How To Light a Pipe?

Lighting a pipe is not rocket science, but it can still prove to be a bit of a challenge for the beginner. If you are accustomed to smoking cigarettes you will certainly notice a difference, since lighting a tobacco pipe requires more attention and care. In this article we will go over the steps involved in lighting a pipe, but these are only recommendations. You might find, based on your particular pipe and tobacco, that a slight change in procedure is called for. If so, then by all means go ahead and light your smoking pipe in the way that works for you.

Tobacco pipes and how to light them

Before lighting up, you will have to pack your pipe of course. You can read about the technique behind packing in another article on this very website. When the pipe is ready you will go through these three steps:

1.      Char the top

Instead of lighting up completely from the get go, you start by lighting ever so slightly the tobacco at the top of your chamber. This is also called the false light. The goal is to char the upper part of the tobacco, thereby removing moisture and evening out the tobacco in density. Doing this first will give you a more well-balanced smoking experience. When you light the tobacco, you should look to have an even distribution of the flame, and you can achieve this by moving the flame in a circular motion around the top of the chamber, accompanied by a few gentle puffs.

2.      Tamp the tobacco

Let the flame extinguish and tamp the tobacco gently with your pipe tool. You will probably have seen experienced pipe smokers use their fingers to do this, but you either need to wait for the tobacco to have cooled off, or have some very thick-skinned fingers for you to be able to do this. Therefore, a pipe tool is highly recommended. When you tamp the tobacco, you should aim to bring the tobacco back to the level it had when you packed it. Doing the false light will unravel the tobacco somewhat, so a bit of tamping is needed.

3.      Light up properly

Now you can proceed to light up your smoking pipe properly. This part of the lighting process is also called the true light. Light up your tobacco with the same objective of having an even distribution of the flame. Use your puffs to bring the flame down deeper into the tobacco and when the stem supplies you with a comfortable amount of wonderful tobacco pipe smoke, then you can consider your pipe fully lit.

We hope this little guide on how to light a tobacco pipe was useful for you. As mentioned earlier, the foundation of a good experience smoking a pipe is knowing how to correctly pack the tobacco in the chamber of the pipe. We cover this topic in another article that can be found on this very website along with a vast selection of tobacco pipes and pipe accessories. Enjoy!