The heck is this?

[American Psycho-Analyst]

Not exactly the clearest picture in the world, but, are these cracks in the bowl something to worry about? I've read dubinthedam's thread about the cracks he's noticed in several of his pipes, and I see that most pipers do not consider them worth concerning oneself over, yet, however, these appear a little severe....

[aeroswat]

Nothing even close to an expert, but that looks serious

[GAW]

Hard to tell for sure in a photo but the cake looks pretty thick and the crack may just be in the carbonized material not the briar. Only way to tell is to remove the cake back to briar and examine again.It has happened to me in a few older estate pipes with very dense buildup - reamed - I use a long blade pocket knife for better control - back to briar and the bowl was free of cracks.

[American Psycho-Analyst]

That's what I thought as well. Upon closer inspection it seemed that it might only be that the cake itself, after expanding when hot, simply cracked and not the briar. Tomorrow I'll ream out the pipe and report from there.

[JAK]

Good luck! I hope its nothing serious

[Cheeto]

I've had a pipe do that to me before on the bottom of the pipe, basically the same looking pipes. They happened after a real hot smoke, I could actually hear it happen, made a weird sound when I was smoking. It turned out to be nothing more than expansions in the cake, but it might be smart to make sure.

[SAjunidog]

I had an old, old grabow that got a similar crack after I smoked it (thing looked the exact same). Picked it up again recently after not smoking it for a while and realized it was clearly only the cake that got messed up.

I'm pretty sure the only reason it looks so bad is that you only check out the inside after smoking it (at least I do), when it has expanded the most. If you look at it cold you can see its way less serious.