How are Pipes Rusticated?

[Briar Lee]

They can now.

View attachment 191133

Back in the heyday of Kaywoodie they made white Kaywoodies.

I think the default for a factory pipe is a smooth finish.

And if they want to make a blasted pipe, it’s from the start.

Years ago carved figural briars maybe were as popular as carved figural meers are today, but for those you’d need an artist.

That tool used to rusticate is something that the pipe makers use, when a smooth pipe isn’t pretty enough to polish out.

 

[Briar Lee]

My pipes rarely get more than noticeably warm on the surface regardless of surface or material. You may be smoking too hot.

None of mine do either.

But Missouri Meerschaum sells “natural cob” pipes, which are unplastered cob pipes. Of all the broken surface pipes, those likely have the most surface area.

Here’s a factory second in natural.


The cooling effect is more than zero, but not much more.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Rustication is a designation we give to any pipe not smooth, nor traditionally sandblasted. So, if you look at all of the different types of rustication done by many different companies or artists, (Peterson, Cooke, Walt Cannoy, Moonshine, etc…) you’ll see many difference approaches and techniques that range from that tool shown above, to modified sandblasts, to acid baths, to electricity, to burs used creatively…

 

[Briar Lee]

The rusticating tool must be skillfully used, and my Pipe Maker and Baronet are really pretty.

And then there’s quick and dirty rustification work.




The Grabow is one of the finest smokers I own.

But it looks almost machined carved, if it wasn’t.

 

[HawkeyeLinus]

Thanks for asking, I had no idea how that was done, now I do!

It's interesting to sit here and reflect . . .

When I started, I was all about smooth "traditional" pipes then learned sandblasts go way, way back and then started acquiring some sandblasts and rusticated and I love them as well.

Then "corrupted" by the lure of the Meer, haha. My IMP is a terrific smoking little pipe. Love it so much, I went so far as to commission one a few weeks ago and anxiously awaiting the result, which I think will be awesome. That will probably satisfy my Meer itch - I doubt I'll ever be able to color either of them up because I jump around so much, but who cares. Then like a hammer blow to my thick head, the realization that clay and Meer were different, no clays on the horizon, but no lines drawn in the sand.

It's a big tent, come on in!

 

[sasquatch]

Most rustications are done with a rotary tool, dremel/foredom type thing, and this is simply because it does the most damage the fastest. Choose a round head or cylindrical for slightly different results, bounce it or drag it for different effects, but most of the pipes shown in this thread are a 5 minute job, and that's simply a thing where the rusticated pipe is going to sell for less than a smooth or a blast even, and so it gets a quick treatment.

Really "high end" rustication exists, I've probably posted this picture before, but a texture like this is a multi-layered, multi-tooled, and time-intensive thing. So you never see it. Not done this well. The combo of carving gauge and cluster tool get close, but then you have to smooth out all the warts too so the thing isn't sharp.




I think we'll see a return to appreciating things other than perfect wonderful straightgrains in the next ten years. It's been over done, it's less special than it was, with more people producing more pieces. I love the current crop of carvers doing weird textures and colors, playing with pipes and making something interesting, even though as a maker myself I am of the dour 1925 school.

Using the wood as a medium, and presenting all the neat things wood can do (including mimicing, in this case, worn sea rocks) is a worthy business.

I don't make too many rusticated pipes because the time you put in is crazy to make a genuinely nice texture, relative to what many in the pipe community will pay. And yet, there's a crowd who recognize "good stuff" when they see it, and understand the time and torment that went in, and are eager to pay. Again, I think we'll see a pretty serious shift in the community over the next ten years for a number of reasons.

 

[sasquatch]

As to hard vs soft for briar and blasting:

Some briar is harder than others. It depends on where and how it grew and how long it's sat since curing. Algerian briar is soft and strangely waxy, and that hasn't changed in 100 years. Dunhill speaks of having a load of the stuff that he found significantly poorer than his usual Calabrian wood, and there's a tale about leaving a lot of briar behind a boiler, forgotten for many months, and in returning to the dessicated wood, he noticed the texture in it, and began to explore ways to heat-cure the wood and draw this texture out.

The actual shell patent bears reading: https://www.folloder.com/pdf/1341418.pdf

All briar does not blast the same, not region to region and not day to day. The internal density of the growth rings plays a huge part, and the actual hardness (which is both inherent and developed with age) of the wood plays a part. Fresh from the mill, I don't find briar blasts near as well as it does with ten years of sitting. And that's what Alfred's process emulated, in some ways.

It's not TOTALLY unpredictable how a pipe will blast, but you never know for sure if the rings are going to show how you hope, or if the xylem are going to be predominant, or if one side of the pipe will act the same as the other. So the best blasts, even and deep, are for sure real rarities, and worthy of collecting if one is into that sort of thing. And that's the argument against rustication's "value" - you can take any block of briar and carve it to whatever result you want, there's no element of the nature of the wood on display, really. Rusticating, the briar is at our mercy. Blasting, it's the other way round.

 

[sasquatch]

Let's rusticate a pipe! Boring piece of briar, the order was a rusticated pipe, briar chosen was good quality but of no particularly exciting features.



Phase 1, wound it deeply with something. In this case a 3/8" gauge rocked and pushed.





Phase 2, attack with a cluster tool, complete the surface. Leaves a really ragged appearance and feel, quite unpleasant.

So you knock that down with sanding or a wire wheel or a sandblast or something, lots of ways to skin the cat.

 

[Briar Lee]

Some briar is harder than others. It depends on where and how it grew and how long it's sat since curing. Algerian briar is soft and strangely waxy, and that hasn't changed in 100 years. Dunhill speaks of having a load of the stuff that he found significantly poorer than his usual Calabrian wood, and there's a tale about leaving a lot of briar behind a boiler, forgotten for many months, and in returning to the dessicated wood, he noticed the texture in it, and began to explore ways to heat-cure the wood and draw this texture out.

The actual shell patent bears reading: https://www.folloder.com/pdf/1341418.pdf

All briar does not blast the same, not region to region and not day to day. The internal density of the growth rings plays a huge part, and the actual hardness (which is both inherent and developed with age) of the wood plays a part. Fresh from the mill, I don't find briar blasts near as well as it does with ten years of sitting. And that's what Alfred's process emulated, in some ways.

It's not TOTALLY unpredictable how a pipe will blast, but you never know for sure if the rings are going to show how you hope, or if the xylem are going to be predominant, or if one side of the pipe will act the same as the other. So the best blasts, even and deep, are for sure real rarities, and worthy of collecting if one is into that sort of thing. And that's the argument against rustication's "value" - you can take any block of briar and carve it to whatever result you want, there's no element of the nature of the wood on display, really. Rusticating, the briar is at our mercy. Blasting, it's the other way round.

Let's rusticate a pipe! Boring piece of briar, the order was a rusticated pipe, briar chosen was good quality but of no particularly exciting features.

View attachment 191164

Phase 1, wound it deeply with something. In this case a 3/8" gauge rocked and pushed.



View attachment 191165

Phase 2, attack with a cluster tool, complete the surface. Leaves a really ragged appearance and feel, quite unpleasant.

So you knock that down with sanding or a wire wheel or a sandblast or something, lots of ways to skin the cat.

View attachment 191166

What you’re doing is artificially creating a beautiful grained surface.

Stay after it!.

 

[Zeno Marx]

I prefer rustication over all other finishes. To me, it's a signature. It's the maker's mark. Grain is cool and all, particularly birdseye (IMO), but I really like the way makers put their mark on briar with rustication. Of course, not all rustication is created equal. Some of it is really ugly, but nevertheless, it is that maker's signature. Then there are folks, like Cooke who make their mark with sandblasting techniques, who walk that line between rustication and blasting. To me, that's really cool too.

Since Sasquatch brought up that great Castello form again, they also did Sea Rocks with carving of less depth that they then hit on a belt sander (I'm assuming here) that gave the feel like 10 grit sandpaper with all the sharp crystalline-like peaks removed. It was another example of a truly unique look and feel in rustication. I mentioned this in another thread. I used to see them all the time, and even on the estate market, they've all but disappeared. I haven't seen one of those in years. Where have they all gone?!

Sasquatch, it looks like you're really nailing that method. It borrows from both Castello and Caminetto. That's my impression from a couple photos anyway.

 

[sasquatch]

It's a work in progress. On one hand, any technique is tool-dependent, and I have what I have and other guys have what they have. But I definitely want to find a way to make a really deep, really random texture that doesn't take me 4 hours and leave my fore-arms with tendinitis. Very recently did a simple pipe up and did the deep trough-work with a dremel, then went to cluster tool, and then spent a lot of time with a wire-wheel and sanding mop, pushing toward a look that is both well defined and at the same time "worn". This is good enough to be a production-style rustication on a mid grade pipe (and similar in ways to what Don Carlos, Ser Jacopo, Ardor manage). I'll keep experimenting and working with different tools.

 

[beargreasediet]

Let's rusticate a pipe! Boring piece of briar, the order was a rusticated pipe, briar chosen was good quality but of no particularly exciting features.

View attachment 191164

Phase 1, wound it deeply with something. In this case a 3/8" gauge rocked and pushed.



View attachment 191165

Phase 2, attack with a cluster tool, complete the surface. Leaves a really ragged appearance and feel, quite unpleasant.

So you knock that down with sanding or a wire wheel or a sandblast or something, lots of ways to skin the cat.

View attachment 191166

Thanks for sharing your experience, I just learned a lot.

 

[huntertrw]

As I understand what Dunhill was trying to do was harden briar...

The late John C. Loring, in his booklet titled The Dunhill Briar Pipe - The Patent Years and After had this to say, in part, about the Shell finish:

"The most innovative of Dunhill's pipe making, the sandblast finish, goes to prove the value of clutter. Algerian briar is among the most beautifully grained, unfortunately it is also amongst the softest. Given the attractiveness of the grain and the comparatively inexpensive price, in 1914 the company experimented with using Algerian briar for a smooth finished pipe, but because of the softness of the briar, without success.* Workshops being workshops, rather then (sic) discarding the remaining briar, the blocks were simply laid aside, fortuitously by the stove. Several months later, at a time when other experiments led the company to find that dye more readily impregnates a bowl with a rough surface, it was noted that the heat from the stove had somewhat effected that condition that with the nearby Algerian briar blocks, shrinking that briar to a mere 'shell' so to speak, leaving the grain standing out in relief, much like the exterior surface of a seashell and according to an oft repeated story 'sounding like rattling seashells' when first brought to Alfred Dunhill for inspection. Hence was born the Shell finish.

"Initially working with the London Sandblasting Company to develop the process, and accentuate the relief characteristics, by 1917 it was sufficiently perfected to apply for a patent which was awarded in 1918...
___________________________

"*Pipe manufacturers such as Barling that air cure their briar rather than oil cure it like Dunhill, have never had a problem using Algerian briar for smooth finished pipes."

 

[bullet08]

Very skilled dwarves called Hillside Rustication Dwarves usually go at it with their special Briar War Hammer to give those beautiful indentation.

 

[Sinzalot]

Here in Wales they throw the stems into the disused coal pits for old Dragons to chew on. After a day or two they take on a nice gnarly look.

 

[ssjones]

Rustication on Peterson pipes evolved multiple times in the last 75 years or so. I'm not sure how they created those finishes - by hand or machine?

I'm sure at that the pipe Briarlee showed at the start of this thread had to have been done by machine, right?

My favorite rusticated pipe is the Sasieni Four Dot "Rustic" finish. Creating this finish, by hand, following the grain lines must have been very time intensive.



Of course Castello and their Sea Rock line are probably the most well known of the major makers.



Another favorite is the little seen James Upshal "Bark" finish. This finish is like the Sea Rock, but sharper in feel. That soujnds like it wouldn't work, but it does.

 

[Zeno Marx]

Upshall rustication could get pretty gnarly to the touch. I liked it. And I just wanted to use gnarly.

 

[addamsruspipe]

When I started smoking pipes my first pipe was a rusticated Savinelli. Then i went to smooth pipes, but my journey has brought me back to rusticated pipes. Most of my pipes are a rustification/carved mix. The texture and character of the rustication really makes the difference to me outside of how it smokes.

 

[ssjones]

Some Peterson rustications in different eras.

1980 Rockey Donegal.



1984



1972




Early 1960's (dated by literature

 

[Puffaluffaguss]

One of my practice pipes working on gem stem inserts and golden contrast staining as well as first rustication attempt. As you can see nothing insane just a dremel burl and that's it but I thought it was a good start but as @sasquatch pointed out it is very rough on the filanges.