Who Else is Addicted to Algerian Briar?

[brian64]

Tree rings are nuttin'.

My Vauen Auenland is carved from ancient Entwood the Hobbits smuggled back to the Shire from the battle of Isengard.

 

[Lumbridge]

I honestly have no idea whether or not the region/type of briar has any effect on the smoke, but all of my Algerian briars smoke incredibly well - cool, rich, flavorful smoke. I think I also just prefer the uncoated bowls.

 

[username]

I got a edwards marked Algerian briar its a good smoker. I just dont reach for it often

 

[sablebrush52]

Yeh, just spoil the movie with like, what? Facts. Your from Hollywood. Isn’t it all about the illusion? Dude. Like, spoil it all with facts. No work for you at the Magic Castle.

Wrong part of Hollywood. I'm a factory worker.

 

[Briar Lee]

Here is grain structure, from the example above. Straight grain.






It grew a little each year from the center.

If the growth rings were visible at the heart they’d be larger when it began to grow than at the outer bark.

Counting those rings would be the only way I can figure to determine how old the root was.

 

[Briar Lee]

I got a edwards marked Algerian briar its a good smoker. I just dont reach for it often

I have several Edward’s.

Good enough smokers but not dynamite smokers like my Marxman pipes are.

Marx used the best smoking grade of Algerian briar.

 

[sablebrush52]

Here is grain structure, from the example above. Straight grain.

View attachment 267021
Briar is part of the heath tree’s root system. All underground, no bark, no rings.
Age is determined by the size of the tumor and experience with the wood, among other factors.



It grew a little each year from the center.

If the growth rings were visible at the heart they’d be larger when it began to grow than at the outer bark.

Counting those rings would be the only way I can figure to determine how old the root was.

 

[Briar Lee]

The wild heather is an invasive shrub where it grows in abundance around the Mediterranean good only for ornamental plantings. The only part of the shrub good for pipes is a tumor, or burl, on the roots.

Those burls start out the size of a pea, and grow slowly.

Each year would leave a tiny mark, on the burl, as it got bigger.

Whatever mysterious mojo makes those burls the one and only wood good enough for quality briar pipes, seems to take more seasons to produce.

If ancient Algerian wasn’t the best Dunhill would have used another grade, one easier to work with.

 

[Sigmund]

Color me a sceptic. They may well be great pipes but I think the pipe industry is a bit like the musical instrument industry in which I am invoilved. I make sax mouthpieces and in the business there are tons of buzz words and internet legends created and unscientifially validated all over the place. Just repeat the same thing a thousand times and people take it for gospel. For instance Material....the belive that old formuations of vulcanite are superior to new ones in terms of sonic presentation. There is no factual evidence and as a mouthpiece maker I can tell you its total bunk. Its more about geometry, precision, design and execution of that design. Old hard rubber does not sound different than new hard rubber...period. A gold plated saxophone does not sound different than a silver plated saxophone.

Its my hunch that what makes some people like the marxman pipes is more about construction, design of the draft and overall movement of smoke/air than it has to do with which briar was used. Also a lot of it has to do with luck. It is very easy for all of us to get one or two pipes made by the same maker that smoke great and then begin to belive that the brand is the best ever.....until the next brand or until we run into a dog.

So no...Im not buying that a broke in pipe tastes better because the material. If its broke in its carbon, smoke, and tar coated. At the risk of being repetitive I think it is about design at that juncture.

Im quite sure 3/4 of the people here think Im wrong but you cant sell something without a hook and one of the major hooks for the industry is building up mistique. Pairing mistique with easily accessable and inexpensive material even makes it better. Id venture to say that Algerian briar was cheaper than what was avaliable on the Europen mainland....simply becuse it was in North Africa.

That said, is there Junk Briar...Im sure there is. No offense or disrespect intended. You should smoke what you ilke. But at the same time I dont believe in magical briar cut from Jacks bean stalk.

 

[Chasing Embers]

Just gonna leave a random photo of Ron White here.

 

[Chasing Embers]

If I handed that pipe to an Algerian briar atheist and he smoked it, he’d come away as convinced as Billy Sunday of the righteousness of true, top grade Algerian briar.

I've got a few and they smoke no differently than briar, strawberry wood, or various hardwoods. I'm glad you're finding pipes you like but you need to layoff the pipe smoking misinformation. It's mysticism and hokum like that that makes potential new pipe smokers shy away from trying at all.

 

[chilllucky]

Understanding Wood 2nd Edition by R. Bruce Hoadley - Woodworking - Techniques - Hardcover Book

A Craftsman's Guide to Wood Technology

www.tauntonstore.com

 

[Hillcrest]

There are quality pipes made from algerian briar still being made in France but there are fewer and fewer.

 

[Briar Lee]

I've got a few and they smoke no differently than briar, strawberry wood, or various hardwoods. I'm glad you're finding pipes you like but you need to layoff the pipe smoking misinformation. It's mysticism and hokum like that that makes potential new pipe smokers shy away from trying at all.

Let’s say I’m a brand new pipe smoker.

I’m likely the same as my wife, and can’t imagine smoking another man’s pipe he slobbered over.

And even if I’m game to buying a used pipe, who’d spend much on these old things?



The pipe on the left cost somebody $5 in the thirties and forties and the pipe on the right is a 400 that was the most expensive factory pipe in the world from 1937 to 1946, when Lee matched the $25 price.

The 400 has a gold band and it weighs more.

Today a good 400 might be as cheap as $100 and I paid $175 for that one. Gladly.

The Jumbo A is fully colored, and might bring $10 and postage.

If I’m steering a beginner wrong he’s missing one meal at the drive thru.

But if I’m right, every measure of what makes a briar pipe valuable, which is 99% aesthetics, is all wrong.

Neither of those pipes have even the pretty grain of a $32 new Dr Grabow.

They’ll turn color to a wine red brown color the first week of hard use.

But if you can smoke 1792 and like it, those old Algerian pipes is all you’ll want to smoke it in.

They are an order of magnitude better smokers than the same size pipe not made of the oldest, best, grainless, ugly Algerian briar that Marx used, even for a 400.

 

[Briar Lee]

There are quality pipes made from algerian briar still being made in France but there are fewer and fewer.

When I rant and rave over an old Marxman pipe it’s not because the briar was harvested in Algeria.

The northern part of Algeria has about the same Mediterranean climate as Spain, France, Italy, and Greece.

I own several other makes of Algerian briar pipes from Edward’s and from Marxman after they were made in France. Good smokers but no more so than one made from Spanish, French, Italian or Grecian briar.

The colonial French briar inspectors are all dead or close to a hundred years old.

They graded Algerian briar so only the most porous, easily colored, oldest, lightest, softness briar that had to be boiled in oil or water a long time, then seasoned a decade before use, was exported as Algerian briar.

That’s what Alfred Dunhill used for sandblasted pipes and Marx used for all his pipes. There can’t ever be that consistently graded briar on the market again.

There is a huge stash of these pipes on the market for about $10 each. My understanding is the Algerians used machines to make them from old stocks of true Algerian briar in the sixties and seventies, and they are just now on the market.

I have three, they are tiny and ugly and crude. But they do smoke and color like a Pre 54 Marxman. They are the real coin.

 

[Sigmund]

Honestly I think the reason Dunhill used it is because it still did an excellent job and once blasts became popular little flaws didnt matter. Great grain didnt matter as much. Good product...better profit margin...win win. Luxury brands watch the bottom line too. Often more than others. Often lux brands pay shops a higher percentage so they are favored over the competition

 

[telescopes]

I've got a few and they smoke no differently than briar, strawberry wood, or various hardwoods. I'm glad you're finding pipes you like but you need to layoff the pipe smoking misinformation. It's mysticism and hokum like that that makes potential new pipe smokers shy away from trying at all.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Hard science fails to explain what it cannot perceive or register. Reality might just be the illusion of something much grander and more wonderful then anything science can ever explain. Love, romanticism, and a touch of the unknown are not perceived equally by everyone. Value can not always be quantified. And I, for one, believe that makes all the difference. Stories are often more powerful than any science textbook. Both have their place and neither displaces the other. What is more real? The statue of Ramesses the second or Shelly’s sonnet of Ozymandias ? Can one truly be discussed without the other?

 

[Briar Lee]

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Hard science fails to explain what it cannot perceive or register. Reality might just be the illusion of something much grander and more wonderful then anything science can ever explain. Love, romanticism, and a touch of the unknown are not perceived equally by everyone. Value can not always be quantified. And I, for one, believe that makes all the difference. Stories are often more powerful than any science textbook. Both have their place and neither displaces the other. What is more real? The statue of Ramesses the second or Shelly’s sonnet of Ozymandias ? Can one truly be discussed without the other?

I still keep the 1939 Required Poems for the Elementary Grades in Missouri book my grandfather bought my mother when she was 13, behind my desk.

Xxxxx

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Xxxx

Time and circumstances took Scottish Christians far away from their homeland but that spark of curiosity remains.

My mother used to laugh and recount to me the first time she recited Ozymandias to me I thought a minute and asked—-

How did he arrange for his statue to be built?

She said let’s look that up in the World Book, shall we?

They are difficult to photograph but my $10 El Morjane pipe has a series of tiny little lines running across the grain about a razor blade’s width apart.


It only holds a Harry Hosterman size pinch of tobacco but it’s smoking cool, bold, robust, and savory this morning in a brand new pipe made from 70 year old Algerian briar.

How Dey Did Dat?.

(Warren Buffett owns the World Book Encyclopedia. Not for the money it makes, I’d reckon)

Things that are real are no less real, because others may doubt the reality of them.

 

[Hillcrest]

I have one Algerian briar made in France pipe. It is a sitter similar to the one shown below. It has the fleur de Lis on the same type of stem. I believe it is handmade by J. Waille but a second and therefore unmarked as such. It smokes very well. J. Waille is retired now but the nephew and grandson of two heads of the French pipe makers society. J. Waille traveled to Algeria before opening his own pipe making shop in Lunel, France. This info is gather from what I have read online and therefore subject to the same salt application one would use when cleaning pipes !

 

[Briar Lee]

I have one Algerian briar made in France pipe. It is a sitter similar to the one shown below. It has the fleur de Lis on the same type of stem. I believe it is handmade by J. Waille but a second and therefore unmarked as such. It smokes very well. J. Waille is retired now but the nephew and grandson of two heads of the French pipe makers society. J. Waille traveled to Algeria before opening his own pipe making shop in Lunel, France. This info is gather from what I have read online and therefore subject to the same salt application one would use when cleaning pipes !

View attachment 267191

Red Mauzey had so many DWIs he’d lost his license forever.

But about 1975 Harry Hosterman loaned Red his log truck on the condition I drive it over to Lebanon Missouri with a load of stave bolts.

Like most log trucks, it was a military surplus Chevy 2 1/2 ton green flatbed that looked like it walked off a scene from MASH.

Red also knew my mother just might kill him if he popped a cork around me, so he didn’t.

It was a great adventure. On the way over to Lebanon Red retold me the stories of his father as a brave engineer on the railroad that used to pass within a mile of our farm, until it closed in 1935, and of his wartime experiences in Korea.

He’d cleaned up and wore a new pair of bib overalls with the 1949 Elgin 571 he’d got for a graduation present from his parents when he graduated high school at Dunnegan.

Red explained to me the white oak logs on the truck might bring twenty or thirty dollars each at the mill in Spout Spring Hollow but as much as ten times more at Lebanon.

Before I ever took a drink of bourbon I learned that only one certain grade of white oak was the only wood used for bourbon barrel staves.

I also learned why NOT FOR HIRE is on all the log trucks.

A 17 year old kid can drive farm to market that way.

There was a similar system for the Berbers to sell briar to their hated French oppressors before November 1, 1954.

After that date, there was no more export grade Algerian briar.