I may have jumped in the deep end boys! Cigars=easy Pipes=hard After accumulating 9 pipes and about 50 tins and some large samples from Natch, I have decided this may be the end I can't keep a pipe lit, it's wet, I have spent too many hours to count reading, trying to learn and for shit. I get maybe 3 puffs and gone nothing. I have smoked it moist, dry, very dry, and even OTC's..... nothing. I have lit it a lot, a little, and in-between.....nothing. This is so nerve racking hobby ever.....well maybe golf Any advice before I sell everything and go back to my Padron's? I don't think I have one more bowl in me

The only advice I can give is DON'T GIVE UP!!!!!! Do you have a friend or aquaintance who can mentor you through it? It really is worth the effort to get past the learning curve.

I guess it has to be something that you really want, because I just don't see it as that difficult.

I wish I had a mentor They all smoke cigars and I am in the boondocks of SD. No B&M, within 100 miles and that is a cigar place

You have that problem on both extremes -- either packed way too loose, or way too tight. Either error will get you that result.

PLAY with it. Repeatedly doing it the same way will only get you more of the same result.

It's never going to behave like a cigar.

Re-lights are nothing to feel bad about.

A big draw and then another, thirty seconds later is not the way to go. Nurse it with more frequent, shallower sips.

Pipes are interactive.

Let it show you how it likes to be treated

I have a load of cigars I'm hot to trade for tobacco.

Sorry if it's not working out for you right now.

I can't offer concrete advice as well as the wise and experienced fellows here, but two little things--apologies if you've tried these already:

1. A corn cob is, for many new smokers, the most forgiving. For that reason, I also think cobs are good teachers: if good quality tobacco in a cob is giving you a hot, unpleasant smoke, it tells you there's a problem with packing or smoking pace, and you can adjust.

2. Have you tried a blend with a strong cigar leaf flavor? It may not be what you're looking for in a pipe, but with all your cigar experience, you'll at least know when you're "getting it," and apply what's going right to other smokes.

Above all things, you have the luxury of time: you can always mason jar your open tobaccos, put your pipes aside a while (out of the sun is best), and revisit them only when a pipe really seems to strike your mood. It'll be waiting for you.

If you don't enjoy it, why bother? Pipe smoking isn't for everybody. I'm the opposite, after a dozen years of cigar smoking I re-discovered the pipe and learned how to pack, tamp, light, smoke properly; now I don't really enjoy cigars anymore, I find pipe tobacco far more satisfying on every level.

Keep a folded-up kleenex handy. Turn your pipe stem-down occasionally & blot that nasty liquid up. The more you get the hang of it (and every freaking tobacco is going to be different -- no one size fits all with pipeweeds as far as packing goes -- especially flakes) the less of it there'll be.

Persistence in a righteous course brings reward
[I Ching]