First off, I have to say that I am not the most tidy Piper.  Meaning I do not clean my pipes between smokes. Keep in mind also that I do not own any pipes that one would call a collector's item.  I have many pipes, and practically all of them get used quite a bit. Sometimes they are stuffed in pockets with loose change, other times they sit in a cubby in my car rolling around with a pocket knife and a lighter.  So they get used hard, and they show the wear. I probably have around 30 or 40 cobs, and probably 100 briar also.  I don't shop for estate tate pipes, but somehow I have acquired a lot of old pipes. Grabows, falcons, weird companies from the '70s that long went out of business.  I have some Petersons but they were gifts and I pretty much never smoked them.  And I have quite a few Morgan bonez, they are my favorites.  I tend to clean my pipes when they need it.  I've never worried much about ghosting, and I consider it a non-issue.  I've tried many techniques for cleaning pipes over the years.  The procedure I have settled on is this.

I run pipe cleaners in the shank from both ends if possible.  I also always clean a pipe when it is still warm, as the moisture usually helps to clean it.  I have various sizes of pipe cleaners, and I usually have one small enough to run up and down the stem also, I prefer the ones without the steel barbs for this.  Even though people warn against it, I often disassemble my pipe while it is still warm to clean it.  I've never had any issues with reassembling it, as long as it is reassembled immediately after cleaning.  Sometimes a pipe warrants a more thorough cleaning though.  In these cases I use alcohol as a solvent.  Everclear grain alcohol works very good for this. I am not a fan of a cake in my pipe.  I find it to be a little gross for some reason, and honestly I have seen some cakes that were quite alarming and had reduced the internal diameter by nearly 50%.  

I do much the same as you, pipe cleaner every time. For the bowl though, I tear off a piece of paper towel about 3-4” across and pick which one of my fingers fits the bowl the best and I twist the pipe on my finger, fold the paper towel and do it again. It’s worked great to keep cake from building up. Occasionally, I’ll do a scraping with a knife when I feel the inside of the bowl is getting rough. 

I have been amazed by some estate pipes I’ve gotten in the past. I’ve had ones that had so much cake buildup in them that about 1” diameter bowls only had enough room to fit a pencil down the center. To each their own, but I don’t even understand how someone let that happen, or even smoked the pipe that long where you could only fit a little bit of shag cut in it. 

I use a paper towel on meer but not briar, although I am pretty aggressive with the pipe cleaner. I just commented on Facebook about the heavy cake. Like smoking a single strand of ribbon in those estate pipes would be fun. Haha.

There are piping subcultures where a heavily built up cake inside a bowl is a point of pride.  Decades ago you would hear people talk about it much more than you do now.  Always explaining how careful you need to be with the cake on the bowl, because it was fragile and would crack off easily. And apparently at the time the belief was that the cake was the only thing that protected your bowl from certain burnout.  Back in the '80s and '90s there was a lot of talk about Dr. Grabow using cheap wood for their bowls. Often having holes in them and being filled with putty. And as the story went if you did not build up a cake quickly it would burn through one of the holes.  I have many Grabows, and I've never experienced anything like this.  Truthfully, some of those old pipes are my most sturdy.  

I mostly do the same, often with a paper towel, but pipe cleaner if that's all I have. Although, lately I've stopped doing it with a few pipes that seem to smoke a bit hotter. I got so in the habit of not developing cake, I realized I wanted to double check if maybe my preference had changed or if maybe I do want cake in certain pipes. 

I agree. The U-bend is an important technique. If you keep the dust out, it does not get mixed with water and tar (or whatever it is) and form a heavy cake layer. The natural tar makes pretty good cake for the small amount that I like. Good post.

Hi all, I smoke a Falcon and I keep things very clean. I run warm water and pipe cleaners through and in the aluminum humidome. My briar bowls are wiped out with paper towels until they come out clean. I’ve seen pipes online that caused me to gag, falcons filled with crud and juice from dozens of smokes 🤮 absolutely foul.