Ruminations on Why Better Briar Smokes Better

[Honkytonk Man]

WTF! this thread has lost me from the start.
Are y'all speaking in riddles?
What the heck happened to what is good briar?

 

[Richmond B. Funkenhouser]

Why, is the shotgun a more noble arm for a man to own and master, than a rifle or pistol?

Try hitting a pheasant with a rifle or pistol.

A good shotgun entitles the owner to have good companions who can celebrate the opener of pheasant season and then get up and go out at the crack of noon to shoot a few birds to justify the trip.

I love a nice shotgun. I don't carry a pistol, but have a Remington 870 in my car.

Never hunted pheasant I have shot doves and quail though. Dove hunts are a great time as long as you don't have too many beers before the birds get there. They can be hard to hit.

I've spent countless afternoons as a kid shooting crows with my friends. That's fun stuff.

 

[Richmond B. Funkenhouser]

WTF! this thread has lost me from the start.
Are y'all speaking in riddles?
What the heck happened to what is good briar?

Yes, sir. Those are the best money can buy.

 

[Honkytonk Man]

Yes, sir. Those are the best money can buy.

Ha! I knew it!

 

[bassbug]

a lady with a plan. Either think if one doesn't solve the other or the first solves the problem and the second solves the problem created by the first. Either way... Gotta love a lady with a plan.

The are some of us who, for reasons left unsaid, feel quite uncomfortable when a lady has a gun...

 

[sasquatch]

Thanks. As I read this thread I remember reading some of your posts over the years attesting to the fact that it is hard if not impossible to know who uses what briar from which region due to a number of factors. How about curing Sasquatch? I believe it does matter but to what extent? Do you have to dry it out? Even if you use a bowl coating (which if it is still true you do not)? I hear that really old and dry briar is harder to work with and is chippy (technical term) so does it matter if it has been cured at all? If so, what is the minimum air dry time? I hear of some companies drying it out for less than a year but of course the mill does dry and cure it before hand but was that always the case? Like in the 50-60’s when Dr. Graybow and the likes were pumping them out by the zillions?
Sorry for the slew of questions but these are things I have always wondered among others but I’ll save the rest for another post.

The mills really only dry it until it's stable enough for transport. Every large order of briar (and remember I am not under ANY conditions ordering truly large orders, I'm talking 100 blocks not 10000) I've gotten has shown up not-quite-ready-to-work. But the briar is boiled, it's "clean" and a pipe made out of it immediately won't taste like skunk or barf or anything. The issue is the block will dry more yet and change shape in doing so. The mortise might get too small and crack, a shank might deveop a bend.... So responsible makers sit on the briar for a year or so at least - it truly takes some time for briar to come to equilibrium with the humidity in the air around it. Savinelli mentions using briar that has rested for 3 years for their Punto Oro pipes. Castello claims to use wood more like 10 years aged, and there's no reason to doubt this. I've gotten very fresh wet wood from various mills and put it away to slowly cure - I don't mind because that way I can dry it slow and prevent it from cracking. There's no other magic, no additive, I don't sprinkle Turmeric on the blocks or read them poetry. They feel heavy and a little cool until they don't. And then they begin to feel harder, they darken, and when briar is truly ready to be made into a pipe, the blocks "clink" in an almost metallic fashion. It's quite distinct.

So let's say it's a year or two on and you are ready to make pipes with the wood. And you are constantly buying new wood too, and eventually you start to build up a stock of older blocks and it's just a cycle - always something drying in the corner, always some ready to go, and probably a few blocks getting pretty old somewhere. These old blocks are invariably harder and darker than new ones. This spring I cut a pipe from a Spanish block that a customer and I put away 10 years ago. It was really hard, tended to burn, like I needed to check my tools for sharpness. It was like a rock. Same for sanding. Not much fun to work with, honestly. I have some Italian wood of the same vintage, and it's very hard too, although not quite as astonishing as that one. It also tends to sandblast better, with real clarity of grain, I find (although this is a whole different conversation). Really fresh briar never blasts as well as crunchy old stuff for me.

Very ocassionally you come across a block that is a reject in some way, cracks or pits being the most common, but once in a while, and I mean, this is for me twice in about 1000 blocks now.... you cut a piece of wood and it doesn't smell good. Perhaps it was indeed pissed on too many times. But more likely it just grew in an area with some kind of mineral, or saw a little too much swampy moisture in it's life... I don't know. But if I cut a block and it stinks, I don't want to make a pipe with it. This is the funny part about Rainer Barbi's answer when asked when he knew a pipe would be special - he claimed the briar smelled like baking bread. This is such a German style of joke - it ALL smells like baking bread when you cut it.

I have a very few blocks put aside with "very light" written on them and a very few with "very heavy" written on them. I have no idea what to expect from smoking either. One will make a lighter pipe than the other. But I can't say one will absorb more moisture or bounce or lose more heat.... when we make a pipe, we select the grain shape and density that is appropriate for the purpose, just as a large pipe needs a large block, so a cross-grain pipe needs a cross-grain block. But no man alive is picking a block saying "Oh, here we go.... here's one that will smoke nice." We buy from mills that sell well-boiled briar and good quality cuts. After that.... you have to make the pipe correctly, whatever you think that means.

As to other curing methods (oil curing most especially), yes, been there, done that. And tested all kinds of pipes too - old Dunhill Shells, various American makers, one notable Italian maker that used to oil cure.... and the pipe that outsmoked all of them, to my experience, was Castello. Air cured briar, no stinger, just a really smooth airway. So I stopped stinking up my kitchen and started buying more briar to hang on to longer. I will say this - in oil curing some stummels, I found NOTHING AT ALL in the oil, it never changed color, no flavor change, I'd say nothing at all came out of the wood. And you are left with a pipe that tastes, at least for a while, like whatever oils are in the mixture. No big revelation there.

But if an oil cured pipe can smoke great, and an air-cured pipe can smoke great, and a morta pipe can smoke great, and a meerschaum can smoke great... maybe the briar isn't doing all the heavy lifting.

 

[telescopes]

The best might become Five Star Lees, the worst a Gold Coast.

Or the best earn a white spot, the worst are stamped Parker.

Mr. Lee. You apparently do t own any Gold Coast. I can assure you they are not what you think they are. I have three and they all have “GOLD FILLED BANDS”. Oooooo. Not Stars, mind you, but rings of power that glow letters when hot.

 

[sasquatch]

"One pipe to confuse them all"

 

[Papamique]

The mills really only dry it until it's stable enough for transport. Every large order of briar (and remember I am not under ANY conditions ordering truly large orders, I'm talking 100 blocks not 10000) I've gotten has shown up not-quite-ready-to-work. But the briar is boiled, it's "clean" and a pipe made out of it immediately won't taste like skunk or barf or anything. The issue is the block will dry more yet and change shape in doing so. The mortise might get too small and crack, a shank might deveop a bend.... So responsible makers sit on the briar for a year or so at least - it truly takes some time for briar to come to equilibrium with the humidity in the air around it. Savinelli mentions using briar that has rested for 3 years for their Punto Oro pipes. Castello claims to use wood more like 10 years aged, and there's no reason to doubt this. I've gotten very fresh wet wood from various mills and put it away to slowly cure - I don't mind because that way I can dry it slow and prevent it from cracking. There's no other magic, no additive, I don't sprinkle Turmeric on the blocks or read them poetry. They feel heavy and a little cool until they don't. And then they begin to feel harder, they darken, and when briar is truly ready to be made into a pipe, the blocks "clink" in an almost metallic fashion. It's quite distinct.

So let's say it's a year or two on and you are ready to make pipes with the wood. And you are constantly buying new wood too, and eventually you start to build up a stock of older blocks and it's just a cycle - always something drying in the corner, always some ready to go, and probably a few blocks getting pretty old somewhere. These old blocks are invariably harder and darker than new ones. This spring I cut a pipe from a Spanish block that a customer and I put away 10 years ago. It was really hard, tended to burn, like I needed to check my tools for sharpness. It was like a rock. Same for sanding. Not much fun to work with, honestly. I have some Italian wood of the same vintage, and it's very hard too, although not quite as astonishing as that one. It also tends to sandblast better, with real clarity of grain, I find (although this is a whole different conversation). Really fresh briar never blasts as well as crunchy old stuff for me.

Very ocassionally you come across a block that is a reject in some way, cracks or pits being the most common, but once in a while, and I mean, this is for me twice in about 1000 blocks now.... you cut a piece of wood and it doesn't smell good. Perhaps it was indeed pissed on too many times. But more likely it just grew in an area with some kind of mineral, or saw a little too much swampy moisture in it's life... I don't know. But if I cut a block and it stinks, I don't want to make a pipe with it. This is the funny part about Rainer Barbi's answer when asked when he knew a pipe would be special - he claimed the briar smelled like baking bread. This is such a German style of joke - it ALL smells like baking bread when you cut it.

I have a very few blocks put aside with "very light" written on them and a very few with "very heavy" written on them. I have no idea what to expect from smoking either. One will make a lighter pipe than the other. But I can't say one will absorb more moisture or bounce or lose more heat.... when we make a pipe, we select the grain shape and density that is appropriate for the purpose, just as a large pipe needs a large block, so a cross-grain pipe needs a cross-grain block. But no man alive is picking a block saying "Oh, here we go.... here's one that will smoke nice." We buy from mills that sell well-boiled briar and good quality cuts. After that.... you have to make the pipe correctly, whatever you think that means.

As to other curing methods (oil curing most especially), yes, been there, done that. And tested all kinds of pipes too - old Dunhill Shells, various American makers, one notable Italian maker that used to oil cure.... and the pipe that outsmoked all of them, to my experience, was Castello. Air cured briar, no stinger, just a really smooth airway. So I stopped stinking up my kitchen and started buying more briar to hang on to longer. I will say this - in oil curing some stummels, I found NOTHING AT ALL in the oil, it never changed color, no flavor change, I'd say nothing at all came out of the wood. And you are left with a pipe that tastes, at least for a while, like whatever oils are in the mixture. No big revelation there.

But if an oil cured pipe can smoke great, and an air-cured pipe can smoke great, and a morta pipe can smoke great, and a meerschaum can smoke great... maybe the briar isn't doing all the heavy lifting.

Thank you for this response. I imagine it took some time to type out and time is valuable. You answered my all my questions and the other ones too.
I have smoked plenty of pipe brands from new (NOS air unsmoked). Some that were air cured for just a couple years seemed to have an acrid sense to them. Almost like eating a lemon where my mouth felt puckered. Once smoked a few times this went away. The charatans, Sasieni, Ashton, and castello did not have this characteristic. I have never smoked an unsmoked dunhill. I chalked this up to the curing but it’s only a guess and either way it isn’t a big difference. With the Ashton I didn’t smell or taste any oil. Just tobacco. I do look for briar that has, reportedly, been cured longer as I have had better luck with that. I can’t help but think these houses know a thing or two about curing, storing and working the briar to give a solid smoking experience while at the same time giving them workable stock as soon as possible. Again, I appreciate your informative reply Sasquatch.

 

[jpmcwjr]

As do I: super good information! Thanks.

It made me wonder if many makers (in addition to big shops with frazing operations) cut away as much as possible and then let more drying occur before the next steps...

 

[jpmcwjr]

WTF! this thread has lost me from the start.
Are y'all speaking in riddles?
What the heck happened to what is good briar?

Well, that happens, and often a couple of on topic posts occur and the thread returns to normal. Not real often, but it's worth trying!

 

[Briar Lee]

The mills really only dry it until it's stable enough for transport. Every large order of briar (and remember I am not under ANY conditions ordering truly large orders, I'm talking 100 blocks not 10000) I've gotten has shown up not-quite-ready-to-work. But the briar is boiled, it's "clean" and a pipe made out of it immediately won't taste like skunk or barf or anything. The issue is the block will dry more yet and change shape in doing so. The mortise might get too small and crack, a shank might deveop a bend.... So responsible makers sit on the briar for a year or so at least - it truly takes some time for briar to come to equilibrium with the humidity in the air around it. Savinelli mentions using briar that has rested for 3 years for their Punto Oro pipes. Castello claims to use wood more like 10 years aged, and there's no reason to doubt this. I've gotten very fresh wet wood from various mills and put it away to slowly cure - I don't mind because that way I can dry it slow and prevent it from cracking. There's no other magic, no additive, I don't sprinkle Turmeric on the blocks or read them poetry. They feel heavy and a little cool until they don't. And then they begin to feel harder, they darken, and when briar is truly ready to be made into a pipe, the blocks "clink" in an almost metallic fashion. It's quite distinct.

So let's say it's a year or two on and you are ready to make pipes with the wood. And you are constantly buying new wood too, and eventually you start to build up a stock of older blocks and it's just a cycle - always something drying in the corner, always some ready to go, and probably a few blocks getting pretty old somewhere. These old blocks are invariably harder and darker than new ones. This spring I cut a pipe from a Spanish block that a customer and I put away 10 years ago. It was really hard, tended to burn, like I needed to check my tools for sharpness. It was like a rock. Same for sanding. Not much fun to work with, honestly. I have some Italian wood of the same vintage, and it's very hard too, although not quite as astonishing as that one. It also tends to sandblast better, with real clarity of grain, I find (although this is a whole different conversation). Really fresh briar never blasts as well as crunchy old stuff for me.

Very ocassionally you come across a block that is a reject in some way, cracks or pits being the most common, but once in a while, and I mean, this is for me twice in about 1000 blocks now.... you cut a piece of wood and it doesn't smell good. Perhaps it was indeed pissed on too many times. But more likely it just grew in an area with some kind of mineral, or saw a little too much swampy moisture in it's life... I don't know. But if I cut a block and it stinks, I don't want to make a pipe with it. This is the funny part about Rainer Barbi's answer when asked when he knew a pipe would be special - he claimed the briar smelled like baking bread. This is such a German style of joke - it ALL smells like baking bread when you cut it.

I have a very few blocks put aside with "very light" written on them and a very few with "very heavy" written on them. I have no idea what to expect from smoking either. One will make a lighter pipe than the other. But I can't say one will absorb more moisture or bounce or lose more heat.... when we make a pipe, we select the grain shape and density that is appropriate for the purpose, just as a large pipe needs a large block, so a cross-grain pipe needs a cross-grain block. But no man alive is picking a block saying "Oh, here we go.... here's one that will smoke nice." We buy from mills that sell well-boiled briar and good quality cuts. After that.... you have to make the pipe correctly, whatever you think that means.

As to other curing methods (oil curing most especially), yes, been there, done that. And tested all kinds of pipes too - old Dunhill Shells, various American makers, one notable Italian maker that used to oil cure.... and the pipe that outsmoked all of them, to my experience, was Castello. Air cured briar, no stinger, just a really smooth airway. So I stopped stinking up my kitchen and started buying more briar to hang on to longer. I will say this - in oil curing some stummels, I found NOTHING AT ALL in the oil, it never changed color, no flavor change, I'd say nothing at all came out of the wood. And you are left with a pipe that tastes, at least for a while, like whatever oils are in the mixture. No big revelation there.

But if an oil cured pipe can smoke great, and an air-cured pipe can smoke great, and a morta pipe can smoke great, and a meerschaum can smoke great... maybe the briar isn't doing all the heavy lifting.

when briar is truly ready to be made into a pipe, the blocks "clink" in an almost metallic fashion. It's quite distinct.

—-

Lee had won, somehow, a huge number of bags of briar that were auctioned by some wartime agency that might have been holding it since January 1942.

(As a side note, all the cars produced in January and part of February 1942 went into government holding agencies. There was a helluva war on.)

Lee had one advantage over Kaywoodie.

Kaywoodie had to wait, to buy briar on the market. Lee had maybe a cargo ship full of aged briar.

Please help me out.

You’d clink the briar.

You might even taste the briar, and sniff it?

But if every other pipe maker in the free world was waiting on briar and you had this huge stash to grade into production,

Other than by sight, arranging briar by potential beauty, would you clink or taste and maybe sniff briar before or after oil curing it?

Lee wanted to make the best pipes on earth, and sell them by the many thousands.

He was not an artisan but a manufacturer.

 

[Python 357]

one of the best tasting pipes I`ve had was a freebie from 4 Noggins,a carve it yourself block of cherry

 

[sasquatch]

when briar is truly ready to be made into a pipe, the blocks "clink" in an almost metallic fashion. It's quite distinct.

—-

Lee had won, somehow, a huge number of bags of briar that were auctioned by some wartime agency that might have been holding it since January 1942.

(As a side note, all the cars produced in January and part of February 1942 went into government holding agencies. There was a helluva war on.)

Lee had one advantage over Kaywoodie.

Kaywoodie had to wait, to buy briar on the market. Lee had maybe a cargo ship full of aged briar.

Please help me out.

You’d clink the briar.

You might even taste the briar, and sniff it?

But if every other pipe maker in the free world was waiting on briar and you had this huge stash to grade into production,

Other than by sight, arranging briar by potential beauty, would you clink or taste and maybe sniff briar before or after oil curing it?

Lee wanted to make the best pipes on earth, and sell them by the many thousands.

He was not an artisan but a manufacturer.

If briar tastes good and is cured well, why oil cure?

This scenario you are imagining currently exists, this very day. There's a giant load of very old briar just waiting for a buyer. But it's 20,000 bucks. And I can't see the wood first hand unless I travel internationally. Do I buy it blind because it's old? Hell no. It could be garbage. Cracked, wormy, sandy, who knows what the hell it's like?

Naturally, if someone has a stock of "ready" wood of high quality, I would buy it. I frequently do as a matter of fact. I've lost track of the number of times I've bought stock from a guy who was quitting. Years ago Michael Parks sold a bunch of excellent briar, marked with a maple leaf stamp. I found some on eBay and recognized it. Yes, I bought it. Yes, it was wonderful.

But the fundamental trick here isn't the age of the briar, it's the quality coming out of the mill. I'll grab a picture or two, I've got a bad block on the table right now.

 

[sasquatch]

Briar in this case from the same supplier - same bag, same purchase.

Currently on the bench, a sandblast grade billiard, looking good, nothing ugly, a few little pepper spots as all briar has.



Marked out and cut just ahead of it:



Would have been fun grain for a blast,

But it's awful - discolored and cracked, absolute reject.




I won't make a pipe from that, and I don't know an artisan who would.

In a factory setting, .... it's getting frazed, stemmed, and finished. It wouldn't be a high grade, but it would get finished and sold.

The pipe at 6:00 and the even worse pipe at 7:15 in this video about Chacom show what continues to be worked on (and therefore sold).

Briar is treacherous stuff. Demand for top quality has always been high. If you choose to believe that every Dunhill was dead root Calabrian north-slope virgin-picked.... I can't stop you. If you think oil curing makes a great pipe, I can't stop you. We've all had varying experiences with all kinds of different pipes.

I disprefer Algerian briar because it's got a lot of flaws and it's kind of weirdly waxy to work with. But that doesn't mean there's no quality Algerian briar. I like Spanish wood, I think it smokes great and it's got a little more "fight" in it than some Italian wood does. Makes for interesting pipes, if less "perfect" in terms of grain. I keep Italian wood on hand for bright contrast work, it stains a little differently.

But it's not at all a case where one can look at a bag of blocks and say "Oh, that's good smoking briar." Utterly impossible. It might be pipe by pipe in ANY bag of blocks as to the quality of the wood, even if you do believe that Spanish briar tastes a little different or smokes with somehow a different character than Italian.


The other thing I'll mention here is that there was a space-race of marketing amongst all the pipe houses - "we have 10,000 year old moon briar", "we have a gizmotronic stinger", "we have a the smoke-o-matic fitment"... all kinds of BS. And smokers lick this stuff up. Being ignorant, largely, of how a pipe works, and how pipes are made, we have all been at the mercy of the copy men. I think it's good to de-mythologize this stuff. I can only do so by relating my own experience as a smoker, an explorer of pipes, and a maker.

Your mileage may vary.

 

[JOHN72]

I'm enjoying this thread, with a slice of apple pie. and another small glass of whiskey. Damn, this thread, is making me hungry.

 

[PipeIT]

Here’s a short little video, someone explaining a little of cleaning the burl, it’s not lot of information, but it’s clear to see, once you’ve dug the burl out of the ground, you don’t know what you’re possibly dealing with until you start cutting it.

And in this video it’s clear to see briar gets knots and bad areas in it like any other wood, and there are certainly some areas on this wood that doesn’t look so good.

 

[PipeIT]

 

[PipeIT]

 

[sasquatch]

Mimmo has the best nose in the industry.