Can I be a briar killer?

Keep us posted on progress--like, "day 27, pipe is smoking great, boy am I bored, I'm putting it in the wood chipper."

If I would to do this I would also choose a Dr. Grabow. During this period I would run a cleaner though it on occasion, just to keep the draw open.
Now for the tobac I would choose a Codger Blend. Simple tobac, with minimal casings and toppings.
This is me.

Enjoy your experiment and please keep us posted.

Quite a while ago I decided to do this to my World's Ugliest Cob. I do not smoke it exclusively and smoke mostly Aros through it, especially cherry and berry blends, but I'll load it up with a codger blend every now and then, too. I don't clean it beyond running a pipe cleaner through the stem once in a great while to keep it open. I smoke it mostly while I'm working around the yard and honestly, I love the damn thing and hope to have it forever.

I have found that it is a lot more resilient than you might think.

Small dog.

Good one. I had to take a second "HUH?" look

Let us know how it turns out. I am interested to found out how long the Grabow will last.

Hahaha. Fantastic!!

Methinks you can not kill a briar.

A couple of years back Charl Goussard gave me a "pipe" to teach me not to be too scared of ruining a briar bowl. It is basically a poker shaped bowl (natural/unfinished) with an aluminium tube as shank and an ebonite mouthpiece. His instructions were to smoke it as many times daily as I could, never clean it (unless absolutely neccessary) and to smoke it as hot as I wished. You may have read of this pipe in the WAYS thread from time to time, I dubbed it the Goussard workshop poker.

Well, I've been smoking the heck out of this thing for a couple of years now and.....it's coloring nicely  No damage whatsover. Only been reamed once, when the cake build up became so thick I couldn't fit my little finger into the bowl anymore.

So, yes, a good piece of briar can take a lot of abuse/use. Our grandfathers often only had one briar and not often "killed" it.

I know one "briar killer" though. My plumber only smokes those smallish Peterson system full bents. He smokes one pipe only and he smokes the whole day. Even then it takes him about 3 to 5 years to finally crack the bowl or otherwise damage the pipe. He then tosses the pipe in the garbage and buys a new one exactly the same

That being said, I take good care of my favourite briars and will not risk damaging them. I am, however, much less scared of damage than when I started smoking.

So good luck with your experiment, djo!

Roger!

We should have set a cob up against it to see how they fare against each other.

Yep. And if you continue on smoking...keeping the dottle mopped, and a cleaner thru the stem, likely only one of two things will happen...eventually. You'll cake it up until you can't put tobacco in it anymore...or the thickness of the cake will heat and swell at a different ratio than the briar, causing one or more major cracks. And, neither of these will be the fault of your poor bent Duke.

Since you picked a bent Grabow Duke...I can vouch for it...I've got a plain old bent Duke which is from perhaps the early 60's or earlier (based on design which was NOT done as of the time my friend began at Grabow in 1966, or anytime later). This bent Duke is a TOP smoker...but would cost a small fraction of other mid-range and higher end pipes I have.

  If, and I say a BIG IF, you have the patience to break in a good Cob it should last your lifetime. The old MM Cobs with the soft bottoms did not last me long to burn thru the bottom. For over 10 years I waited for MM to make a better Cob, and “ dag nab it “ they now make some outstanding Cobs 👍👍👍

They last indefinately from my experience with my parents neighbor, who died 5 years ago. I knew him from when I was 16 till 5 years ago. He smoked only 3 pipes, all Grabows and the same PA all these years and . His wife gave them to me when he died and I've not smoked them yet!