So what is the pipe curing process?

I do not believe there is or ever was anything good about oven curing wood. It is essentially rushing the process and brings truncated results based on my working with wood for knife handles. Normal curing of Briar, if it is anything like curing other woods is keeping it in a dry place for years and making sure all the moisture is gone which both enhances its longevity and stability. Oil curing was another method of reducing drying time but I am not sure how well it worked or works. In wood circles, I think the consensus is that air curing is the superior method, although expensive from a time standpoint. I am curious to hear from those that know more specifically about pipes though, especially on the oil curing side.

There is also kiln drying, but I don't know what the results are, vis-a-vis regular air-drying.

There is also kiln drying

Click to expand...

This is the same as oven drying, although kiln is a more accurate term.

To pipe makers, oil curing is pretty much like Fight Club. You dot talk about it...

The purpose of curing is to allow the sap and resins to work their way out of the wood, and a well-cured pipe will require minimal breaking in until a cake is built up. Here's a bit of a rundown. When the briar is harvested, it undergoes various treatments including boiling the wood, drying it, sometimes kiln drying, and so forth until it goes to the mill, where it is cut and prepared for sale. Depending upon the age of the briar, it will be bought by the lower-end producers, who will purchase the newer wood, to the high end artisanal producers who will pay premium prices for older briar.

Dunhill stamped certain pipes DR, meaning "Dead Root." This meant that the tree had died, and the root had remained in the ground for sufficient time to allow all the saps and resins to work their way out of the wood. Such a pipe required little to no breaking in, and could command a premium price. Additionally, Dunhill would oil-cure its briars. This meant that the briar would be immersed in a proprietary oil solution and gently heated (not french-fried,) to allow the oil to pentrate and replace the saps and resins. Then the pipe would be gently heated in air to allow the oil to bead up on the surface. It would be wiped down several times until the oil stopped beading on the surface. Dunhill advertised that its oil-cured pipes were better smokers than other pipes. It was a great advertising pitch, but the jury is still out on the efficacy of the process. Here I must confess that I have a preference for an oil-cured pipe, but that's a personal thing. I can't prove that it's "better" than another method.

The Italians prefer air-cured pipes. This means that the briar is placed on a rack in a warehouse where air can circulate over it for anywhere from one to ten years. The briar is turned regularly to allow the air to reach all surfaces evenly. The air curing will allow the saps and resins to work their way to the surface where they can evaporate into the air.

What all this means is that regardless of the method of curing, if you buy a well-made pipe from a reputable pipe-maker, you can be assured of getting a briar in which the saps and resins have been mostly removed from the pipe by a variety of methods.

So yes--curing is important, it does matter, but every well-made pipe from a reputable manufacturer, whether one of the better factories or any of the artisanal pipe-makers, has been well-cured, and you can buy it with confidence that you are getting a well-made, well-cured pipe.

@ravkesef
Great overview of the curing process and its importance in the pipe making process.
I've noticed that some cheaper pipes appear to have a greenish patch on one side of the pipe that I've always interpreted as improperly cured or un-cured briar, but I'm just guessing.

As briar is the vessel in which we smoke, and as when it is green it contains materials that sully the smoke, a quality pipe has to be made from from cured briar. I suppose each maker has standards for the type and duration of curing. I think that even quality factory pipes have had some curing, but it doesn't make sense that the wood in pipes selling for $100.00 or so will be cured as well as those selling for $1000.00.

Many sacred cows in this thread- A couple of thoughts-
I buy my briar in quantity from a 3rd generation cutter in Calabria Italy who we visited last year and got a good feel of how his process works. They dig the burl first and leave it covered in the basement in piles that are moistened over a period of several months. Next step is cutting the briar on the saw- After cutting, they will boil it in a large vat for 24 hours- this is the step that actually removes the resin. The rough cut blocks are aged in piles usually for no more than 3 months at which point they are shipped to the pipe makers. The wood at this point is fairly wet- The challenge for the pipe maker is to be able to buy enough briar to let it air dry for a year or two. Wood of any type will air dry to the ambient humidity at a rate of 1" per year, so after two years, it simply is not going to get any drier. In the rare case where

I drill a block and see moisture forced to the surface by the heat of the drilling, I finish drilling and lay it aside for a few more months to continue drying.
Dead root briar has long been suspected to be a marketing gimmick used by Dunhill- Fires, bugs, and uncontrolled drying will tend to destroy burls of dead briar.
I'll leave the subject of oil curing to those who actually use it- Lee van Erck and I believe Walt Cannoy use it…

I have a dead root briar from Julius Vesz. It produced a wonderful taste on the first few smokes -- very noticeable.

After a cake started to develop, the taste became quite ordinary. I think the hype is not justified.

I will soon ream the cake back to the wood -- or nearly so -- just to see if I can recapture that initial taste.

I'll post my findings.

@ravkesef. My friend, please allow me to put some things for you in the right order because in your mind they are a bit mixed up..When the briar burl is been harvested from the forest, it undergoes an initial treatment, in order to cut off any parts of it that are nor useful during production of plateaux or Ebauchons.This is left over pieces of the root system of the plant as well as parts of the stem of the tree. In some cases and in some briar producing countries the people who harvest the wood proceed into processing it further more by splitting the burls in half, thirds or even quarters, depending on the size and the overall quality of the burl, in order to remove inner parts of it;parts that their quality is subpar, like dead parts of the wood, stones, red coloured wood in the burl that indicates inferior quality and many more and then they bring it to the mill. The wood that comes in the mill is not boiled, dried or anything else. On the contrary, we, the mills, try to keep it as close as possible to its original state when it was in the earth as much as possible.

When the burls come into the mill, THEN we start cutting them, always aiming for the best possible quality out of each piece. It is the nature of the wood such, that you can't a priori say" i will make a plateaux out of this piece".You always fallow the wood. its quality and its grain pattern will lead to towards where it wants to be taken.
Another issue that i have my objections on is the Dunhill DR myth. From my experience, I consider it exactly that; a myth.

When a heath tree dies, decomposition starts very fast and it starts burl first because that is the part of the tree that is exposed in an environment that promotes growth of micro organisms that metabolise dead plant matter into useful nutrients for nature.So, in a relatively small amount of time and with the stem of the tree still standing, the burl is decaying fast and it is unusable for pipes. In my experience the first thing that happens is that the saps inside it start to kind of ferment, that is happening is a few day after the tree stops getting nutrients from the ground, and and the wood acquires an ammonia like smell at the beginning and then it smells like bad cheese.
All the rest that have to do with different methods of curbing, air, kiln, oil curling, I agree with you and my opinion is that every method has its advantages as long as the necessary principles are been fallowed.
I hope I do not sound too authoritarian, thats the last thing i want to be, I just thought it would be a good idea for all the brothers of the briar to have the pipe making process in their mind right.
Keep smoking....