Your rotation practice...

at home I have over a hundred pipes...with a strong representation of stanwell and tinsky among several others...when I have all of these at my disposal...I keep them in cabinets and chose from the whole gamut...whatever strikes my fancy...I tend to smoke certain families of tobaccos in certain pipes...because I like different types of pipes for different families of tobacco...for instance if I am smoking something like OJK...I'll go for a smaller pipe...otherwise the nic. will get to me...but...

here in Denmark is a different story.

I have had a remarkably small rotation of six pipes...5 stanwells and a Dunhill for the last 6 months...and the dunhill only for a little while...and none of them have gone sour or had the least problem...all I do is keep up general cleaning from day-to-day...and all is golden...

anyway...I don't think it is as terribly important as some people make it out to be...as long as you keep up the maintenance and don't smoke the hell out of one pipe...anyway...KISS works well...and if you get enjoyment out of another more complicated way...all the more power to you...I just don't think that I could keep up with it in the long haul...

Cheers,

Josh

small rotation of about 20 or so I just try to select a pipe that I haven't smoked in a few days. I have only about 4 pipes that are dedicated to a genre, the remainder have seen a bit of everything.
So basically I have no rotation at all, hodge podge grab what I feel like, load it and light it. For me, it is the only way to fly, anything more would numb my mind.

For my little briar buddies. I don't have many in the rotation, but 2-3 bowls a day and 9 in the rotation works out fine.

I have 18 briars and 5 cobs. Have a few I use for specific blends.I select the next in line and go to the next. A few days rest on each I suppose. Working on more briars since giving up ciggs. 3 weeks now.
Dave

24 pipes. 1 pipe per day. 24 days rest between smokes. Works like a dream for me. I ain't changin'.

This works so well for me since I got rid of all the pipes in my rack that didn't wow me. Now, I seldom (if ever) jonez for any particular pipe - just the next one in the rotation is good enough (since every one is exciting to me).

Funny thing about this. When I first thought of getting rid of over 60 pipes I didn't think I'd ever be able to part with all those pipes. It was tough letting go of some of them but get real, what I have now is sooooooooo far better I don't even think of them unless this kind of thread comes up ... and now the thought is "thank God I did that" rather than moaning over their loss.

All of these responses have shown rather careful thought. I approached the issue from another direction. Rather than dedicate pipes to tobaccos, I prefer to limit the kind of tobaccos which I smoke to a few readily accessible blends, usually burleys. In this way, the pipe-tobacco selection process is much easier. There is no set rotation, I smoke whatever pipe is right for the moment.

There are a few exceptions. For example, I recently found that a Christmas BBB '82 is best for Irish Flake, and has become a flake pipe. There are times when you just sense that you'll have a great smoke w/ a particular pipe, and that great smoke may come from a particular tobacco in that pipe, only. It's the pipe that helps the smoke along, not the tobacco. I had an Olde England apple that could transform the worst tobaccos into serviceable smokes. Maybe engineering or structure, maybe the briar, but the smoke was just outstanding every time. OTOH, any pipes that don't smoke well have to go, and that point is firm. I agree with Rick in casting off the marginal smokers.

I have also dedicated a KW09B just to 5Bros, and the string cuts (G-H Kendall KY). More on that experiment later. I can say that after 3 weeks, the concentration of nicotine in that pipe's bowl is well above threshold levels for human health

There are no rigorous rules for cleaning: a pipecleaner after a smoke, an occasional light reaming, never alcohol in the bowls.

But, overall, the nominal diversity has helped tremendously.

I used to have something that looked half-ass like it would be considered to be something that would remotely resemble a rotation. It ain't even close to that anymore.

So what do I do?

Well, I pick up a pipe, smoke the hell out of it over the course of several days with the same blend - usually OGS. If the taste starts to go a little off, I run a cleaner through it and puff on. When I get tired of looking at that pipe, I give it a decent cleaning, put it in the drawer and pick something else.

I do however stick to the same genre of blends with my pipes. A VA pipe will never get soiled with an English or a Burley. I have other pipes for that.

From my personal experience, I can only conclude that once you find those blends that just work without gunking your pipe, rest and TLC is a bunch of hooey.

Puff on.

Predictably, most of my pipes are dedicated to burlies, I do however have 2 set aside for aromatics (I don't often smoke aromatics so these two are probably my least favorite pipes and one of them is a danish handmade). Five pipes are set aside for English/Va. The two superstars in that group are a large no-name, made in England billiard (which I'm currently smoking SL in) and a large apple Longchamp (a French pipe covered in leather) which seems to be a natural for English blends. I'll also occassionally use some of my new school Kaywoodies for non-burley blends but the four-digit pre-1940 Woodies never see anything but Codger Burlies.

My cleaning regimen is a pretty unformal affair as well and seldom involves anything more substantial that running a pipe cleaner through when I get a gurgle or the pipe just begins to taste nasty. Every couple months I take a reamer to the entire fleet.

I do rest my pipes between smokes at least several hours but generally I go several days between smoking a given pipe.

to give my 80+ pipes a good rest between smokes. A few pipes I set aside as "friday only" (my day off), and my other favorites rotate other random days.

Some of my junk pipes may get smoked a few times a week, however, every one of my pipes is well swabbed out before being re-racked.

I have no dedicated pipes per se, but I do notice several that smoke certain blends better than others.

organization and dedication. It just doesn't always work for me. This question has caused me to really think about how I plan on doing this. Now that all my pipes are out of their racks, maybe it's time to reorganize the office. Now where did I put that lighter? :)

I'm an aromatic smokers so I don't care to devote any type of tobacco to one pipe. If I'm trying somthing new I'll fire it up in the corn cob first to make sure it's not to horrible. Other then that I'm not to worried.

As for rotation, I have 7 pipes I use. I'll pick one up and and smoke it until running a pipe cleaner through it just doesn't do it for me. Then I'll move on to the next one.

My rotation basically works this way:
( in aprox. 200 pipes, I have some of them to aromatics blends, some to virginias blends, and the rest to english blend).

In those 200 pipes, there are 80 aprox. pipes in a low-mid range price ( Stanwells, Savinellis, Chacoms, Butz Choquim, Hilson, etc., - as well as seconds marks of many carvers- ), that I use to rotate when I work: I am a salesman, I use to smoke 1 pipe in the morning - going to my first place - ; and sometimes another one when I finish.
The rest of my pipes -one hundred or so-; of that pipes that I consider best; I smoke them in my house, of course trying to follow ( and trying to remember ) each case if it is for Vas, English and/or Aromatics.

Eduardo + WO. Larsen + 965.-

I select a pipe out of my 8 pipes, and smoke it, bowl after bowl, for one day or for many days. I try to clean it every night(disassemble and clean thoroughly w/ dry cleaners). I clean all the nooks and crannies in there as well as possible, again only w/ dry cleaners.

Sometimes, I have 2 or 3 pipes off the rack and smoke any one of them indefinately, but once cleaned, the 1 or 2 or 3 pipes get a day or so to rest. Obviously, the rest is varied and often very short. When I moved recently, I smoked the same pipe for about 2 weeks, several bowls a day, cleaning it every day or two.

I do think that rest is important. I just think that with 2 or 3 pipes in the mix, it sorta' happens on its own.

My meer rarely gets smoked at all, so really I've got seven pipes in the rotation.

I think seven is a manageable number. If I were traveling, then two, I think.

I have traditionally only smoked one blend at a time, for instance, Prince Albert for about 8 months, then Mammoth Cave Twist for a year, etc., so my pipes were not dedicated(or they were all dedicated to the same blend).

However, the Pete likes englishes, so it may well get dedicated to them in the near future.

I stick to a strict rotation. I smoke a pipe once a week, whether it needs it or not. The only exceptions are a 1895 WDC giant bulldog with an amber stem and a cheap Italian that gets it every 3 or 4 months.

By one pipe a day, you mean one pipe for all day's bowls right? Or you just have a single bowl per day?

Sometimes I'll have multiple bowls in one day in the same pipe before putting it back to rest. Most time however if I go for multiple bowls I'm reaching for variety and thats when the yard work rack gets its duty. I'd say 90% of the time each pipe just gets one smoke a day - but its not some hard fast rule. During break in for example I'll smoke a single pipe for 2-4 weeks multiple bowls per day until the pipe breaks in the way I like ... of course thats not possible now that I'm breaking in 5 at the same time. Aargh.