THE FILLING

Filling your Big Ben pipe requires just as much attention as choosing and buying it. A pipe packed too tight gives little smoking pleasure because you have to draw too hard. A pipe packed too loose draws too much air and becomes hot so that you do not taste the tobacco any more. Packing a pipe is often seen as one of the charms of pipe smoking. For many pipe smokers it is a relaxing activity and it is not that hard:

Loosen the tobacco on the flap of the pouch, or on the lid of the tobacco tin, and place the tobacco in the pipe, flock by flock. The first flocks are loosely pressed into the pipe. The next ones are pressed down more firmly, and so on, packing it more and more firmly until the pipe is full. The knack is to make sure that the tobacco is filled from the bottom to the top of the bowl, increasingly tightly.

Long-threaded tobacco is best packed spirally into the bowl by packing it with a rotating movement of the finger. The pipe has been filled correctly if it springs back slightly when pressed with the index finger, and if you feel a light, pleasant resistance when you draw on the pipe calmly and evenly. Obviously you do not have to fill the pipe completely. Fill it as full as you wish. However, you should never fill the pipe to the rim of the bowl because pipe tobacco tends to curl and swell when it is lit.
 
When you follow these instructions, packing a pipe is simply a matter of practice.