Ruminations on the Porosity of Briar

[Briar Lee]

Today I got in a very nice Lee Three Star large squat bulldog that seems to be unstained and natural briar.


I was able with Everclear and steel wool to clean it up to like new.

After four smokes, I’ve got another incredibly good smoking $25 Lee pipe for certain, plus I’ve noticed something I’ve not previously thought much about.

In the cool of a fall evening, enjoying a good book, I’m sitting here thinking about how, a briar pipe colors.

Steel wool cleaning left this pipe bland, bald and plain looking.

Four smokes have returned the pipe to a highly figured, contrasting grained thing of beauty.

I’ve smoked it with clean, dry hands on my deck, and the only way I can figure that my sanded smooth and plain pipe is now gloriously figured again is that briar must be porous enough for oils in the tobacco to permeate the briar and color it, the same way water applied to a blank board temporarily shows the grain until it evaporates.

The ember inside a pipe reaches nearly a thousand degrees. Yet fractions of an inch away the pipe is cool enough to hold it.

The capillaries (or pores) of the briar structure are only atoms in diameter.
But once they carried water, and now carry hot steam and the oils from burning tobacco and that subtly colors the briar.

Use the pipe enough and they’ll go rancid and the pipe won’t be good anymore, but that’s a very, very long process.

If you’ll sit and think enough, sometimes a man gets an epiphany.

But usually, it’s just boredom, that causes sitting and thinking.

 

[telescopes]

We’ve had this discussion. NO, the oils from inside DID NOT make it to the surface. Saying something over and over DOES NOT make it true. The oils from your skin and other external sources can and do marks pipe. UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO BAND SAW A PIPE IN HALF please stop suggesting this. Right?

 

[fireground_piper]

I don't know, Cosmic's cut in half pipe was a good specimen on the possibility.

 

[telescopes]

I don't know, Cosmic's cut in half pipe was a good specimen on the possibility.

Not in four smokes.

 

[Briar Lee]

We’ve had this discussion. NO, the oils from inside DID NOT make it to the surface. Saying something over and over DOES NOT make it true. The oils from your skin and other external sources can and do marks pipe. UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO BAND SAW A PIPE IN HALF please stop suggesting this. Right?

About thirty years ago a man peddled an incredible volume of high dollar meerschaum pipes across from the Battlefield Mall in Springfield Missouri.

Nobody argues meerschaum is not porous.

He had a display of a wonderfully colored meerschaum pipe sawed in half, to help him sell pipes. Only the bowl portion and the outside of the pipe was colored, the center was still white.

He’d explain to the well to do ladies buying his wares as gifts that CAO pipes were boiled in beeswax. The beeswax penetrates the meerschaum and serves to act as a barrier to the smoke going through, thence the coloring was easier.

And, it didn’t hurt he was a dead ringer for Charlie Rich, a famous country star of the day.

When you sit and think about it, briar must be somewhat porous.

It used to carry water.

 

[bassbug]

I'd hate to see what happens after 40 smokes if four smokes managed to get oils to seep all the way through the walls of the chamber and the stummel....That's some oily tobacco you got there.

I don't have a source to quote but I'm pretty sure tobacco does not reach 1000 degrees when burnt.

Oh, and by the way, that pipe is stained.

 

[alaskanpiper]

 

[canucklehead]

I'd hate to see what happens after 40 smokes if four smokes managed to get oils to seep all the way through the walls of the chamber and the stummel....That's some oily tobacco you got there.

I don't have a source to quote but I'm pretty sure tobacco does not reach 1000 degrees when burnt.

Oh, and by the way, that pipe is stained.

 

[telescopes]

About thirty years ago a man peddled an incredible volume of high dollar meerschaum pipes across from the Battlefield Mall in Springfield Missouri.

Nobody argues meerschaum is not porous.

He had a display of a wonderfully colored meerschaum pipe sawed in half, to help him sell pipes. Only the bowl portion and the outside of the pipe was colored, the center was still white.

He’d explain to the well to do ladies buying his wares as gifts that CAO pipes were boiled in beeswax. The beeswax penetrates the meerschaum and serves to act as a barrier to the smoke going through, thence the coloring was easier.

And, it didn’t hurt he was a dead ringer for Charlie Rich, a famous country star of the day.

When you sit and think about it, briar must be somewhat porous.

It used to carry water.

Lesson: The vascular system is comprised of two main types of tissue: the xylem and the phloem. The xylem distributes water and dissolved minerals upward through the plant, from the roots to the leaves. The phloem carries food downward from the leaves to the roots.

Each and every year that system turns to what we call wood. You see it in the tree rings. A new set of piping replaces it. ONLY THE OUTSIDE of a tree is alive, not counting the bark. That’s the green part. The rest of the wood is sealed up, and is not porous in the manner you are referring. Wood is not a sponge. This is simple biology or at least over simplified so you can get the idea.

 

[Briar Lee]

I'd hate to see what happens after 40 smokes if four smokes managed to get oils to seep all the way through the walls of the chamber and the stummel....That's some oily tobacco you got there.

I don't have a source to quote but I'm pretty sure tobacco does not reach 1000 degrees when burnt.

Oh, and by the way, that pipe is stained.

It’s not stained much, if any, beyond natural oils.

Sanding it with 4/0 steel wool left it blonde and pitiful looking.

Every video and description of harvesting natural briar tells about either boiling the burls or soaking them in water, then drying.

This is said to be needed to remove foul tasting tannins.

Then of course, the briar must dry out, either naturally or by using artificial heat.

It’s porous. Not so porous as most natural woods, but it’s not made of ceramic.

View attachment 173418

a good average might be 500 degrees Celsius which is about 932 degrees Merican’ measurents. It’s damned hot.

Most woods would ignite, but not briar.

In the small space between the chamber and the outside of the bowl the temperature drops to where you can hold the pipe.

When our briar pipes were burls on the roots of a heath tree, they stored water and nutrients.

There is still a microscopically tiny capillarity system in our pipes.

It works as a wonderful insulator.

And why we can see grain on an unstained or very lightly stained pipe are oils carried in the steam made by tobacco combustion.

What else could it be?

I handled parts of this pipe with clean, dry hands, but not all of it.

 

[Briar Lee]

Lesson: The vascular system is comprised of two main types of tissue: the xylem and the phloem. The xylem distributes water and dissolved minerals upward through the plant, from the roots to the leaves. The phloem carries food downward from the leaves to the roots.

Each and every year that system turns to what we call wood. You see it in the tree rings. A new set of piping replaces it. ONLY THE OUTSIDE of a tree is alive, not counting the bark. That’s the green part. The rest of the wood is sealed up, and is not porous in the manner you are referring. Wood is not a sponge. This is simple biology or at least over simplified so you can get the idea.

After briar burls are harvested they are boiled. Bad tasting tannins are removed.

Burls aren’t sponges, but they were once alive, and aren’t hard granite stone.

Take a little grapeseed oil (Harry Hosterman told me to use olive oil but here I learned about grapeseed oil) and apply it to any good, unvarnished briar pipe. It doesn’t evaporate, the briar sort of sucks it in. The materiel is slightly porous.

Good saddle leather and harness soaks up neatsfoot oil the same way, as does fine walnut and linseed oil.

The pores are so tiny as to be invisible.

When the almost thousand degree oil laden steam penetrates the briar it makes the xylem and phloem visible as beautiful grain.

 

[OzPiper]

I realised sometime ago the @Briar Lee illustrates perfectly the power of thought.

If he ruminates long enough, he can transcend the laws of nature and transmogrify an interesting supposition into fact.

Or maybe that's just the universe he inhabits.

 

[telescopes]

I realised sometime ago the @Briar Lee illustrates perfectly the power of thought.

If he ruminates long enough, he can transcend the laws of nature and transmogrify an interesting supposition into fact.

Or maybe that's just the universe he inhabits.

It’s frustrating to see supposition twisted into science. Of course their is a certain porousness to the wood - but that doesn’t in any way support the supposition that the oils and Tara travel completely through the pipe. There is contrary evidence to that idea. Cut the pipe in half down the middle and it is plan to see. Sand it and you find bare wood. Ream it and you find? Again, bare wood behind the actual chamber. How hard must it be to demonstrate this concept.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I vote, cut it in half. It is a cathartic endeavor. And, my experience is that everyone loves to see a pipe cut in half.

My opinion, suported by science, is that all briar is not the same. Some have developed with grains of said imbedded into it, some have pockets, pits, and whatknots, and of course some is a dense as General Briar Lee here. Like our arguments on here, some hold water, some might slowly leak out over time.

The one and only thing that I can say for certain is that I have an opinion, which may or may not align with anyone else's opinions. But, until someone went for a crazy little boat ride, most folks said that the world was flat... or that's what they tell us.

 

[TheWhale13]

There is only one way to conclude your hypothesis, and become a hero to everyone here. Saw

 

[Briar Lee]

A good night’s sleep and this morning here’s another, almost identical large squat Lee Three Star to smoke,,,

Except this one was obviously walnut stained by Lee.



We don’t know, if Lee tried making a natural color pipe, and then chucked the finished pipe in a vat of boiling stain, or he stained the entire block of briar before he made the pipe.

I don’t have to cut my beautiful pipe in half to know it’s been artificially stained, and that stain is deep, not something painted on and fired off, like some imported English made pipes still are today.

You can sand on a stained Lee until the cows come home and it’s still stained. And when they are found unsmoked, the interior of the chamber has been stained the same as the outside.

Sittin’ and Thinkin’ here this morning, if I had enough money to buy Twitter or launch my own space ship, I’d not do that with it.

Since I know briar is porous enough to take a very deep walnut stain, I’d try boiling briar in artificial sugar, of different kinds.


Lee might have boiled them in saccharine , but since they aren’t ever bitter, my bet is on sorbitol.

Sorbitol - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

After one more day of work, I get to go to my farm and watch my Amish renter start a mile of new fence.

We will start from a hedge corner post my father told him that him and his brother Elmer dug and set in 1919, when Uncle Elmer returned from the war.

I had one dug up once just to see, and sure enough under the ground a hundred some year old hedge post still looks as good and moist as the day it was set. Hedge, and briar, are porous,,,,but not very much so.

If you can saw wood, it’s not solid.

 

[Hillcrest]

Not all briar is the same. My Barontini has three areas of very fine flame grain that are very porous and like an open window that get scalding hot if the pipe is stoked. Any liquid or oil will soak right through to inside or outside depending on where applied. No there are no cracks or fissures. Other briar - not as porous. So you're both right but you are also both extremists - all or nothing ! Birds of a feather !

 

[bassbug]

Now you're contradicting yourself...

In your first post you said that everclear and steel wool took the stain off and now you say the staining is deep.

Which one is it?

 

[Hillcrest]

My opinion, suported by science, is that all briar is not the same.

Brilliant !

 

[craig61a]