192. Prepping Your Estate or New/Old Stock Pete for its First Smoke
What follows is a speculative segment of what may eventually be included in The Pocket Peterson: A Field Guide. I am in hopes that whatever your experience in pipe-smoking and however different it is from mine, you will consider offering your opinion. Your comments will help me revise or discard this piece from the final book. Preparing your New/Old Stock or estate Peterson for its first smoke should be as easy as stuffing it with choice leaf and lighting it. Or so we think as young pipe smokers. But after more than forty years’ devotion to the art, I became so disenchanted with that first smoke—of even new pipes—that I found myself putting it off in a cold sweat of anticipatory dread to turn back to the trusty comrades already in my rotation. The first smoke is far more important than many pipers realize. If it goes well, the smoker will return the following night and many nights in succession, marveling at how his favorite mixture has reached new heights of flavor. If the smoker is less impressed, he may return a few times in the following weeks, appreciating the visual or tactile aspects of the pipe and wondering how many more bowls it will take until it begins to taste right. But if the first smoke is downright bad, the smoker will eye the pipe with uneasiness, disdain or even hostility. The brand, the chamber, or the condition of the pipe (if an estate) may be blamed, when the real culprit may simply have been the lack of adequate preparation. The dread of the first smoke has nothing to do with whether the pipe is new in the box, an estate purchase or new-old stock from decades ago. In has nothing to do with Peterson as a brand, per se, but everything to do with the unpleasant experience common to breaking in almost any pipe. Bowl coatings come in many varieties. The worst in my opinion is the impenetrable substance known as water glass (sodium silicate and water) which literally melts onto the chamber walls, preventing any wood taste whatsoever from penetrating. Close to that is when stain is applied to the inside of the bowl, which Peterson did until about twenty years ago and still does on their highest grade pipes. The best I’ve ever encountered is the one Peterson currently employs on darker stained pipes, a recipe of food-grade gum arabic with activated charcoal powder and water. Their coating produces an almost neutral and perhaps slightly sweet taste, creating a very rapid cake. But as it seems to blossom during the first few smokes, it may raise a bead of sweat for the uninitiate looking into the chamber of their newly-smoked pipe for the first time. Never fear, just be patient and all will be well. Most artisans claim to use some kind of closely-guarded secret bowl coating concocted of organic, safe-to-ingest substances of varying degrees of palatability. I’ve paid $400 and more for a new artisan pipe…