Briar Rating Guide

[Sasquatch]

Who do I buy from, what do I get?


Vendor A

Grain: 9 Cut: 5 Smoking: 9 Price: 4 Hardness: 8 Dryness: 4 Flaws: 5 Total points: 43


Vendor B

Grain: 8 Cut: 10 Smoking: 7 Price: 5 Hardness: 2 Dryness: 3 Flaws: 8 Total points: 43

Vendor C

Grain: 3 Cut: 3 Smoking: 10 Price: 6 Hardness: 9 Dryness: 9 Flaws: 3 Total points: 43

Vendor D

Grain: 9 Cut 7 Smoking: 8 Price 6: Hardness: 5 Dryness: 3 Flaws: 5 Total points 43


Now, anyone who has bought a lot of briar will look at this and laugh, cuz it's just about useless. First of all, I stacked the numbers and made them come out at a total of 43, which is an absolutely meaningless number and includes "scores" on things like hardness which may be positive or negative. It's bogus. It's rigged. It's bullshit.

I've gotten awesome pipes out of all these vendors. I've had utter total catastrophe blocks from all these vendors.

What's the point of posting this nonsense?

New Pipemaker has 10 different options for buying briar and he doesn't want to get the wrong stuff. Well, it doesn't matter, New Pipemaker, because if you buy 10 blocks from ANY of these guys, one of 'em is gonna be crappy inside. That's just the way it goes. In fact, 2 or 3 may have some kind of issue. That's briar. No one has X-ray vision.

Certain cutters have older stock, certain cutters have wood that's better for blasting, certain cutters think "ebauchon" should mean "nice cross cut" and certain cutters think that "ebauchon" means "whatever I found on the floor after cutting the good bits".

There's no magic resource here, no encyclopedia of briar. There's also no way to buy 6 perfect flawless blocks. Buy some briar, make some pipes. If it does what you want it to do, great, if not, buy from someone else. Some cutters offer tremendous uniformity - nothing too bad, nothing too good. Other cutters offer some staggeringly awesome blocks and some garbage blocks. It's not that one way is right or wrong, it's that you have to sort out what works for you, at the budget you have, at the point in your pipemaking that you are at.

FWIW I frequently buy from at least 2 vendors that some guys wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. I understand why they wouldn't, but I'm not doing what they are doing. Likewise, there are vendors people swear by that I don't particularly buy from. And the only way to learn this stuff is to try it out. By the time you are ready to order 2000 blocks, you'll know who you want to order from.

[SchmidtN]

Hey Sas, I can help you make a decision with my advanced upper division Industrial Engineering know-how!

What you've done there is grade the wood based on a 7 point Likert Scale. You also need to rate your categories... is Grain, Cut, Smoking, Price, Hardness, Dryness or Flaws most important? Maybe hardness is least important to you so you score it a 1, grain is 5 times more important so you score it a 5, etc. Once you've decided how important each category is to you, then I can do the Analytic Hierarchy Process (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_hierarchy_process) to give confidence scores for each vendor and make a suggestion as to where to buy your wood and a comparative score between them. PLUS, you could stamp your pipes, "Wood guaranteed by SchmidtN EIT Freelance Contracting" and if that doesn't sell pipes I don't know what will.

P.S. My rates are extremely fair; you have my contact info... chat me on G+ some time, killer.

[Sasquatch]

With great power, comes great responsibility, Nic.

[SchmidtN]

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/60s-spider-man

[Tyler]

That escalated quickly.

[e Markle]

Yikes...

[d.huber]

What a memee thread.