So then is avoiding cake the best idea for breaking in the pipe, and heating the moisture out of the briar?
A Rumination on the Superiority of Good Briar
- Thread starter Briar Lee
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Briar is a natural product, right, like lumber? It's a shrub or half-assed tree or something, right? Betcha it has sap flowing through it when it's alive. Green lumber sucks, I was told by my uncle, a carpenter. It's got to be aged, cured, dried, whatever you want to call it. I don't see a hell of a lot of difference between briar and other lumber, except for end use. I've had nasty pipes, and they tasted and behaved like green wood to me. No mystery.
Edit: Written while Sasquatch's above was posted. I do believe he says it better.
Edit: Written while Sasquatch's above was posted. I do believe he says it better.
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I’ve traveled to Washington Missouri and was invited to tour the working cob pipe factory, and saw first hand how cobs are selected. They are pretty well all the same, coming out of the two year long drying bin because they were very nearly the same, going in that bin.
But while Missouri Meerschaum uses machines (some well over a century old) to manufacture an astounding number of pipes per hour, those machines don’t grab a pipe and make a pipe. Missourians make those pipes, one at a time, using those old machines.
This is also true in Sparta North Carolina with one huge difference, there are undoubtedly and obviously differences in blocks of cured briar.
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Fifty dedicated employees, many with more than 40 years in pipe-making, bring a total of some 1200 years of skill to creating the best value for quality pipes available in the USA today.
Each of the 200,000 pipes they make annually from quality Mediterranean natural briar passes through their hands and 52 production phases before being distributed to pipe retailers across America.
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The Lord only knows how many pipes were made in Sparta the day my magnificently grained Golden Duke was made by a fifties man earning two dollars an hour, at the most.
If I had to be right or die, I’d guess it was a 1955 Christmas present to Dad who smoked cigarettes if anything, and he loaded and smoked it twice at most.
It sweated because it came from a region with a higher moisture content than Missouri, until the briar dried a bit.
I suppose the Golden Duke was top of the Duke line in 1955. It rated an Ajustomatic stem, and a $3.49 price tag, and was top of the card to buy for Dad’s Christmas present.
I wonder how much better a $5 Riviera or $10 Eldorado might be?
Good briar matters, or else all those Kaywoodies and Lee’s that cost five, ten, and fifteen dollars after the war we see on EBay, would have been sold as one or two dollar card pipes.
The American pipe industry depended on grading briar. The better the briar, the more they cost.
But while Missouri Meerschaum uses machines (some well over a century old) to manufacture an astounding number of pipes per hour, those machines don’t grab a pipe and make a pipe. Missourians make those pipes, one at a time, using those old machines.
This is also true in Sparta North Carolina with one huge difference, there are undoubtedly and obviously differences in blocks of cured briar.
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ABOUT DR. GRABOW
For more than 60 years, Dr. Grabow Pipes and a wide range of other pipe brands have been crafted in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Since 1943 the town of Sparta, NC has been home to what is today the largest quality pipe manufacturing operation in the world.Fifty dedicated employees, many with more than 40 years in pipe-making, bring a total of some 1200 years of skill to creating the best value for quality pipes available in the USA today.
Each of the 200,000 pipes they make annually from quality Mediterranean natural briar passes through their hands and 52 production phases before being distributed to pipe retailers across America.
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The Lord only knows how many pipes were made in Sparta the day my magnificently grained Golden Duke was made by a fifties man earning two dollars an hour, at the most.
If I had to be right or die, I’d guess it was a 1955 Christmas present to Dad who smoked cigarettes if anything, and he loaded and smoked it twice at most.
It sweated because it came from a region with a higher moisture content than Missouri, until the briar dried a bit.
I suppose the Golden Duke was top of the Duke line in 1955. It rated an Ajustomatic stem, and a $3.49 price tag, and was top of the card to buy for Dad’s Christmas present.
I wonder how much better a $5 Riviera or $10 Eldorado might be?
Good briar matters, or else all those Kaywoodies and Lee’s that cost five, ten, and fifteen dollars after the war we see on EBay, would have been sold as one or two dollar card pipes.
The American pipe industry depended on grading briar. The better the briar, the more they cost.
This primarily revolves around the violin makers of Cremona, Italy, of the mid 16th thru mid 18th centuries, principally the Amati, Guarneri and Stradivari families. Lots of research has been done on the products of these three makers, and no one has anything close to conclusive to offer. Some think it's the specific wood that was chosen, others think it the way the wood was treated, still others look at the way the components are shaped, and on and on it goes.
Wood getting older doesn't always make it better. Eventually it turns to mulch, just like human beings. There is a sort of worship of old britwood, like old Britwood is inherently superior. Old Britwood can be wonderful if it wasn't mistreated by previous owners, but modern day pipes are just as good in my experience.
But not all old Britwood and not all contemporary pipes. Taking Sturgeon's law into effect, 90% of everything is crap. That may seem a tad harsh, but it's probably a reasonable yardstick. Cheap crappy basket pipes from the early 20th century have largely ended up providing heat in the fireplace, while more expensive carefully maintained product has survived. Old Britwood takes on its aura because the 90% of it that was crap has long since turned to ash.
Then there's the myth that the quality of the raw material was much higher "back then" than it is now. That's not what I hear from people in the trade. Ken Barnes wrote me about the amazing quality of the briar he had gotten, as good as anything he'd seen in his career. And if you take the time to do a bit of research you'll find tidbits like a 1906 interview with the general manager of BBB complaining about the quality of stummels coming out of St Claude and how they aren't what they used to be. It's a popular trope.
I suspect that at various points in pipe history, briar supply has been better and worse... over harvesting in the peak production years (when single companies were making a half million pipes a year) must have left the hillsides pretty bare. But we've had 50 or 70 years to recover, and in most countries the briar is a governed resource. Ken was right - the small maker has access to terrific briar from any number of sources these days, and the cutters are doing a better job than ever of giving us what we want for grain, size, cut... it's just great. We are just now entering a phase where the hobby/artisan side is sort of catching up in terms of demand vs supply, and it's getting harder to find good pieces ready to go. You can pay for fresh wood from any number of mills, but it's dripping wet, boiled a week ago kind of thing. And that's what most of us do - pay our money, get our wood, and sit on it until it's ready to go. People who started doing this 10 years ago are in an okay cycle. Newer carvers are having a tough time coming up with truly ready wood. Luckily it doesn't take super long, 6 months is probably as much as many pipe blanks ever would have aged in most factories (Savinelli claims 3 years ONLY for their high grades, for instance). Lots of excellent briar out there, and I think the "secrets" for making a pipe smoke well are pretty thoroughly understood by most in the community.
What is the optimum age range for the best briar? I know Dunhill used to use 100 year old briar. Would a Dunhill from 1921 with approximately 200 year old briar be too old/brittle to use?
Some have speculated that the effects of The Little Ice Age (1303-1860) on the trees that were used to produce them may be a factor.
Just to take some fun out of this conversation re violins:
www.science.org
Million-dollar Strads fall to modern violins in blind ‘sound check'
Living violinmakers score a win over Stradivari in double-blind test
www.science.org
This just shows what you're up against when trying to de-myth something. LOL. "Yeah but what about CALABRIAN DEAD ROOT???"
I have a Ming Dynasty style stable I bought while in Xian, China. The wood is naturally aged Rosewood. The workshop - an artisan shop- aged it for two years . At that point it was constructed using hand tools and assembled with no metal fasteners. It then was given 30 coats of shellac made from a type of sumac plant. This dining room table and it’s 10 chairs are an artistic wonder. But when I inquired why only 2 years of drying, the artisans state that once the wood reached an equilibrium with the surrounding air, the aging process is complete. My point to all of this is that I am sure it is the same with briar. Once the moisture level reaches stasis with the surrounding air, it is what it is.
This makes a lot more sense to me than moaning a mantra of "the wood, the wood, the wood." There's also the "old britwood" guys who say a pipe is exemplary simply because it's old and British. (Circular, I know). There was an article on pipesmagazine about "old wood" that said absolutely nothing about its qualities, which I found par for the course as its laudations were totally without substance.
How do we know a pipe smokes well. Why, because you say it does. hat proof is that? None. We simply have no way to enter into another's subjective smoking experience, and even if we did, how would those fine smoking qualities that be measured? We have no way to communicate about that which we cannot measure.
This doesn't surprise me in the least. Many years ago I asked one of my friends, who owned a Strad, (I can't remember the instrument's name, sorry) if it was truly better than newer violins and his response was, "of course not". He dearly loved that instrument, but he also played a modern instrument, for which he had paid about $26,000 at that time, just as much.Just to take some fun out of this conversation re violins:
Million-dollar Strads fall to modern violins in blind ‘sound check'
Living violinmakers score a win over Stradivari in double-blind test
Also, who knows what these 300 year old instruments, many of which have been disassembled for restoration during their existence, sounded like when they were new? Nobody living.
This discussion reminds me of the conversation I had, repeated several times here, with a collector of ultra high grade Danish pipes. I asked him if his Bo Nordh pipes really smoked so much better than any of his other pipes and he responded, "They smoke about as well as my Grabows".
We love romance and mythology. The pipe world is full of such beliefs. Doesn't make them a substitute for reality.
Another unscientific thing I believe anout good briar is that eventually, and it might take generations of owners and centuries, is that eventually good briar becomes saturated with bitter tars and the pipe wears out, and needs to be displayed as a memento that there was once, a fine work of art that served it’s purpose well.
I own a patent pending Kaywoodie Drinkless made about 1933 or so.
When Dillinger was robbing banks that pipe was surely magnificent. Once it was somebody’s prized smoker, and beautiful to look at and hold.
I have soaked it in grain alcohol and scrubbed it, so thaf it’s no longer black but a chocolate brown.
Three times I’ve packed the bowl with sea salt and grain alcohol, and left it overnight. The salt came out black, the first time, brown the second, and nearly still white the third. It tasted like salt for awhile, then soured again.
It smokes so hot at the bottom it’s char darkened the bottom of the pipe.
Overall to look at it in your hand, it doesn’t look worn out but it’s had it’s day and there’s no more days left for it to please.
I own a patent pending Kaywoodie Drinkless made about 1933 or so.
When Dillinger was robbing banks that pipe was surely magnificent. Once it was somebody’s prized smoker, and beautiful to look at and hold.
I have soaked it in grain alcohol and scrubbed it, so thaf it’s no longer black but a chocolate brown.
Three times I’ve packed the bowl with sea salt and grain alcohol, and left it overnight. The salt came out black, the first time, brown the second, and nearly still white the third. It tasted like salt for awhile, then soured again.
It smokes so hot at the bottom it’s char darkened the bottom of the pipe.
Overall to look at it in your hand, it doesn’t look worn out but it’s had it’s day and there’s no more days left for it to please.
That's another popular myth. Actually, the company known for its "old wood" was Barling, not Dunhill. Sellers on eBay would rhapsodize about Barling using 100, 150, 200 year old wood for their pipes, which was and is just ludicrous.
In their early '20's pamphlet, "The Romance Of The Barling Pipe", the Company wrote about looking for burls that were around 60 years of age. In their 1962 catalog they wrote about looking for briar between "80 and 120" years of age. I think the latter is a sales pitch, since they weren't making pipes strictly from Algerian briar, having lost their Algerian harvesting operations in 1954.
They bought their wood on the market, like everyone else. And there's the myth about the superiority of Algerian briar, which was actually considered a lower grade of wood a hundred + years ago. That was wrong as well, the belief of Algerian generically being better than, or lesser than, other sources.
It comes down to knowing about the working characteristics of whatever materials you're using and accepting that there will be variations and surprises. Montague Barling was the "500 pound gorilla" in the trade, so they got good material from just about everywhere.
100 year old briar is an enduring myth. Kaywoodie advertised that they used 100 year old wood. Ehrlich had a line of pipes made from 100 year old wood, or so they advertised. Other makers have done the same. It's a nice round number.
Crapshoot. Cosmetic "perfection" pleases eyes, but that doesn't determine how the pipe smokes. My Peterson Irish Made Army pipes smokes as well as natural finish Peterson with straight grains. And ones with eyes just as well. Well engineered, and well drill pipes smoke well. And some of 'em smokes slightly better.
Rick Newcombe addressed that in his book, In Search Of Pipe Dreams, when he asked several respected pipemakers for their take on this, and I seem to recall that they thought that a pipe hit it's limit at between 1,000 and 2,000 bowls. Then he also mentioned a collector who has happily smoked his pipes for decades, maybe 10,000 bowls each and both still going strong.
We've also seen pictures of old pipes, with decades of use, cut in half that show little to no penetration of tobacco oils, the biggest damage being done by cracks forming around the base where the heat generated by overzealous puffers caused the wood to fail.
I've experienced a favored pipe seeming to go a bit "off" and I give it a thorough cleaning and put it away to rest for a few months to a year. It always bounces back. I don't have a theory as to why, I've just noticed that it does.
A few of my pipes date back to the 1880's and they all smoke well. There's no exact limit.
As for "good briar" and "plain briar," My pipe collection has three generations -- my grandfather, Pop and those I have added. I was raised on the principal that Dunhills and Barling were the best pipes, and they're great. That said, I have some of Grandpa's pipes -- he was born in 1909, so some of his are likely from the 1930s-1960s -- that are no-name pipes and smoke like champs. And knowing Grandpa, he didn't spend much on his pipes.
I'd be inclined to be more concerned with the construction of the pipe rather than the briar -- good or bad, relatively speaking. While I'm sure there are briar experts on these forums, you have a better chance of evaluating the pipe in ways you can see and feel -- can you run a pipe cleaner through it? Does the stem meet flush with the mortise and the stem? -- than the more cloudy world of briar.
I'd be inclined to be more concerned with the construction of the pipe rather than the briar -- good or bad, relatively speaking. While I'm sure there are briar experts on these forums, you have a better chance of evaluating the pipe in ways you can see and feel -- can you run a pipe cleaner through it? Does the stem meet flush with the mortise and the stem? -- than the more cloudy world of briar.
BTW, when makers talk about "100 year old wood", they're not talking about the age of the pipe. They're talking about the time the burl spent in the ground. So a 1921 Dunhill made from 100 year old wood would still be a pipe made from 100 year old wood.
As for whether it can be smoked, that depends on the condition of the wood. If it's been left in a hot attic for decades it will turn into something like particle board.
Nicely grained (or shaped or whatever) are pretty. If I think a pipe is pretty I'll be a bit more careful with it, so odds are it'll smoke better.
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