Ruminations Regarding Smoking Quality

[Briar Lee]

There’s a school of thought that briar quality is most important to smoking quality, and as long as I can remember I’ve been of that school. It’s briar, not the boring of the briar.

Another school teaches the importance of construction. Subtle differences in chamber size, draft hole length and size, make the difference. It’s boring and not the briar that produce great smokers.

Today I got in a low use old Edward’s and cleaned it up while my wife fixed lunch.



And I filled it with Gettysburg and it was a delicious, sweet smoking pipe.

But a friend here suggested I use a lighter to raise and eliminate the tiny little chew marks on the stem, and when I did that (successfully—wow—that’s magic) and started to use steel wool and beeswax to get the stem black again, I noticed it was difficult to run a pipe cleaner through the stem.

I could, but there was lots of drama and effort.

So I took my trusty drill I have a bit on to open up the draft holes in the shank and used it to enlarge the stem from the tenon back as far as I could.

It made a lot of rubber smoke but I didn’t break nothin’.

Wow.

This pipe is now a dynamite smoker. It was good before, now it’s outrageously good.

From now on I’ll believe in good briar that’s well bored.

 

[sablebrush52]

There’s a school of thought that briar quality is most important to smoking quality, and as long as I can remember I’ve been of that school. It’s briar, not the boring of the briar.

Another school teaches the importance of construction. Subtle differences in chamber size, draft hole length and size, make the difference. It’s boring and not the briar that produce great smokers.

Today I got in a low use old Edward’s and cleaned it up while my wife fixed lunch.

View attachment 416273

And I filled it with Gettysburg and it was a delicious, sweet smoking pipe.

But a friend here suggested I use a lighter to raise and eliminate the tiny little chew marks on the stem, and when I did that (successfully—wow—that’s magic) and started to use steel wool and beeswax to get the stem black again, I noticed it was difficult to run a pipe cleaner through the stem.

I could, but there was lots of drama and effort.

So I took my trusty drill I have a bit on to open up the draft holes in the shank and used it to enlarge the stem from the tenon back as far as I could.

It made a lot of rubber smoke but I didn’t break nothin’.

Wow.

This pipe is now a dynamite smoker. It was good before, now it’s outrageously good.

From now on I’ll believe in good briar that’s well bored.

I’m of the “it’s 25% equipment, and 75% technique” school. One can buy the finest pipe, but not knowing how to prep, pack, and smoke will negate any benefit from that well made instrument.

 

[Briar Lee]

I’m of the “it’s 25% equipment, and 75% technique” school. One can buy the finest pipe, but not knowing how to prep, pack, and smoke will negate any benefit from that well made instrument.

My other hobbies include playing a flat top dreadnaught guitar while singing through my nose.

And like a pipe, let’s consider Willie Nelson’s guitar Trigger here in our pipe discussion.

As for technique, I’d say Willie’s guitar technique is a million times better than mine. He could take any of my guitars and play them like Willie Nelson.

Willie has a case of emphysema (from cigarettes) and if Willie has a briar tobacco pipe, I guarantee that I could smoke Willie’s pipe as well as any of mine, in seconds. My pipe smoking technique has been improving daily since 1972.

But Willie paid $600 for Trigger in 1969 before do gooders passed any laws restricting Martin and Gibson from using the rarest and most exotic imported hardwoods they desired.

And Trigger is constructed like a $600 grade Martin was in 1969, it’s not a Gibson.

Willie has worn a hole under the strings on Trigger but one luthier with magical skills keeps Trigger the best sounding twanger guitar on the planet earth.

You Wouldn’t Cross The Street to Say Goodbye

Trigger played by Willie

Wherever your technique you need good wood and the instrument be well constructed.

That Edward’s was stamped France.



It was made in France of Pre 54 Algerian briar and has been seasoning about as long as I have.

There’s no better briar to bore, you know?



Wood quality, if constructed well, makes a lot of difference.

Listen to how empty this song sounded before Trigger. It was twangy, just not Trigger grade twangy.

Original You Wouldn’t Cross the Street to Say Goodbye

 

[Briar Lee]

Sitting here waiting for my wife to wake up I’m smoking Prince Albert in my latest Edward’s and I noticed these marks.



The dead French hands that carved and finished that pipe nearly seventy years ago stamped what looks to me to be a P and an O on it.

Oh my.

Was he a fifties namesake of Pierre Ozanne?

Pierre Ozanne - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Maybe Pierre made a mistake bending my stem or maybe a careless owner got a pipe cleaner stuck partially in the airway.

At this long distance it’s hard to say, you know?

——

When my first wife threw those huge swimming pool parties on our MacMansion on the hilltop I let her build using about every dime I had I had a bandstand set up on the concrete apron of the pool with a diving board.

And she’d invite every local big wig and dignitary and name dropper in our little town and I’d play music under the deck with my mother and my identical twin blonde bombshell secretaries and their mother and my band members who were all related by marriage to my good friend Jack Rutledge who founded Tana Wire Markers in Little Rock Arkansas in 1968 and played guitar and harmonica and loved Moon Mullican.

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Fireworks Splice HTML

www.tanawiremarker.com

My mother taught me how to sing.

She knew every song I knew and then some.

Once she’d get my favorite twin secretary up to the mike Mama would always request we sing Hank Jr and Lois Johnson’s rendition of

We Live in Two Different Worlds

Jack’s in laws were just beyond fantastic electric lead and steel and bass guitar and electronic keyboard players, the best I’ve ever performed with. They even had a fiddle and dobro and banjo players, Mama was just in heaven watching me lead, and her requesting the songs.

When we’d finish my duet partner would sometimes giggle and say that pipe makes you look so distinguished, and it smells like heaven.

Which always left me, atypically, at a complete loss for words, you know?

 

[burleybreath]

The dead French hands that carved and finished that pipe nearly seventy years ago stamped what looks to me to be a P and an O on it.

Betcha it's a 3, lying on its side.

 

[dottlejockey]

Betcha it's a 3, lying on its side.

Was going to say the same thing. I'm seeing a 3.

 

[Briar Lee]

Betcha it's a 3, lying on its side.

Ding ding ding, a winner!

Thanks for the revision.




Why would the long dead Frenchman laboring under the shadow of the Cathedral at Saint Claude with the Hubein Altar intentionally stamp that 3 on there sideways?



Third pipe that day?

Third quality to send to the Yanks?

——

What are these tiny lines so close together on my pipe?



The other side shows the cut




They say grown men shouldn’t cry but after every one of those huge pool parties I’d excuse myself to go roll up the enormous cover over the swimming pool that was the largest in our county.

I’d clean up all the mess on the yard and burn the trash in our excavated burn pit.

And I’d watch the lights on our three story home turn off one by one.

And I’d sit there on the diving board and cry my eyes out until

I’d hear the click of my mother’s high heels.

And one of those parties, she said Dana and I had the best conversation this evening.

I’m seventy now and up in years and when I take the final plunge I need somebody with a clear head to manage my not inconsiderable affairs.

And I had a copy of all my keys made up and I gave one set to Dana and here’s your set.

You aren’t forty and Dana isn’t 25 yet, you two could live another fifty years, you know?

My father lived to be 92, and my mother was just 75 when he died.

I’d like my properties to be managed well, after I’m gone.

And I told Dana you’d lose your set of keys so I gave a set to Dana to hide in your desk, too.

And I hugged her and said you’ll be the death of me yet, Mama.

How my mother taught me

We Live in Two Different Worlds

Blind Pig and the Acorn Version