Ok, so I have never smoked a pipe but want to. I was going to go pick up a cheapo pipe at the local B&M but decided to try Ebay. I ended up winning 2 auctions and picking up 4 pipes in total. The first is a Dr.Gabrow Westbrook and the other three were Savinelli Duca Carlo pipes. I will definitely clean them up before I smoke them but....

What type of baccy should I try first?? I enjoy med to full cigars, so something in line with that?

Thanks in advance for any input :-)
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Bueller Bueller anyone anyone Bueller....lol
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You picked an awfully slow forum to be pulling the Beuller line in. In fact, the whole forum is slow these past months.
If I was new to the pipes diversion, and I had a love of fuller bodied cigars, I would likely go with an english mixture,
a variety of products with ball$. Without going slam to the top of strength, you should try the various versions of
FrogMorton, maybe the baccy I just was introduced to this week, Squadron Leader. I like Commonwealth. I like a
large variety of Virginia/Perique blends too, Anniversary Kake is good, Escudo is excellent. But if you are trying
to duplicate the robustness of a cigar in a pipe, no sense in messing with aromatics with names like apricot kisses or
cinammon spanking or something. In the end you will find they please more of the people around you than your own
taste buds. Usually the only 'taste' you get with these is the cloud around you. The tobacco is usually rather tasteless.
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Yeah, I was starting to realize that this side of the forum wasn't visited all too often, lol. Thanks for your input, I'm going to do a little online shopping now. Hopefully the pipes come in sometime early next week.

Thanks again
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HEY! I like my Cinnamon spanked! :-)


Like Brad suggested, start with English blends. Frog Mortons, Squadron Leader, Dunhill EMP, Nightcap, 965.
Escudo is a great Va/Per that is worth a try.
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If theres a Tinderbox somewhere near you, or you want to buy bulks online from them, try the Sherlock's Choice and Philosopher. Sherlock's is our only bulk blend with Oriental/Turkish tobacco in it, so its a nice change from usual. Philosopher is our strongest blend, but of the people who buy english bulks from us its by far the most popular.

If you want to try an aromatic as well thats not too over powering with sweetness try Peterson's Irish Whiskey. It almost tastes like an english, but you can just tell its an aromatic by flavor. Oh, and Peterson's Irish Oak is a great english as well, but be warned, the Perique in it can kick your butt if you're not prepared.
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Ok, there actually is a TinderBox near me, I never go in there because its usually pretty pricey. I will have to check it out, the Sherlock sounds good. I probably wouldn't be too up for aromatic, not a sweet kind of smoker, lol.
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Just be careful your first time out. Online stuff gets your wallet all froggy. Buy a little tobacco locally and learn to fill your pipe
with it before you get 50 bucks down in a hole for a bunch of tobacco you don't like. Filling a pipe and having it burn to the
bottom on one or two lights takes time and patience.....and butane, lol. PLENTY of time to stock up after the fact.
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Sounds like a solid plan, pretty much like buying cigars. I buy a few at the local and then If I like them buy a box online. Hopefully I can get some this weekend. My pipes should come in around wed. and then I will have to clean/restore them. Thanks
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If you can pick up a corn cob tomorrow too, do it. If those pipes from fleabay are not clean, the smoke is probably going to be nasty. And trust me, as much will power as you think you'll have, you'll probably be itching to fire a bowl up.
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don't, whatever you do, read http://www.cigarasylum.com/vb/showthread.php?t=6366
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This. It takes every ounce of willpower I have to walk out of work empty handed.
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Sorry, I read some of that thread and posted on it. I havn't had too much time to read 22 pages of QnA, just thought it was quicker to post my own ?? lol

:-)
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Tobacco looks pricey, but consider what you are getting. A single cigar cost you what, $3-$23? What do you normally pay for your cigars? That is the cost of a one and a half hour smoke.

Now take expensive pipe tobacco - say $20 for a 50 gram tin (and that'd be really expensive). That amounts to $2.00 a pipe full if you have a big pipe that takes 5 grams of tobacco - and that is your hour and a half smoke. Normally, you get about 4 grams to a pipe bowl, if you pack it fairly tight.

Now, to put that into perspective, if you get some 8 ounces of tobacco at Tinder Box at $24 (what one TB is selling 8oz for), you will get about 56 smokes out of that 8oz. That comes to about $0.43 a smoke. You can't get Swishers for that little.

Even smoking the expensive stuff, compared to cigars, pipe smoking is cheap.

And if you get estate pipes, you can always sell them later on for about 1/2 their new price - if you take care of them.

As for what tobacco to try? I'd suggest going to a locoal tobacconist, maybe the Tinder Box and get an ounce of an aromatic (tobacco with a flavoring added), a burley blend, an English blend, a straight Virginia blend, and a Virginia with Perique. Try them all.

Everybody's taste in pipe tobacco may be much different than their tastes in cigars. They really do not compare.

Peace of the Lord be with you.
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See, I had no idea how much tobacco cost and how far it went, this is why I'm in here, so you guys can school my non piping arse, lol. I won't make it this weekend, just so damn busy. I'm gonna wait a bit until I get my pipes and clean them up.

Thanks for everyones advice.
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The Dr.Gabrow Westbrook finally came in. The pipe actually looks to be in good shape, very surprising. It doesn't seem to have much "cake" (I think thats what its called, lol) and the stem doesn't show any bite marks, just a few scratches. I love the look of it and can't wait to clean this puppy up.

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Nice looking pipe. Cake(yes that is what some people call it) or not I would still ream/scrape most of that off and do a salt treatment. get some strong liquor and soak some pipe cleaners and then run them through the stem. The ghost (old tobacco flavor) is actually absorbed into the briar and not in the cake so a good bowl cleaning will help with that. As MJ said I would grab a corn cob with the tobacco to get some immediate satisfaction while you are cleaning the pipes you just got. This way you know if you like the baccy you choose and it is not influenced by the tobacco that was previously smoked in the pipe. You will get some old flavors but after the cleaning and a few bowls of your choice the flavor will go away.
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