Ruminations on the Aging of Briar

[Briar Lee]

Somewhere in my vast stash of pipes is an old pre war Kaywoodie whose briar first took root before the time of the American Revolution,

We know that the Heath tree in the Mediterranean is a shrub, a sort of variety of brush that would be eradicated to plant crops. So on rocky hillsides, and only in that region, after about fifty years the Heath tree forms burls on it’s roots large enough to fashion into pipes. The larger the burl, the older, and in the late thirties Kaywoodie was advertising they used enormous burls that had to be centuries old.

To be useful for making pipes, the briar root has to be dug up, killing it, and then boiled or soaked to remove the sap, then dried enough to turn it into pipes. Then the briar must be broken in.

Does aging briar improve the smoking quality?

If so, does the aging start from the birth of the Heath tree, from harvest, or from first break in?

I suspect that the age of briar has no effect on smoking quality, except older burls afford a pipe maker better chances to find extremely tight grained, hard briar that I believe does smoke better.

Your thoughts?

 

[fireground_piper]

I'll say this from my limited experience of a few years working with cut briar as a hobby interest. Pretty fresh briar is noticeably wet and doesn't drill/shape great. It will also change dimensions as it dries out more.

Properly cured and let to rest at least a little bit and it's my preference. Anything a couple years old has behaved expectedly for me.

I bought a stash of ~27 or so blocks about 2 years ago that were all from the 80s/90s and so they are 30-40 years old at this point. I used one earlier this year finally and it's hard and brittle when doing any type of drilling. Whether it's different because of some other influence or just age, I certainly needed to be extra careful with any type of drilling/lathe work. I also don't think it would take stain quite as well as something just a few years old. Sure, it would probably take some basic stain but I have my doubts how well it would take a really good contrast stain. I had left it natural, but I'll probably try staining another at some point.

 

[sablebrush52]

The industry standard for defining the age of the briar is determined by the estimate of how long it was growing in the ground before harvesting.

As for century and older briar being somehow special, it's great advertising hype. Numbers have an emotional effect on people. 36 24 36 is the Olympian proportion for women due to it's ratios and symmetry. The flag was a mess with 49 states. It will be a mess with 51. Monk likes the food on his plate arranged in a very precise way and requires 10 peas if he's eating peas, no more, no less.

The briar experts I spoke with over the years were united in their experience that the whole ancient briar thing was just advertising spiel. One, though, did say that he thought that Algerian briar did mature later than briar from other parts of the world and that 100 year old Algerian briar would still be quite viable, while briar from other area peaked in the period of roughly 35 to 65 years of age. Even the apostles of Ye Olde Wood, Barling, wrote in their 1920's pamphlet, The Romance Of The Barling Pipe, that they looked for burls that were around 65 years of age.

Briar can get unfit for use as it gets over 100, due to structural changes in the burl. But keep in mind that the outside of the burl, the plateau, is the newest part, so what you're smoking isn't as old as the interior part. One of the finest pipe makers who ever lived, the great Rainer Barbi, wrote about the structural changes he had witnessed in briar burls of different ages and that he believed that the best performing wood was to be found in burls aged around 35 years, and 100+ wood was not optimal.

So that Kaywoodie with the pre Revolutionary War wood is a lovely bit of penmanship. I'll bet it helped sell a lot of pipes.

 

[Briar Lee]

There are something like 22 different oak trees native to Missouri, and Harry Hosterman knew how to identify them all, and the best use for every one.

There is one called a post oak, used for making fence posts, when Osage Orange wasn’t available.

Harry Hosterman cut and sold post oak and Osage Orange posts, but on Harry’s place he used 100% Osage Orange (hedge).

A hedge post will still be standing on Judgement Day.

Hedge gets harder as it ages. Old hedge is so hard you can’t drive steeples or nails in it.

Does anyone know if briar hardens, as it ages?

I doubt it, but I’m curious.

 

[hugodrax]

The industry standard for defining the age of the briar is determined by the estimate of how long it was growing in the ground before harvesting.

As for century and older briar being somehow special, it's great advertising hype. Numbers have an emotional effect on people. 36 24 36 is the Olympian proportion for women due to it's ratios and symmetry. The flag was a mess with 49 states. It will be a mess with 51. Monk likes the food on his plate arranged in a very precise way and requires 10 peas if he's eating peas, no more, no less.

The briar experts I spoke with over the years were united in their experience that the whole ancient briar thing was just advertising spiel. One, though, did say that he thought that Algerian briar did mature later than briar from other parts of the world and that 100 year old Algerian briar would still be quite viable, while briar from other area peaked in the period of roughly 35 to 65 years of age. Even the apostles of Ye Olde Wood, Barling, wrote in their 1920's pamphlet, The Romance Of The Barling Pipe, that they looked for burls that were around 65 years of age.

Briar can get unfit for use as it gets over 100, due to structural changes in the burl. But keep in mind that the outside of the burl, the plateau, is the newest part, so what you're smoking isn't as old as the interior part. One of the finest pipe makers who ever lived, the great Rainer Barbi, wrote about the structural changes he had witnessed in briar burls of different ages and that he believed that the best performing wood was to be found in burls aged around 35 years, and 100+ wood was not optimal.

So that Kaywoodie with the pre Revolutionary War wood is a lovely bit of penmanship. I'll bet it helped sell a lot of pipes.

Advertising hype was invented for Briar Lee.

 

[crashthegrey]

Briar hardens when it ages, and working with 60 to 100 year old blocks is difficult. Very hard to shape, sometimes brittle, or explosive on the lathe, and it takes a lot to sandblast it.

Does anyone know if briar hardens, as it ages?

I doubt it, but I’m curious.

 

[crashthegrey]

Here is a nice little burl.

 

[Briar Lee]

Sitting here in the cool of the evening, I’m enjoying the third bowl today in a 1946-7 era Peterson 307.

This pipe must have been a gift to a cigarette smoker, who tried smoking it maybe three or four times, halfway down.

The bottom half of the chamber was as brown as when it left Ireland 75 years ago.

As I get down halfway I can still taste the briar, not unpleasant, but not as good as it will be after a dozen or two smokes all the way to the bottom.

This 307 used a big hunk of briar, maybe 75 years old. It’s aged for 75 more.

I’ll grant this about aged briar.

It doesn’t spoil.

I suppose the older it is, doesn’t hurt it any.

 

[craig61a]

I believe all wood hardens over time. The White Pine used to build my house in 1937 is nearly as hard as steel when driving nails into it.

Decades old briar blocks don’t really add any value to a pipe in my opinion. Just more susceptible to splitting when being worked.

From what I have read, briar that has been sitting for 50-60 years or more is pretty much useless for pipe making.

I recall reading that Nording ages his briar for about a year or so. I would imagine that once the wood has dried down enough so that it doesn’t tear out when being worked it’s good to go.

I think the notion that aged briar somehow imparts some sort of mysticism on a pipe is pure add hype. Same goes with oil treated briar. The oil is pretty much gone after 20-30 bowls.

As for smoking, after 20-30 bowls in a new pipe, any residual resins or impurities and remaining moisture will be pretty much driven out, and the smoking experience in that pipe is pretty much fixed.

 

[Briar Lee]

Here is a December 1938 Kaywoodie ad touting 200-400 year old briar.

My father said he followed the wheat harvest in Kansas in the late thirties to earn as much, as $3 a day.

But he only admitted to punching a time clock one short period of time in 1944 when he worked at the Humansville Farmer’s Exchange, part of some wartime program to get young men to work at feed mills.

He was 4-F because of histoplasmosis, there was a $3,000 mortgage on the farm, he needed $210 to pay his Aunt Eva back the $210 she’d paid his Uncle Elmer in 1936 so he could buy 60 acres he’d been cropping on shares, and he said he felt like a rented mule, punching that time clock.

But he never took a dime in cash, took all his pay in hog feed, and when he sold out the hogs for just over $4,000 he gave two weeks notice, and he hoped to God Id never have to punch a time clock, for the “other man”.

His Aunt Eva forgot her promise and made him pay $900, or $15 an acre for Elmer’s Sixty.

When his mother found out, she ran off towards Spout Spring Hollow with a gun to put Eva in the graveyard. They caught her halfway there and wrestled the gun away, and she cooled off, but never forgot or forgave such profiteering.

When $10 would but one Flame Grain, or three acres of good farmland, or was three days pay in the wheat harvest, a customer expected ancient briar, I’d reckon .

 

[didimauw]

So 2 lots in my town just got sold, at 1/2 acre, for 100,000 dollars each. So that puts it at 200,000 dollars an acre. So 3 acres, at 600,000 dollars.

That's one hell of a Kaywoodie.

 

[Briar Lee]

So 2 lots in my town just got sold, at 1/2 acre, for 100,000 dollars each. So that puts it at 200,000 dollars an acre. So 3 acres, at 600,000 dollars.

That's one hell of a Kaywoodie.

There was an old man named Alva Rains that was at our home, several days a week while I was growing up.

He told me exactly the same story at least a thousand times.

Alva was born in 1905 and on one specific April day in 1915 his grandfather drove him to our place.

His grandfather was getting old, and Alva’s father was an alcoholic.

His grandfather knew the reputation of the beautiful mistress of Prairie View Farm, for Christian kindness and mercy.

Alva said he walked up to the mansion (that burned in 1931) and an Angel named Paralee opened the door.

His grandfather asked if Alva could be useful as a hired boy for Paralee to do house work, because at age ten he wasn’t old enough to work the fields.

Out in the huge red barn, were pairs of champion mules that sometimes sold for two thousand dollars in gold, per pair.

Paralee took him in, fed him, then had him help her ready her buggy to drive him to Humansville for proper clothes.

Alva lived for three years as the man servant to my great grandmother during the pinnacle of our family’s wealth.

After she died of the Spanish flu in 1918 he stayed on to nurse my great grandfather who lingered on sick, until he died in 1920.

After that Alva took all the earnings he had, and bought forty acres for four thousand dollars he still had when he died as a very old man.

Alva’s son Irwin hauled the last seven Perchon mares to Springfield in 1950, and my grandfather stood there crying as he watched them shot, at the rendering plant.

By then mules were only used by Arkansawyers and my grandfather swore none of his brood mares would ever spend one night, mistreated.

The stories Alva told, were uncomparable.