Pipe care/cleaning

The articles presented here were originally started with permission from the excellent FAQ from the Alt.Smokers.Pipes FAQ[1]

Maintenance

Reaming

After a pipe has been smoked for a long time its cake may become so thick that it significantly reduces the capacity of the bowl. In very extreme cases, an overly thick cake may actually crack the bowl due to differential expansion. Ideally, the cake should not exceed one-sixteenth of an inch (about 1.5 mm) or so. When the cake exceeds this thickness, it should be carefully reamed. Some pipe tools have a blunt-pointed (to prevent gouging of the bowl bottom) knife blade for this purpose. While these will work, it is very easy to trim the cake unevenly or even inadvertently dig into bare wood. Numerous adjustable, multibladed reamers are available commercially, and these will do a much neater job. A favored tool for this task--suggested by pipe maker extraordinaire JT Cooke--is nothing more than a series of short wooden dowels of varying diameters that are wrapped with fine grit emery cloth or sandpaper. Whatever device you choose to use, work very slowly and carefully to prevent damage to your pipe. The idea is to gradually shave the cake down to the proper thickness, not to scrape it out in chunks. If you have more than the usual number of thumbs, you might want to take the pipe to your tobacconist, who will usually perform this task for a nominal fee.