My New Morta

[trevert]

Hey guys, just wanted to post a bit about the newest addition to my collection. As some of you know, I've been a professional pipemaker for many years, and I was one of the first people to work heavily with morta. Thus far I've worked mainly with Breton morta taken from the bogs around where we lived in France, so I'm very familiar with that material but am on the hunt for other sources of good quality stuff. In Bretagne, the light colored morta was crap - Mostly unusable and not very pleasant to taste (My general guess was, "Needs a couple thousand more years of cooking time). Anyway, I got hold of some stock of a much lighter color and was assured that it was quality stuff, but I wanted to experience it for myself before I thought about turning any of it into pipes to sell. Ergo, my first new pipe for myself in quite a while:

Even though it was mostly a lark and I more or less slapped it together out of some spare parts, it came out pretty well and I'm all happy to have a new pipe to smoke again :D I made it as a 9mm filter pipe because I knew I'd smoke it a lot more that way. So far the material smokes GREAT - I'm in love with it already and it's nice to have a morta that's bigger than a thimble, even though it doesn't smoke anything at all like the Breton morta I'm familiar with.
Anyway, there's my new pipe. Hurray! Smoked it last night while watching the western series "Hell on Wheels" on Netflix and it made a perfect accompaniment.

 

[vespertillio]

That looks very groovy. Congrats on an awesome looking pipe sir.

 

[gwtwdbss]

I like it!

 

[riptide]

Great looking pipe. I could not tell it was just slapped together by looking at it.

 

[rigmedic1]

Wow, that is the best looking pipe I have seen ever. I am very fond of rusticated and sandblasted pipes, but I have never seen work like that on briar. Morta is on my PAD list; I hope I find something as nice. The color is beautiful. Hats off to you, sir.

 

[martiniman]

WOW beautiful pipe. :clap:

Like most Morta is on the list here, I only ever see 1 or 2 makers utilizing it and they are all dark.

 

[martiniman]

I was just admiring the pipe again and was imagining the interesting tactile feel of a surface like that....

 

[pstlpkr]

Looks like wire brush rustication to me.

 

[jah76]

That is beautiful. It almost looks "woven".

 

[shawn]

That is just super. What a wonderful job.

 

[ejames]

I really like the colors in that pipe! I wish I could slap one together like that! Beautiful piece! One of these days I hope to buy one of your pipes.

 

[cajunguy]

That is one awesome looking pipe. I have a morta pipe, and I love the material. That is definitely a winner.

 

[trevert]

Thanks for all the kind words, guys! I'm really pleased with it so far. It isn't wire-brush rustication, it's sandblasted. That's just the way the material blasts. Thankfully it is a lot easier to blast than the black morta I've worked with previously! The real question will be whether it proves as durable. The first smoke last night was terrific, though.
As far as being slapped together, it's pretty much a spare parts pipe, as most of my testers are. The stem is a molded acrylic piece that I drilled to accept a 9mm filter tenon - I've got several of these stems lying around, had them for years and no real use for them, so it was readymade for this. The shank end cap is a press-on copper band that I hand-etched to create a stippled pattern and at least make it look a little more interesting. The fun thing about the bowl and the shank is that the material won't turn worth anything on the lathe (It's WAY harder to turn than briar) so I had to shape the bowl totally by hand and actually eyeball-sand the shank down until it would fit the band.

 

[arinbjorn]

Trevor, that is just plain amazing.
I dig the tactile feel of pipes. That pipe kind of makes my knees quiver, brother.

 

[trevert]

(Newbie question - Is there a way to auto-quote specific messages here so I can reply to specific comments? I don't see anything like the usual forum 'Quote' buttons...)
One thing I wanted to mention about the color - This is something of an experiment for me because my opinion of light-colored morta has not been very high in the past, based on my personal experience with the lighter colored morta from the Briere marsh. There, I only wanted to make pipes if the stuff was pure, natural black. Light colors like this indicated that the wood would be much too soft, often partly rotted, and always with a bitter taste to it. The black morta had its own flavor but it was much darker, smokier, and more pleasant assuming you like tobaccos that go with that sort of thing (FWIW, my personal all-time favorite tobac in Breton morta is Gawith Black XX rope). So, I avoided light color morta in general.
While checking around for future morta sources, I've found a few places offering lighter colored wood for sale and have been pretty skeptical based on my experience in Brittany, but a friend sent me a crate of this stuff to try out and I'm very pleasantly surprised. It IS softer than my black morta, noticeably, but it was uniformly hard (Previous experience with tan morta was also that it sometimes had "soft spots" that I could literally sandblast right through). It doesn't have the smoky flavor of my black morta, either - It's far more neutral. It's going to be fun to work with.

 

[trevert]

There is a BIG difference in hardness between the black Breton morta I have and this tan material. That's not necessarily a bad thing - Soft briar can smoke as good as hard briar - but if it affects durability then it's obviously an issue. This stuff works similarly to briar in shaping and detailing. The black, by contrast, is a PIA - I have to use a carbide grinder to make major shape modifications to it and SS cutting bits to shape it, and it will eat up sandpaper discs and wheels fast.
Also, a direct comparison - I created that blast above in a simple, 2 pass blasting run using glass bead in my cabinet. Glass bead is useless on the black morta I use. Literally, all it will do is polish it and make the surface slightly ripply. If I want to blast the black Breton morta, I have to switch media to an aggressive aluminum oxide at high pressure to get it to cut. I don't have any way to measure and compare hardnesses accurately, but that's a pretty striking difference.
But, like I said, it smokes great so far. I plan on beating the heck out of it - No rest periods, smoke every day, etc - to see how it holds up under abuse.

 

[john218]

I love that blast. I would like to see this with a cumberland stem, even though this one looks nice. How would you compare the smoking qualities of this wood and black morta to a good quality briar?

 

[lonestar]

Beautiful pipe Trever. Its good to see you posting over here.

For the guys here who dont know Trever Talbert, he's an innovator an originator and someone I consider a leading voice in American pipe making.

Anyone who is looking to learn about making pipes, or just understand more about making them would do well to dive into the blog he writes.

His name comes up here on the forum, often around Halloween, and often discussing his "Goblin" pipes. But he is truly an artist and can make a wonderful pipe in just about every style pipes are made.

Glad to have you aboard !

 

[trevert]

Regarding pipe abuse - Unfortunately, that's the nature of the testing game! I need to see how it will perform under very hard use, because I don't want to be having to refund someone's $500 down the road if his pipe unexpectedly burns out. After I moved to France, I made myself a morta poker test pipe ..

(This one)

...and proceeded to smoke it at least once or twice a day, every day, for about three years. Smoked it hot, lighter-torched it, etc, and it took everything I could throw at it. One handy advantage to morta is that it can be smoked day after day without going soggy and sour as briar would. The only side effect was that it caked insanely fast and had to be reamed constantly. I smoked the new pipe twice last night and it never even got gurgly, which was a nice sign.
As far as a comparison of morta vs briar, well, it's very different. This tan morta is strikingly neutral - It would make a great tester for comparing tobaccos, actually. It's as flavor-neutral as clay without the raw, rough edge that clay adds to everything. I am tremendously happy with the flavor. Black morta vs briar is quite different - It's more of a love it or hate it experience. The material has a very dark, musky characteristic that it imparts to whatever you smoke, so I've found it to be very tobacco-specific. If you smoke the right tobacco in it, it's heavenly. If you try to smoke a sweet aromatic in it, it's downright gross. I mentioned that my favorite tobacco for black morta is Gawith Black Rope XX, and that is (to me) a marriage made in heaven - The rich smokiness of the morta amplifies the impact of the Black XX flavor and it's a very Nirvana experience, provided you keep it to a small bowl so it doesn't kill you. It's fantastic stuff for smoking latakia but not so great for Virginias. And of course, YMMV!
And thanks for the kind words, Lonestar, whoever you are! :D

 

[cigrmaster]

That pipe is gorgeous, I would love to own something like that. I have been looking at Morta pipes and have wondered how they smoke compared to a briar pipe. From what I have been reading the morta is much harder and denser wood, would that lead to a cooler smoking pipe? How is it weight wise compared to briar, are they much heavier?
I have been to Trevor's site a number of times, he makes some awesome pipes. Hopefully one day I will add one to my collection.