A Rumination on the Superiority of Good Briar

[lawdawg]

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

www.science.org

That was an interesting read, and a surprising result of their blind test of instrument tone.

The takeaway I got is that some of the violins were proven to be, for lack of a better or more accurate description, “better” than others, even if the result was the reverse of what was expected. But what is it that makes some high end violins better than others? Seems like they still can’t figure that out exactly, which seems to be about where we’re at with briars, except with far fewer people who would even think to try to answer the question.

 

[sablebrush52]

Though not as conclusive of a statement. Makes me feel like it's more of when we can then a guarantee.

It's almost 70 years since they lost their operations, so definitive proof of the sort you're requiring is unlikely to turn up. Basically Barling controlled their product from the ground to the counter, so there's that. 60 yo burl isn't exactly an unreachable goal.
Taking your concerns, how can we know you are Bob and not Pansie Mae, or that there was one other bob so that you could become anotherbob? Maybe your responses are the result of a thousand monkeys striking keys on Underwood typewriters. How do we know that you're not a simulacrum, plugged into a modem in the basement of a necromancer preparing for an invasion of Earth from the planet Mongo, Perhaps you are a glitch in the system. Considering the tangent you, or whatever is being represented as you, are intent upon embarking it isn't fanciful for any of these possibilities, or others really strange, to be the purported entity assigned the moniker anotherbob. Please provide indisputable proof that you are anotherbob and I will be satisfied that you are.

 

[Chasing Embers]

 

[sablebrush52]

Talked to him about it. It split vertically along the shank. Said it was irreparable and unavoidable.

Doesn't have any bearing on whether adding a silicate coating will or won't help a different pipe. Really old and possibly dried out pipes are something of a crap shoot.

 

[hauntedmyst]

Ebauchon aren't simply small roots, they are just a cut of briar that doesn't have bark. If a briar block is cut so that it has the outside skin on it, it's a plateau. Everything else is Ebauchon

This is always how I've understood the difference to be. Plateau is simply the outside of the root, and Ebauchon from the rest.

 

[Chasing Embers]

Doesn't have any bearing on whether adding a silicate coating will or won't help a different pipe.

Never said it did. I just said I talked to him regarding the issue and he said it was beyond repair.

 

[sablebrush52]

Never said it did. I just said I talked to him regarding the issue and he said it was beyond repair.

Such a shame. That was a pretty pipe.

 

[Chasing Embers]

Such a shame. That was a pretty pipe.

I keep it as a display piece.

 

[anotherbob]

It's almost 70 years since they lost their operations, so definitive proof of the sort you're requiring is unlikely to turn up. Basically Barling controlled their product from the ground to the counter, so there's that. 60 yo burl isn't exactly an unreachable goal.
Taking your concerns, how can we know you are Bob and not Pansie Mae, or that there was one other bob so that you could become anotherbob? Maybe your responses are the result of a thousand monkeys striking keys on Underwood typewriters. How do we know that you're not a simulacrum, plugged into a modem in the basement of a necromancer preparing for an invasion of Earth from the planet Mongo, Perhaps you are a glitch in the system. Considering the tangent you, or whatever is being represented as you, are intent upon embarking it isn't fanciful for any of these possibilities, or others really strange, to be the purported entity assigned the moniker anotherbob. Please provide indisputable proof that you are anotherbob and I will be satisfied that you are.

that pretty much proves my point. Except I am not saying I am probably Bob or indicating and implying I am a Bob I am saying it.
I honestly upon thinking about it more. You can't really get proof the piece of wood is 100 percent over a certain age. You can have a really good idea and list of criteria of precisely what to look for, but to say this piece is blank old isn't so precise.
Oh and by the way I am also one of those Popes that no one talks about. You know not Catholic. Could prove that but I currently in hiding. You know how it is when you need a break from well wishers and miracle seekers. And some people no matter how much you tell them everyone's a pope they're still impressed.

 

[jpmcwjr]

Any one have a cogent thought to add? —(On the subject, that is.)

 

[captainsousie]

Any one have a cogent thought to add? —(On the subject, that is.)

My magic 8-ball says "outlook unlikely"...?

 

[sablebrush52]

I honestly upon thinking about it more. You can't really get proof the piece of wood is 100 percent over a certain age.

You can’t and I can’t, but that doesn’t mean that people who harvested burls couldn’t. Talk with a briar merchant and your perspective might change. My experience is that people in the trade know the wood with which they’re dealing.
When a company describes the wood they’re using, it’s within the parameter they’ve set. It’s not like they know a burl’s birthday and bake it a cake.

 

[rmpeeps]

To further the discussion, there’s oil cured vs water cured blocks of briar, air dried vs kiln dried, female vs male roots, and the biggest variance perhaps of all:

Ebauchon vs Plateaux​

Kaywoodie used to advertise every Drinkless was made of Plateaux briar.

And maybe a few plateaux blocks were bought by Grabow but your drug store pipe was made from an ebauchon.

I love my Danish free hands and other such pipes where I know, because I can see the burly root lumps, my pipe was carved from an Plateaux.

But as I understand it an ebauchon is a small briar root, that was harvested before it grew up to be a plateaux.

All briar might be born equal but when it goes before the pipe maker a plateaux is a lot more equal than an ebauchon.

I’m smoking one of my favorite pipes, a Briar Lee third generation push stem yacht that could have been a four or five star Lee except for that one, tiny fill.

I’ll bet this briar was an oil cured plateaux when it was made.

This pipe smokes as good as it looks, and I don’t think that’s an accident.

View attachment 96595View attachment 96596View attachment 96597View attachment 96598

More cheers for the Dublin shape.
If only they were TanBlasts.

 

[anotherbob]

You can’t and I can’t, but that doesn’t mean that people who harvested burls couldn’t. Talk with a briar merchant and your perspective might change. My experience is that people in the trade know the wood with which they’re dealing.
When a company describes the wood they’re using, it’s within the parameter they’ve set. It’s not like they know a burl’s birthday and bake it a cake.

that's what I meant. Or pretty close to it. It would take too much explaining to a customer who questions the province or at least the age. Not much to point to for the uninitiated. Which I think is a good explanation for the vague wording of their ads. I am sure when you look visual arts you sometimes ask why someone made a certain choice. I do that with ads and other writing. What is the reason they put in that intentional and specific way. I think without being able to ask them in person without a possible medium, this answer seems good enough.

 

[telescopes]

It’s like when a firm says they have 500 years of experience: When what they really mean is they have 50 employees who each have an average of 10 years each in their field of service. I am sure it is along those lines.

 

[Briar Lee]

45 years ago, when I was young enough to dodge mean bulls, I worked at the Cattleman Auction at Humansville Missouri. I much envied the Cadillacs and Lincolns and big silver belt buckles, 100X Stetsons and mobile phones of the order buyers, and considered that as a profession.

But those men could by sight and long years of experience, look at a cow or calf and grade how much it weighed, and whether the carcass would grade out prime. And they did that instantly, in competition with othe buyers.

Four huge packing companies now control virtually all the cattle trade in the United States, and the order buyers are still at the sale barns, but they dress in bib overalls and wear baseball caps and have lost their panache and style.

Back then they usually smoked hand rolled cigars, now they smoke King Edwards, and Dutch Masters Presidents.

During the heyday of pipe smoking there had to be lots of briar buyers, that knew their trade.

 

[telescopes]

45 years ago, when I was young enough to dodge mean bulls, I worked at the Cattleman Auction at Humansville Missouri. I much envied the Cadillacs and Lincolns and big silver belt buckles, 100X Stetsons and mobile phones of the order buyers, and considered that as a profession.

But those men could by sight and long years of experience, look at a cow or calf and grade how much it weighed, and whether the carcass would grade out prime. And they did that instantly, in competition with othe buyers.

Four huge packing companies now control virtually all the cattle trade in the United States, and the order buyers are still at the sale barns, but they dress in bib overalls and wear baseball caps and have lost their panache and style.

Back then they usually smoked hand rolled cigars, now they smoke King Edwards, and Dutch Masters Presidents.

During the heyday of pipe smoking there had to be lots of briar buyers, that knew their trade.

I’m guessing that smoking a Dutch Masters cigar has little to nothing to do with ones ability to grade beef.

 

[Briar Lee]

I’m guessing that smoking a Dutch Masters cigar has little to nothing to do with ones ability to grade beef.

I’ve tried them, and they are the best survivor of the formerly nickel cigars, but they never came in Spanish cedar boxes.

When order buyers were wealthy some would pass out real hand rolled cigars to the boys that worked the back alleys.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

During the heyday of pipe smoking there had to be lots of briar buyers, that knew their trade.

This insinuates that pipemakers today don't? Come on, there were horrible pipes back then. We are in the Renaissance of pipemaking. Never have there been more people sharing and exchanging knowledge of pipemaking. Hell, in the US back then, you were limited to driving half a day to a decent tobacconist, or buying one of the hack job Grabows off the peg in the nickel and dime store. I know, I know... I am arguing with a guy who collects old bottom rung pipes. I shouldn't expect much, ha ha. But, I'm don't buy into that shit of "the good ol' days", and I not a fresh daisy of today either. I was there. It was bullshit.

 

[sasquatch]

This insinuates that pipemakers today don't? Come on, there were horrible pipes back then. We are in the Renaissance of pipemaking. Never have there been more people sharing and exchanging knowledge of pipemaking. Hell, in the US back then, you were limited to driving half a day to a decent tobacconist, or buying one of the hack job Grabows off the peg in the nickel and dime store. I know, I know... I am arguing with a guy who collects old bottom rung pipes. I shouldn't expect much, ha ha. But, I'm don't buy into that shit of "the good ol' days", and I not a fresh daisy of today either. I was there. It was bullshit.

Exactly right. The takeaway should be the opposite: most companies accepted absolutely awful briar for 100 years running. Most old pipes have wild or poor grain, most have fills. It wasn't a thing. I just got a set of two pipes, cased (so I mean, not junk pipes) from 100 years ago, unbelievably bad briar. Just full of fills. When you are buying a half million blocks a year, you aren't going through them by anything but size. Put 'em in the bucket with the other ebauchons of the right size for shape x, turn them all, and then maybe grade them when they're done. There's a great book called the Illustrated History of the Pipe, shows a pile of these operations. When you see a bucket full of identically frazed stummels, and a guy whose job it is to knock the corners off with a rasp before they all go to the next station, you get an idea of what serial pipe making looks like. It ain't pretty. Even today, a cutter like Mimmo (a small operation compared to what existed 50 years ago) gets burls from all over the mediterranean. You get a truckload of burls dropped off, you cut 'em up and see what they're like. But there's no secret area where all the burls are perfect, no particular hillside being harvested for some particular company. I pay about 25 bucks a block on average buying from cutters, if anyone here thinks that any big company is paying more than about 5 bucks a block, I got news for them. Buy in bulk, manufacture in bulk, and if a few come out nice, sell 'em for a little more. Same formula as ever.