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Favorite Briar Finishes

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mso489

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,459
What are your favorite briar finishes? I actually enjoy most finishes, but if I had to put them in favored order, with most favored first:
Smooth with grain, first

Sandbast, deep grain

Sandblast, subtle/shallow grain

Artfully rusticated

Smooth matte, silk brune, etc.

Carved rusticated

Rough rusticated

Glossy with grain

Glossy without grain

Smooth with opaque stain/color
What have I forgotten? Depending on the pipe, some of those lower on the list might ratchet upward. But this gives others a start for their own ranking.

 
cigrmaster

cigrmaster

Lifer
May 26, 2012
20,249
57,280
66
Sarasota Florida
If price were not an issue I would love all my pipes to be loaded with Birdseye. Next would be perfect straight grain.
But alas, I have to live with some really cool sandblasts and I do enjoy them. I learned a long time ago that you cannot smoke grain.

 
mso489

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,459
So much depends on the pipe. I have a Tsuge with a really light 'blast, and it is a whole different effect, subtle and pleasing.

 
mso489

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,459
One "finish" I don't like as well for smoking are leather wrapped briar pipes. Though I was still a kid, I remember them well from the commuter train platforms of the fifties when they were the stylish item for pipe smokers who rode the smoking cars on the commuter line, if you can imagine that these days. Some of those leather-upholstered briar pipes also had Meerschaum liners in the bowls. That was when smoking was almost required and marketing them involved a lot of bells and whistles. I still enjoy seeing them, and they could come around as a fashion among pipe smokers again, but I like the look of the briar itself too well to covet one. Those pipes were still around in the early sixties, the days of extra narrow lapels, extra narrow ties, and narrow snap brim fedoras, the Mad Men era. Before the arrival of "devices," commuter trains were also the host of many ongoing poker and bridge games that picked up every morning and/or evening for the commutes, in a cloud of smoke.

 
alialansari

alialansari

Starting to Get Obsessed
Mar 2, 2015
120
57
Hidd, Bahrain.
I always wondered if the quality of briar used in making smooth pipes is superior to that of sandblasted or rusticated ones. Do all bowls start out as smooth and then get scrapped into the sandblasted lot because they have some fault in them?

 
Chasing Embers

Chasing Embers

Captain of the Black Frigate
Nov 12, 2014
43,450
109,397
Not always. Some carvers will blast straight grains to produce perfect ringblasts.

 
mso489

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,459
Ali, I think that's generally true, though I'm not sure how much time and expertise is spent on a factory line. It's probably a quick assessment. Excellent grain is spotted and exploited if possible, I'm sure. Flaws are sent to the less revealing finishes. Some artisans are famous for being able to source first rate briar in the first place, and then to assess how to bring out the most spectacular aspects of it. You see this incredible flame and birds eye, and none of that is by chance. It's both a natural gift of a carver and the product of years of training and experience. It's like the rock climbers who see a staircase of footholds while others exhaust themselves feeling around.

 
bazungu

bazungu

Starting to Get Obsessed
Feb 28, 2018
110
7
Smooth perfectly centred cross grain (virgin finish)

angel hair straight gain (virgin finish)

Deep sandblast with black/red stain (I don't like it when the sandblast is too symmetrical)

Sea rock like rustication (Or Ferndown bark style)

Random grain patterns in bordeaux red stain (e.g. Dunhill bruyere finish)

All the others

 
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