A piece of briar showing growth rings horizontally and grain vertically.
Just to get the terms right, because the pipe sellers confuse the word grain. A so called “ring grain”forms along the annual rings also called growth rings in the briar root ball, once it is sandblasted. Just to remember in that process of particles-storm harder parts of wood remain while softer wood washes out. You can recognise the growth rings in a block of briar easily in addition you can see the grain, like in my block of briar at the beginning.
A pipe maker of the so called “ring grain” tries to build the pipe in such a way, that the growth rings getting into a relief like a stack of rings around the bowl, once sandblasted.
This has nothing to do at all with the term “grain” used in “straight grain” or “flame grain”. What we identify here are wood fibres functioning like vessels of different colours that had been growing throughout the growth rings in direction to the surface of the rounded shape of briar root. The fibres are growing in different angles to the growth rings to serve their purpose of transportation water etc.
Unfortunately the pipe sellers don’t care much about semantic approaches, that’s called advertising or marketing.
Nevertheless the rings show up quite nice.
