I got me a burl, now what do I do with it?

[DMI]

Funny the things you find on ebay, bought for £10.75 ($15 ish).

It's roughly 14" wide and 18" high, it looks to be two seperate pieces that have grown next to each other, there are also some pieces from another burl bought at the same time in Sardinia. There are a couple of cracks running into the burl from where the stems have been cut, I just hope the inside is ok.

I know that once cut I need to boil the pieces and allow them to air dry but I was wondering about trying to oil cure some of the pieces, is it a simple as boiling and then soaking in olive oil and drying or is there more of an art about it.

David.

[Sasquatch]

The "art" to oil curing, as far as I can tell, is twofold. First, you need to choose appropriate oils, and second, you need to get the oil back out of the block so it doesn't weep when it gets smoked.

You want oils that have high burn or smoke temperatures, oils that aren't gonna taste awful if they sit for a year, oils that probably have a decent flavor to start with, etc. Then you cook the stummel (or not - I think radice did a cold cure but I'm not sure) in oil, then heat it up to bleed the oil back out and hope the thing doesn't crack.

Candidate oils include but are not limited to: Sunflower, Safflower, Olive, Grapeseed, Walnut, Linseed etc. I did a few in Valvoline 15 40 but they came out kinda bad.

[RadDavis]

Also worth noting is that oil curing is done after the pipe is drilled and shaped.

Rad

[kbadkar]

Screw the oil curing. I don't get the point of this gimmicky extra step. Is it just supposed to "taste" better until the bowl is broke in?... whatever. Spend the time perfecting a honey, sour cream, activated charcoal, waterglass, carbon soot, yak butter tea, eye-of-newt bowl coating.

So the burl hasn't been cured? I think just attempting to do the regular boiling/cutting/air drying routine is going to be more than enough variables to attempt to control.

[KurtHuhn]

Somewhere in this forum is a couple posts from CKR, a fellow Rhode Islander, where he described the process he used to boil and cure some burl. I think his was manzanita, though I'm not certain. At any rate, it'd be worth digging up again so you've got a starting point if you want to go that route.

[DMI]

Having managed to cut the burl into plateaus and ebaucheons, mainly with a handsaw, I ending up cutting most of the pieces down to tamper blanks due to the number of flaws in the briar. The remaining three plateaus will be boiled for three hours, change of water and a further hour, air dried for a couple of hours then thrown in a rack in the loft for three months. This seems to be the standard method used by the commercial mills.

The oil curing will be done by simmering the roughly shaped briar in olive oil for several hours, to draw out the surplus oil the briar will be placed in a cardboard box filled with fullers earth (cat litter) which will help draw out and adsorb the oil. The box will then go in our boiler house for however long I can wait.

The pipes made will be going to friends.

kbadkar, making a good bowl coating is easy, there are several recipes on this site and others, the only problem is not everybody wants a coated chamber. Part of the reason I am doing this is to see how much of a difference there is in an oil cured pipe, the theory is that any of the resins and oils left in the briar are replaced by the oil which improves the long term taste of a pipe.

Like many of the things I did as a leather worker I want to try this, I once made as series of Elizabethan style pouches from deer skin, I shot the deer and processed the skin myself. The antlers went into knife handles, buttons etc, the meat got eaten and some of the bones were used aswell, the only thing I threw away were the feet.

[kbadkar]

Well, do report back on your oil-curing findings... it's one of those Holy Grail adventures and I've heard the secrets of oil curing are carefully guarded by the Cabal. I fear for your safety should you expose a successful method.

[DMI]

I spent today making briar soup.

I went down to the beach today and boiled up the briar, I got a few odd looks as I sat stirring this big pot of frothy brown water. As a guide I threw in some 1 inch cubes of briar which I would takeout and chop in half every half hour, it took an hour and a half for the water to fully penetrate the little cubes so the big bits got the full four hours.

Once the briar was out of the water the outer surface dried very quickly and if it weren't for the extra weight you would have thought nothing had been done.

Note to self: Weigh them before you boil them next time.

At the same time I was deep frying some old stummels that I have just to get an idea of timing on the oil bit. It was very similar to re-waxing meerschaum, when the bubbles stop coming out they are ready to be served up. Again I used the cubes as a guide for penetration only I checked one every 15 minutes, with a pre-drilled stummel being thinner than the blocks I timed it for 4mm penetration which coincided with the lack of bubbles.

The briar and stummels will be spending a couple of days in the boiler house before going into the loft where they will be checked and weighed weekly, I have wrapped the stummels in kitchen roll for the time being.

All in it was a nice day out, it has been a long time since I cooked griddle cakes on a hot rock but they still taste great even with bits them. I may have sunburn on my bald bit though.

edit: If you are going to oil cure do you need to boil the briar in water as both methods (in theory) provide the same result ie removing the nasty stuff.