The Art of the Tamp ...and Other Musings.

[Scott M]

The Art Of The Tamp; Things I've learned, read, or found by Devine Intervention.

We've seen much interest in the briar lately on this board, (myself included), and with it come a littany of issues that seem to be common in this activity. Keeping the pipe lit, burning evenly, smoking cool, etc. While some of these issues are related to packing, pace, smoking style, ad nauseum, the use of the tamper rarely gets mentioned. The judicious use of the tamper can alleviate many problems pipe smokers encounter.

The common lighting instructions usually say to give the tobacco surface a quick char, (the "false light"), then let it go out, tamp, and relight. After that, there's not much else other than to tamp occasionally, especially prior to relighting the tobacco should it go out. But other than that, why have one at all?

Tamping ensures that the burning tobacco stays in contact with the stuff that's waiting to fire up. You've seen the way it expands when it's first lit. The tobacco will expand throughout the length of the smoke and must stay in contact with the unlit tobacco for it to continue to burn. Quite a few pipe smoking difficulties are linked to this simple fact. But tamping also can keep the burn in check by either depriving it of oxygen, (if it gets too hot), or "directing" the burn toward unburned areas, (or "directing" unburned tobacco toward the burn). This can have a couple of benefits, mostly fewer relights and less heat on your tounge, but it will also create a larger volume of smoke via more burning tobacco.


Things I've found to work well...most of the time.

I like packing the tobacco so that there's a noticable resistance with the draw, (or draught, if you're an Anglophile). Not enought to suck the ear wax into my throat, but enough to notice. This will be important in a moment. After the initial false light, I try to make a "mound of tobacco", tamping the outer edges down more than the center by angling the tamper toward the center of the bowl. From what I've found and read, this helps the edges of the tobacco plug keep up with the burn in the center. Whenever the resistance gets too low, (usually accompanied by a decrease in smoke volume), I find that a "points of the compass" tamp, (N, S, E, and W) with the tamper angled toward the bowl center WHILE DRAWING IN SLIGHTLY helps bring both the draw reisistance and the smoke volume back up to where it was initially. Generally, the weight of the tamper is sufficient to accomplish this task, but once in a while a slightly firmer touch is called for, especially when the burn is going too hot and needs to be throttled back some. I don't count the times I do this per bowl since it's dependent on many factors. Just whenever it needs doing.

I've also found / read that this really only works well with loose cut tobaccos. Flakes and ropes don't benefit as much from tamping since they're already more tightly packed to begin with. Try some of this and see if it helps.


Mind in the ash can.

Some mention of ash dumping in another thread. Again, what I've found / read suggests that the ash helps keep the heat in toward the tobacco and away from the environment, (as insulation against wind). The only times dumping the ash was mentioned was near the end of the bowl; if the ash level is too high, it chokes off the oxygen getting to the burning tobacco. Otherwise, it's just plain easier to leave it in place. It also seems to be popular to shake up the ash after it's finished to coat the bowl and promote the formation of cake. Personally, I do this as well, (and it seems to help), but the most important thing if you really want to build up cake, IMHO, is to smoke the damn thing.


IT'S MAKING NOISES AT ME!!!

Gurgles. Ugh. They make it hard to draw, choke the pipe, taste REALLY NASTY if you're unfortunate enough to have them sucked up into your mouth, and leave icky bits of unburned tobacco. But there are ways to deal with, or eliminate them all together. Mostly, gurgles seem to stem from the condensation inherent in tobacco smoke. It's possible to assist this process with your own saliva, but not much. Even if you don't get the noises, a higher level of moisture can give you a really nice case of tounge bite. Some things I've found;

First, and most important; never get the bowl higher than your mouth. If you don't believe me, try it once. You'll try it...once.

The simplest way to address them is to not have them in the first place. Try drying your tobacco out before you light up. Dry it out completely. It won't hurt the tobacco flavors. Not turn-to-dust dry, but about the "slightly crunchy" level oughtta work.

When they rear their ugly head, the gurgles can be dealt with in a few ways. One, as Greg (IHT) mentioned in another thread, was to blow gently into the stem. If you're using a straight stemmed pipe, you can insert a pipe cleaner into the stem and soak up the yummy juices with that instead of them getting into your mouth. Or you can "flick it"; cover the bowl with a thumb so that the stem is out away from your hand, hold onto the pipe firmly and flick the stem, much the way that was done with the older mercury thermometers. A big word of caution is in order: do NOT do this inside, and ESPECIALLY not over your wifes / in-laws / neighbors new carpet.



Now, go smoke something.
Peace.

Scott"crampedfingers"M

[Dr. Stogie Fresh]

Great post Scott! I don't even smoke a pipe and I was fascinated by your descriptions. Pipe smoking sounds a bit to complicated for my pea-sized brain, but it is very interesting.

The Doc

[Mr. Pink]

Agreed. Well put.

[canadasmokes]

after i read this i pulled out my cob (me and millow had a little herf in my garage) and i tried lighting it then letting it go out then tamping again a bit, and that makes all the difference! after i did that it was basically a perfect burn.
thanks guys now bygeorge i think iv got it!

[icemncmth]

I have found that you are better off tamping then working on the quality of packing...I think way too many people worry too much about packing a pipe and not thinking about other parts of the pipe smoking process...

I have a lot of tobacco sitting around in jars. All are kept "moist"...none are smoked that way.. What I do is simple....I have a large ball/kerr jar....and I take the center part of the lid off..I just use the ring...then I have some extra window screen that I use in place of the center lid. So if you look at this jar what you see is a large jar with the lid that actually threads onto the top of the jar and when you look closer you notice that I have taken some screen and placed it so that there is probably an inch overhang on the top of the jar...then I screw down the outside lid....in doing so I have now an empty jare with a screen that is tight across the top...

Then I place my moist tobacco on top of the screen to dry out ...I will let it sit a while and move it around so that all the tobacco is evenly dry...

Then I smoke it..

As for the pipe cleaner.......it shouldn't matter what type of pipe you have you should always be able to run a pipe cleaner through it...

That is one thing I do before I by a pip...I hold the pipe in my hand and run a pipe clear down it and...if it doesn't reach the bottom of the bowl...I won't buy it...

-ice