Don't be afraid to handle or hold your meerschaum with clean hands. Remember, you purchased a meerschaum primarily for your smoking pleasure. The "added" pleasure you derive from a meerschaum is watching it color as you smoke it.

The conventional wisdom on this topic is that handling a meerschaum while warm removes the beeswax coating on the pipe, which highlights its coloring. While this is true, only the purist - the smoker far more concerned with the look of his pipe than his own smoking pleasure - need worry about it.

Do take care when removing the stem of your meerschaum by pulling it and twisting it CLOCKWISE while supporting the shank with the fingers. Replace the stem by pushing it and twisting it CLOCKWISE also. Twisting counter-clockwise could unscrew the tenon, and doing so repeatedly can strip out the shank. A little care here will be repaid through a lifetime of smoking pleasure.

Don't tap your meerschaum against a hard surface. If you tap it in your palm, be sure to support the shank firmly with your hand. This is sound advice for briar pipe smokers also. To empty a meerschaum, tip it upside down, and if the ash doesn't fall out on its own use a pipe tool gently to loosen it.

Don't let a cake develop in a meerschaum. Therefore do not worry about "breaking in" your meerschaum. Meerschaum pipes, unlike briars, do not burn and hence need not be protected by a carbon cake. Besides, the meerschaum is softer than the cake and it may crack very easily, since the cake expands with heat faster than the meerschaum does. You can ream it out, but you've got to be very careful in the process--the reamer will remove meerschaum faster than cake, so you've got to watch for spots where you've reamed away the cake and stay away from those.

Do clean the cake or residue inside the bowl of your meerschaum. Use a sharp-edged, blunt-ended tool. Avoid digging into the heel of the pipe when cleaning the graft hole by not allowing the pipe cleaner (NOT liquid cleaner) to extend too far into the bowl. Do not use alcohol to clean the bowl of a meerschaum pipe. The meerschaum is WET and SOFT in the heel immediately after a smoke.

Smoke your favorite blend in your meerschaum. Each pipe will color differently.