, beginning by loading only about 1/3 of a bowlful a couple times, moving up to 1/2, 3/4 , probably a few times each. Takes time to break a pipe in, sometimes a lot of time.
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
But wooden pipes, and even meerschaum pipes to a lesser extent, will sog up if you don't rotate them.
From what few experiments that have been done, it seems that smoking a pipe without resting it will eventually produce some bitterness and a wet smoke with lots of gurgling, as the pipe hasn't dried out (assuming it's a briar - meerschaums and plastic pipes don't have this problem since they don't absorb the wetness or expand with wetness)
If you abuse the hell out of a pipe, it might crack from absorbing the water and then having that water expand when it's heated with another bowl - but the only instance I've ever heard of someone actually managing to do this was on purpose, after many days/weeks of not resting the bowl at all . . . and the pipe was a cheap POS, nowhere near quality briar.
So, is it possible to crack your bowl if you don't rest it? yeah, but you'd have to be purposefully brutal and the pipe would likely have to be cheaply made. If you managed to crack a quality briar pipe through over smoking, I'd wager every pipe forum on the internet would be interested in how you managed it.