Last updated 2026-08-13
Pipes
The Pipe You Carry and the Pipe You Keep
Decide where the pipe is going to live and the rest of the choice makes itself. A pocket and a bedside table ask for different things, and the material follows from which one you are buying for.
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The pipe you keep
A piece that lives on a shelf can be anything. Nothing is going to sit on it, drop it or close a bag on it, so the only real considerations are how it draws and how easy it is to clean.
Glass wins here and it isn't close. You can see through it, which means you can see when it needs cleaning and see that it came clean. Nothing else offers that, and over a year it is the difference between maintaining a piece and guessing about it.
Size stops mattering, so a wider bowl and a longer stem are free improvements. Both cool the draw, and a longer stem is easier to get a brush through than a short one with a bend.
The pipe you carry
A bag changes every priority. The piece is now competing with keys, and it will be closed inside something, tipped over and forgotten about.
A lid is the feature that matters most and the one people skip. Without one, the bowl empties into the bag, which is both a waste and the reason the bag smells. A swivel or hinged cover solves the whole problem for a couple of dollars of design.
Metal survives this environment in a way glass doesn't. Brass and steel take being dropped and take being in a pocket with keys, and a sliding stem removes the last thing that snags.
Glass in a bag needs a case, and a case is a second thing to carry and lose. Some people happily do it, and the ones who don't usually stop carrying the pipe.
Hand Pipe
Blue Glass Spoon Pipe with Stand
Cobalt glass with white cane worked through it in a spiral, four and a bit inches end to end. A leather stand comes with it, so it has somewhere to sit and stays off the floor. Glass is the material you can see through, which is the only one that tells you when it needs cleaning.
Hand Pipe
Brass Pocket Pipe with Swivel Lid
Solid brass, with a swivel lid over the bowl and a stem that slides back into the body. The whole thing closes into a pocketable block with nothing to snag. Brass takes a patina with handling, so age reads as character. It is the one piece here you could put in a coat and forget about.
Pipe + Kit
Six-Inch Wood Pipe with Accessory Kit
Longer stem, which cools the draw simply by giving it further to travel. Arrives with the tamper, cleaner and pouch, so nothing else is needed on day one.
Accessories
Pipe Screens (100 pack)
The thing people run out of. A fresh screen is the difference between a pipe that draws and one that does not, and a hundred of them costs less than a single pipe.
What a screen is for
A screen sits in the bottom of the bowl and stops material being pulled through into your mouth. It is the cheapest upgrade available to any pipe and the one most likely to be missing.
They are consumable. A used screen clogs, and a cleaned screen never draws quite the same way again, which is why they are sold a hundred at a time. Replace instead of cleaning.
A note on what Amazon sells
Nearly every pipe on Amazon is listed as a tobacco pipe, and many put "tobacco only" in the title. That is the seller clearing a policy filter, and it is why searching for what you want returns cleaning supplies and screens instead.
It also means the useful search terms are the boring ones: the shape, the material and the length. This site calls these what they are, which is a hand pipe, and the listings underneath won't.
The rest of the gear
Pipes are one section of a longer guide covering storage, grinders, cleaning, rolling and odor.
Informational only
General information about equipment. Not medical or legal advice, and nothing here says cannabis affects any condition. Florida bars use in public places, whatever you are carrying it in.