(Scratching head) than why did your initial contribution to the thread denigrate Algerian briar of all eras from Alfred Dunhill forward ? Edwards Algerian briar Pipes from the 1970’s and 1980’s that I am most familiar with were light for their size, broke in as easily as any Italian or English brand at multiples of the price, had decent machine made mouthpieces and can be obtained inexpensively today on the estate market. And the early Randy Wiley freehands from that era were at least as good a pipe as anything any artisan today is making. Again, they can be obtained at reasonable prices on the estate market. And there is a market.
Again, there's a huge difference between the pipe MAKER's view of a product, and the pipe SMOKER's view of a product. I hate Algerian briar. It's cut poorly, it's full of big flaws, out of 20 select grade blocks I probably get about 2 smooth pipes and 4 in the garbage. Same money buys me wood out of Italy that I would get 18/20 smooths and maybe 1 in the trash. So I don't want that briar. It loses me money.
Dunhill's take in "About Smoke" is, as I said, candid about his feelings on the wood, he couldn't get nice pipes out of it, so it sat around until it dried and shank and showed some interesting grain, and the sandblast/oil cure was the result. That's not my opinion, that's what Dunhill wrote in the book.
The idea that there's some particular block from some particular hillside that smokes magically better is BS imho. I've bought from everywhere, smoked everything, spent thousands of dollars searching for this answer. And the answer is, the briar is a very, very small portion of how good a pipe smokes (given that lots of excellent pipes are not made from briar at all we should not be surprised). I wanted very badly to have magic briar, to make the best, most reliable smoking pipe on the planet. And to do that, takes skill in making stems. And ..... basically any old briar that isn't junk grade. I have Spanish, Greek and Italian wood in my shop now, I'll happily make anyone a pipe from any of those, or for the truly dedicated, three identical pipes from 3 different sources. And they'll smoke.... about the same.