Let's start with what works - I have explored the pipe world in earnest for about 10 years, hunting that ultimate smoking experience. Learned a bit, I think, at fairly large cost over the years. I'll cut to the chase - the best smoker you can just go out and buy off the rack is a Castello. Time and time again. So that's air cured Italian briar. Can you subject a pipe to any number of processes during construction? Yeah, you could soak it, boil it, put it on a shelf, put it in the dryer... I don't care, it won't be a better smoker than that Castello. I've had oil-cured Shells, you name it. It's all bullshit, all gimmicks. Good wood, good construction, good pipe.
If you think back to some of these curing processes, some of them started as ways to hurry the air-cure, or ways to treat otherwise inferior briar (reading Alf's old Shell patent documents, that's the feeling I was left with - he had some briar he didn't like so much). If you are moving 400,000 pipes a year, you are buying a lot of wood, and no one, NO one, ever sat on 10 wearhouses of 1000000 blocks each for 30 years or any of that silly crap. Wood gets dumped off the truck, zipped into pipes and sold. So any process that might unify, expidite or in some other way help (say, by finding bowls that are prone to cracking before they are sold) is going to be implemented.
An artisan pipe is inspected, hand held, 10" from the guy's face, for 10 hours. If the briar isn't good, he'll know. I had a block once, I cut it, smelled like a swamp. Bluck. I kid not. I threw it out! Big factory makes that into a pipe and sells it.
To answer the question directly, I try to let my blocks sit 2 years - this is Mimmo's recommendation as being the steepest part of the curve, and I agree with him. The wood seems more stable, harder, etc. Seems to smoke uniformally well. So new wood just goes into drawers or onto the shelf at my place. There is lots of older wood available - some is great, some is not so great, but I have some on hand for those who want it. But again, I don't think after 3 smokes anyone could tell the difference between 3 year old Ligurian briar and 10 year old Tuscan. And I'm happy to make and sell a pair of pipes to anyone who wants to explore this. :wink:
Good wood (non-swamp), good drilling, good stem work (clean airway), good smoker. It really is that simple, but we LOVE our myths, we love the midnight briar, we love the magic dip, the secret rights, the provenance of pipery. It's hard to shake out.
If you think back to some of these curing processes, some of them started as ways to hurry the air-cure, or ways to treat otherwise inferior briar (reading Alf's old Shell patent documents, that's the feeling I was left with - he had some briar he didn't like so much). If you are moving 400,000 pipes a year, you are buying a lot of wood, and no one, NO one, ever sat on 10 wearhouses of 1000000 blocks each for 30 years or any of that silly crap. Wood gets dumped off the truck, zipped into pipes and sold. So any process that might unify, expidite or in some other way help (say, by finding bowls that are prone to cracking before they are sold) is going to be implemented.
An artisan pipe is inspected, hand held, 10" from the guy's face, for 10 hours. If the briar isn't good, he'll know. I had a block once, I cut it, smelled like a swamp. Bluck. I kid not. I threw it out! Big factory makes that into a pipe and sells it.
To answer the question directly, I try to let my blocks sit 2 years - this is Mimmo's recommendation as being the steepest part of the curve, and I agree with him. The wood seems more stable, harder, etc. Seems to smoke uniformally well. So new wood just goes into drawers or onto the shelf at my place. There is lots of older wood available - some is great, some is not so great, but I have some on hand for those who want it. But again, I don't think after 3 smokes anyone could tell the difference between 3 year old Ligurian briar and 10 year old Tuscan. And I'm happy to make and sell a pair of pipes to anyone who wants to explore this. :wink:
Good wood (non-swamp), good drilling, good stem work (clean airway), good smoker. It really is that simple, but we LOVE our myths, we love the midnight briar, we love the magic dip, the secret rights, the provenance of pipery. It's hard to shake out.
