Quote Originally Posted by ndhawk
To those of you that have them, do you maintain them at all? Do you clean it or ever do anything at all to keep it good to hit? I sometimes just use a pen to remove any ash or resin left over.

Do you also have a dugout(extra space in the pipe's case to store weed), and if so can you use it so that you never have to actually pack the pipe just put it in the dugout and bring it back up? Is there some particular special way to do this so that the weed stays in the pipe when you pull it out of the dugout? I always end up packing it by hand in little bits really full so I can get at least 3 or 4 decent hits off of it.

What's the closest you've been to someone while using the pipe? Did they know?
I live by the Dugout / onehitter pipe (stem / bat). I use some bristle pipecleaners for the pipe part and a knife or something similar to scrape the bowl clean. (Q-tip also work great. Just break off the head and stuff them through. 2 will do the trick)

For loading... I never really thought about it, well until I thought about it. I either put downward pressure in the "stem" while moving it back and forth. That will break up the bud if you were too lazy to and load up a good hit.

OR If the smoke it nice and clean, I will just stick the "stem" in the stash put downward pressure while spinning the stem back and forth. (kind of like a cookie cutter)

Never hand-loaded a dugout "stem" / pipe.

The closest I've been is while family is visiting, I'm upstairs while they are downstairs. Take a hit or two and blow it out an open window. Those exaust window fans work great.

One note. If you are using a brass pipe / stem / bat... Get rid of it they suck. Get an aluminum one.