Bowl experiment.

[T3pipes]

I used the buttermilk, yogurt, activated carbon coating on one, the other is not coated. I put some stain on the coated one so it would be easier to remember which is which weeks down the road. After it dries over night, I will wipe off the gritty bits inside, and these will be the first ones I smoke in the mornings, using Prince Albert tobacco. Every few days I will post updated pics showing how each is developing.

[kbadkar]

What is this experiment going to demonstrate? Which will build the nicer carbon cake? Which will form a carbon cake first? Which tastes better?

Did you rough up the bare wood with low grit paper?

[Nick]

Could be interesting. Of course I am not sure what's being tested.

[T3pipes]

What is this experiment going to demonstrate? Which will build the nicer carbon cake? Which will form a carbon cake first? Which tastes better?

Did you rough up the bare wood with low grit paper?

This is for my own education, just thought I would share my results as I went. Pre-coating seems to be a matter of choice, so this is just a way for me to make a good informed choice. I'm testing all 3 that you listed. Plus, difficulty in making and applying it. The overall goal is to determine if the difference is worth doing a pre-coating.

I used 150 grit, light/medium pressure on the chambers.

Will smoke one more bowl in them tomorrow and then post on the progress.

[RadDavis]

Bowl coatings are for idiots and losers.

Like Todd and Jeff, for example.

And that Weaver guy.

Rad

[sean]

Haha!

[Mike Messer]

I would be interested in hearing the results of your tests.
One test you might perform...See how the bowl coating affects the porosity of the bowl. I have tried just putting a drop of water on the side of the inside of a bowl, and while liquid behaves differently from hot water vapor, it is an indicator. The water did not soak into the heavily caked side. I get some confusing indecision about this subject, because porous is considered good for smoking qualities, but I think it will eventually blemish the finish when the dirty vapor reaches the outer surface. So, ?

[Sasquatch]

Eventually, after, say, 20 smokes, the pipe is going to be acting the same no matter what.

The idea that anything is migrating through the briar is utterly wrong. I've seen pics of REALLY old, really heavily used pipes cut in half on a band saw. The briar .04 mm past the cake looks brand new. I'll go see if I can steal the picture.

EDIT: Can't find what I want. I will go chop an old beater in half.

EDIT2: All right - here's a real old flea-market beater that had the hell smoked out of it. It was a serious fight to get this pipe cleaned up. Worst I've seen. I don't ever smoke it, so I lopped the top off for examinatorycalative purposes. What's a guy see in this pipe - a layer of cake a layer of darkened briar, probably 1 - 2 mm thick, and then ordinary briar. There is no streaking or discoloration, and this is a cross-cut piece, and there is no evidence that the end grain (bird eye) vs the side grain act differently in any regard at all, which is a question that I've always wondered about.

[Sasquatch]

What I think the photo above shows is that you can smoke a pipe 50000 times and the amount of damage done to the briar is minimal. The evidence on this pipe when I got it indicates that it was used real hard - it was caked to unuseable and just a terror inside. All black and horrible on the rim - a really hard used pipe. I think the worst you can say about the briar is that it seems to get lighter and lighter the further out you go - so perhaps it is charring a bit, or perhaps it is carrying some tar in its pores.

But a bowl coating is not going to make any difference to either of those possibilities as far as I can tell.

[Sasquatch]

PS - if anyone wants to get REALLY technical about this, there is another consideration which may be of import. Testing with water tells you nothing about water vapor. For example, there are waterproof wood finishes that have a very low vaper-penetration rating, which means that even though a finished piece of furniture can't be damaged by a spilled rum and coke, it will shift greatly in changes of ambient humidity.

Polymerized Tung oil is one of the few oils that actually has a limiting effect on vapor penetration. Most vegetable oils don't, which is part of the reason oil curing does not wreck a pipe (unless you use polymerized tung oil!).

There is some liquid water in a pipe to be sure, but there is also a tremendous amount of steam, and that's why I don't think a bowl coating is going to make any difference at all after maybe 2 smokes.

Just my .02.

[m.c.]

I think naturally formed cake has more to do with flavour than with moisture absorption. A new pipe needs some baptism of fire to drive out some unwelcome elements in the wood that do not go with the taste of tobacco. A pre-carb coat provides a buffer that mitigates the adverse effect on taste at first smokes, and IMO that's all. Repeated smoking seasons the wood in some way that allows it to blend with the stuff inside, and the result is a more harmonious and full-bodied smoke. As far as absorption is concerned, a brand new meer pipe is not to be beated. The smoke is super dry and mild, but it just robs me of the finest elements of taste in tobacco, and a cool and dry meer smoke is more "fun" to me rather than a fulfilling experience of enjoying tobacco flavour, that's where a well-seasoned briar is so lovable.

[Leus]

I still believe that the main reason for coating a pipe is just good marketing. Most people see a naked bowl and think the pipe is either unfinished or if they buy it they may have to do some arcane ritual process to break it in...

And yes, I don't think a coating makes too much of difference, not with the temperatures involved inside a bowl (615° Celsius, according to this study.)

[daniel]

when i showed up a just finished biljard i made long time ago to my brother,
he said that it vould be much better looking if the inner bowl was black.
what i thought was that hes just ignorat, as the fackt was.
but anyway, i gues too, that it´s mainly the image that the coating gives.
though some people say they hate new pipes cause they hate the taste and smell of burning briar.
to me, when i look a coatet/carbonized pipe, it somehow always makes me think, what is under the layer.

[Nick]

I still believe that the main reason for coating a pipe is just good marketing. Most people see a naked bowl and think the pipe is either unfinished or if they buy it they may have to do some arcane ritual process to break it in...

And yes, I don't think a coating makes too much of difference, not with the temperatures involved inside a bowl (615° Celsius, according to this study.)

Wouldn't it be totally cool to go to a university where this stuff can be studied??

[Alan L]

Wouldn't it be totally cool to go to a university where this stuff can be studied??

You could always ask your friendly neighborhood bladesmith. I stuck my pyrometer probe in a bowl of 1792 one day (there was beer and tending a bbq smoker involved, needless to say) and found that if I puffed slowly the interior stayed around 500 degrees F, but if I smoked like I usually do when there's beer involved it shot up to around 775 degrees F. This was in a Peterson shape 106 silver-mounted army.

But yeah, can you imagine trying to run the grant for THAT study through these days?

[TreverT]

There is some liquid water in a pipe to be sure, but there is also a tremendous amount of steam, and that's why I don't think a bowl coating is going to make any difference at all after maybe 2 smokes.

Just my .02.

As a side note, this is what causes problems in silicate coatings where too much silicate is used. If the mix is too heavily waterglass, steam from the wood, released from smoking temperatures, can cause the coating to bubble because the moisture vapor can't pass through it in the same way it can pass through a more granular carbon coat.

[T3pipes]

It's been a few weeks now, and I was going to post pictures of the results to this point, but there is not any noticeable difference on the bowls. The only thing I noticed so far was a dairy taste on the coated bowl for the first 2 smokes, then a carbon taste for 2 bowls after that. I tasted wood at times for the first 2 bowls on the un-coated one, but I believe this was due to me getting it too hot at times. I tend to over-draw when I get distracted, and I get distrac... hey, something shiny.