The Importance of Breaking in All the Way Down

[cosmicfolklore]

So, more suckers pipesmokers are all off to go buy themselves Briar Lees...

 

[sandollars]

I stick tobacco in 'em and smoke 'em without much thought as to how to break them in.

I always smoke my pipes the same way whether it be a Great Dane, Elegant English, Amazing American, or Iconic Italian. I figure if I don't think about it and smoke them all the same, all the time, I am breaking them in for my smoking style.

MY method has worked flawlessly for me so far.

WTH is a Lee Briar pipe anyway? Is it a basket pipe?

 

[sablebrush52]

Boiled isn't nearly the same as the 400-500 degree heat of burning tobacco.
Oil Curing, yes, but almost no-one does that anymore.
Breaking in your pipe (heating the bowl with smouldering tobacco for 5-10 hours) causes chemical change, that is a fact. How exactly that affects your tobacco could be the subject of much research I'm sure, for all I know the effect on your smoking experience could be absolutely nothing, but the idea that the fundamental composition of the wood of your pipe changes after break in is not speculation.

Documentation please. I need documentation to change disbelief in unsubstantiated myths to disbelief in substantiated myths.
Oh, and the internal temperature you quote is wrong.
Is there change at the surface? Sure, just not of the sort that Lee and you are trying to pitch. Wood gets slightly charred,, more if the smoker doesn't know what he or she is doing. It gets carbonized and then gets coated with carbon from the tobacco. It doesn't turn into something else.

But hey, bring it on, show me the studies.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

WTH is a Lee Briar pipe anyway? Is it a basket pipe?

It's a step down from a Dr. Grabow that this whakadoodle repeatedly posts as being some sort of wonder pipe, that it is not. They couldn't even stay in business.
I don't mind seeing fringe pipe collectors that love a brand like this, but he constantly posts BS about them, encouraging other forum members to buy them. It is a step past extolling his love of this pipe.

 

[sablebrush52]

He must have used the best grade of vulcanite.

There was no "he" of any duration. The founder sold the company after about a year, since it wasn't doing well.

 

[Briar Lee]

I don't own a Lee, but I do have pipes with stems of a similar ilk, the old MasterCrafts are made with some form of vulcanite or para that basically doesn't need any care either, where my otherwise acidic saliva (or perhaps just my personality) will turn an ordinary vulcanite stem green in two seconds.

But my point about those old Danish pipes you are talking about is two fold - first, they got cheap, poor stems mostly. Second, the pipes are drilled and fitted with hardly any care for the most part. And the result is absolute mediocrity. But it's not because the briar is poor. My Mastercrafts and frankly your Lees are much poorer quality wood in general (and yet they smoke just fine as we both know, so much for the wood hypothesis).

Buying cheap, roughly fitted pipes and generalizing about groups of pipes, "Danish" (or "pickaxes" or "bulldogs" or "rusticated pipes", whatever grouping a guy happens to choose) is wrong headed.

If Lees were oil cured or honey impregnated or if they are simply made from nice tasting wood and they break in faster than some other pipe, that's great. I feel the same way about Castellos, and that's why I buy them. But if the average Castello is a much nicer pipe to smoke than the average 1970's cheapo factory freehand, it's not because the Danish pipe is inferior wood, it's because it has a crap stem and crap drilling most usually, assembled and shaped in mere minutes.

I read about poor craftsmanship and bad drilling on pipes, but frankly I can’t say I ever acquired a pipe that was poorly made. I’ve owned many pipes I’ve improved by drilling out the airway a little, and many that had fills, carvings and sandblasts to cover up pits in the briar. And cheaper pipes have less handwork.

Years ago Wally Frank advertised a pipe for a dollar, and I bought one.

It was a crude looking little straight billiard, blasted and filled, but it smoked wonderfully after I broke it in.

I dropped it, and it didn’t bounce.

Briar is a wonderful wood, the only wood ideally suited for making top quality beautiful smoking pipes (or else they’d use something else cheaper, such as pear or cherry more often) but it must come from rugged hillsides around the rim of the Mediterranean, it has to be dried and cured, and ideally aged for a few years.

Demand for briar is only a fraction of what it was when Lee made his first Star Grade pipe in 1946.

I suppose the men who scale the hills to harvest briar roots are far fewer, as well.

That means there should be a lot of heath trees that are old enough now to harvest, just waiting to be turned into pipes.

Our briar pipes today, are likely better than the briar pipes offered 75 years ago.

 

[Simmerdown☕️]

 

[ashdigger]

IBTL. ?‍?

 

[didimauw]

The oils and moisture protect the bottom anyway. —It’s the least likely area to burn out, mainly because so few of us reach it. Has anyone burned their briar? I never have and I rinse mine — No cake or even significant carbon layer builds on my pipes.

Hard to burn through when it looks like this!!!

 

[Donb1972]

It's a step down from a Dr. Grabow that this whakadoodle repeatedly posts as being some sort of wonder pipe, that it is not. They couldn't even stay in business.
I don't mind seeing fringe pipe collectors that love a brand like this, but he constantly posts BS about them, encouraging other forum members to buy them. It is a step past extolling his love of this pipe.

I did consider getting one after reading a few posts, but looking closer at the examples I have seen for sale, I don't think I will ~ there just doesn't appear to be anything "special" about them. Of course, I prefer the oddball pipes. I saw a Monarch, which has quite an unusual inner set-up, that I think I will get instead. ?

 

[canucklehead]

Documentation please. I need documentation to change disbelief in unsubstantiated myths to disbelief in substantiated myths.
Oh, and the internal temperature you quote is wrong.
Is there change at the surface? Sure, just not of the sort that Lee and you are trying to pitch. Wood gets slightly charred,, more if the smoker doesn't know what he or she is doing. It gets carbonized and then gets coated with carbon from the tobacco. It doesn't turn into something else.

But hey, bring it on, show me the studies.

Impact of thermal modification on color and chemical changes of spruce and oak wood - Journal of Wood Science

Thermal modification of wood is an environment-friendly alternative method for improving several properties of wood without the use of chemicals. This paper deals with the examination of color and chemical changes in spruce (Picea abies L.) and oak wood (Quercus robur F.) that occur due to...

jwoodscience.springeropen.com

 

[telescopes]

So, more suckers pipesmokers are all off to go buy themselves Briar Lees...

I think you mean Pipes by Lee, LOL. Briar Lees are indeed an inferior product with an even lower quality of stem material.

 

[sablebrush52]

Impact of thermal modification on color and chemical changes of spruce and oak wood - Journal of Wood Science

Thermal modification of wood is an environment-friendly alternative method for improving several properties of wood without the use of chemicals. This paper deals with the examination of color and chemical changes in spruce (Picea abies L.) and oak wood (Quercus robur F.) that occur due to...

jwoodscience.springeropen.com

Thanks! I'm downloading it to read and see if this is germain to the topic of the briar becoming "heat cured" during the break in process.

 

[telescopes]

I did consider getting one after reading a few posts, but looking closer at the examples I have seen for sale, I don't think I will ~ there just doesn't appear to be anything "special" about them. Of course, I prefer the oddball pipes. I saw a Monarch, which has quite an unusual inner set-up, that I think I will get instead. ?

Most of the ones on the internet are beat up and abused. I do have several and they are in excellent condition, but boy, were they difficult to find. I disagree with @cosmicfolklore about them being a step below Dr. Grabow. For the time period, pipe to pipe, they really are equal to the 40s Kaywoodies for the most part. Regardless, oddly enough, they do smoke fairly well. I say this because I find myself blindly reaching for them more often than I would have thought. They are not front and center in my pipe cabinet so I have to dig around for them so to speak. I would NOT pay the price on the internet for most Lees being offered. They are in beat up condition and overpriced. But if I found one for under $30 dollars and it was one from either the first or second generation, yah, I would consider it. As for as @Briar Lee and his ramblings, from my experience, that what people in the Ozarks do. Taking it too seriously when it is obvious that he is working hard to be a parody of an old time pipe smoker from a small Missouri town says more about the viewer than the one being viewed. I don't worry about readers getting mislead. There is enough information about pipes to keep what our friend Briar Lees says about them in his stories. But what do I know, I am a story teller by trade.

 

[Donb1972]

Briar is a wonderful wood, the only wood ideally suited for making top quality beautiful smoking pipes (or else they’d use something else cheaper, such as pear or cherry more often)

I'm not so sure I believe that briar is the best wood for a pipe, and not simply what is "traditionally" the best. I have a cherry wood that is almost twice my age, and it's still in nearly perfect condition. And I think I read somewhere(don't quote me ? )that olive is better than briar.

Of course, I prefer the real traditional pipes, clays, over briar, so I am not an expert. But morta, cherry, and pear all seem to work great for me...if there was a briar embargo, I wouldn't shed any tears.

 

[Briar Lee]

There was no "he" of any duration. The founder sold the company after about a year, since it wasn't doing well.

I had a perfectly good conspiracy theory that Lee either didn’t exist, or that he was a hireling and minion of Wally Frank, and his name was used for Wally Frank to set up a rival of Kaywoodie.

But a few moths ago a fellow forum member posted photos of Lee, and his factory, and I was happy to know that Lee actually lived, and Lee was every bit as real as Preston Tucker, Henry Kaiser, Joesph Frazier, and Howard Hughes, other postwar tycoons with big plans and new ideas.

Lee had been a pipe company executive for many years. He somehow found the financing and bought bag of briar that were released by wartime purchasing agency and started selling the highest priced regular production pipe on earth, the $25 Lee Five Star.

The prestige London pipe brands sold in the American market for $15 in 1946. Most of Lee’s production seems to have been the $10 (later $15) Three Star grade, but still it was an audacious, bold, and so very American raconteur type enterprise to even enter the market in 1946.

Lee did sell out his company, when I do not know.

I hope he bought a Packard convertible with air conditioning, when he did.

It was a time when Americans believed we could do anything, and did most everything better, and differently than before the war.

Even the music, was full of swagger and swing.

Moon Mullican

 

[elpfeife]

All this informational back and forth.... I need to ruminate on it.

 

[sablebrush52]

I had a perfectly good conspiracy theory that Lee either didn’t exist, or that he was a hireling and minion of Wally Frank, and his name was used for Wally Frank to set up a rival of Kaywoodie.

But a few moths ago a fellow forum member posted photos of Lee, and his factory, and I was happy to know that Lee actually lived, and Lee was every bit as real as Preston Tucker, Henry Kaiser, Joesph Frazier, and Howard Hughes, other postwar tycoons with big plans and new ideas.

Lee had been a pipe company executive for many years. He somehow found the financing and bought bag of briar that were released by wartime purchasing agency and started selling the highest priced regular production pipe on earth, the $25 Lee Five Star.

The prestige London pipe brands sold in the American market for $15 in 1946. Most of Lee’s production seems to have been the $10 (later $15) Three Star grade, but still it was an audacious, bold, and so very American raconteur type enterprise to even enter the market in 1946.

Lee did sell out his company, when I do not know.

I hope he bought a Packard convertible with air conditioning, when he did.

It was a time when Americans believed we could do anything, and did most everything better, and differently than before the war.

Even the music, was full of swagger and swing.

Moon Mullican

Actually, Lee's departure is known and if memory serves, that information was given to you by jguss, pipe historian extraordinaire,

 

[sablebrush52]

Impact of thermal modification on color and chemical changes of spruce and oak wood - Journal of Wood Science

Thermal modification of wood is an environment-friendly alternative method for improving several properties of wood without the use of chemicals. This paper deals with the examination of color and chemical changes in spruce (Picea abies L.) and oak wood (Quercus robur F.) that occur due to...

jwoodscience.springeropen.com

It's an interesting read and it would be of greater relevance were we talking about wood that had not been previously treated, seasoned, or cured. But, that's not the case here.

 

[ashdigger]

I’m oddly longing for my X-Ray Shoe Fitting