Was kinda thinking about making one of the mountain man rondevous and was wondering how the old clay pipes smoked?
Like was shown above. I guess they do alright? But a bit fragile?
Doc
They break in quickly: a thin layer of carbon forms inside the bowl. The bowl gets incredibly hot and burns any tobacco down to a fine, dry ash. Empty the bowl and clean the stem immediately; rotate several pipes, and you will have a sweet-smoking, inexpensive pipe collection. IMO they are better smoking than porcelain, cherry wood or corn cob.
Clay and meerschaum are the easiest pipes to break. You almost always break the stem, and long stems are for home use only.
You are interested in reenactment, so here is some history. The earliest image of a European smoking
in Anthony Chute's pamphlet
Tabaco, (London, 1595), about how great tobacco is for your health especially for your lungs!! Notice the forward rake of the bowl. Smokers were lighting up with burning embers from a fire, and the angled bowl helped them do it without igniting big hats and big hair. The bowl is small because tobacco was mostly a Spanish import and expensive.
Twenty-eight years later, tobacco was cheaper and pipe bowls were larger and more upright. Big hats and big hair were still in, but large pipe bowls work better upright and smokers wanted a nice long smoke.
Mid 19th century, tobacco was very cheap and pipe smoking was a worker's habit. This is a pipe for someone who smokes while working with his or her hands.
