pipemakersforum.com

My blocks came my blocks came my blocks came.

Which supplier ?

NICE!!!!


I'm jealous.

Makis Minetos/ACutABoveBriar (Achaiki/Amadeus).


Cleaned a couple up:













Super nice looking stuff. Wet though - this will require significant slow drying time.

Um, I hate to break it to you, but that looks suspiciously like a garbage sack. You sure that's the good stuff ?:)
On the other hand, you just received a load of nice wood, so I'm probably looking at the thread through slightly green tinted glasses

Garbage sack?


GARBAGE SACK?


Fuck you Andrew, that's a special REAL PIPEMAKER'S MEMBRANE that Tyler sold me for only 50 bucks. Works good too.


You Jelly Babies make me laugh.

Nice looking blocks! I assumed that you could use the amount of dirt and patina on the outside of the blocks to judge that they were aged enough to be ready to work. Is that not the case?

Yay! Briar!

Whoopee! It's always a big day when the briar comes.

How can you tell that these blocks are wet? My experience with briar being relatively limited, I'd love to know how to tell.

They weigh a ton, they feel cool, and I put them in that garbage bag and in 2 hours, the sides of the bag had condensation inside.

When you drill a chamber, there's a little bloom of moisture on almost any block. When you drill a wet block, this bloom is pretty apparent, lasts a while, and if you put your thumb into the fresh hole it will feel like a sauna.

You can cut pipes from this stuff, but the mortise will shrink quite a bit over then next month. So that's another option - cut the stummel and let the wood sit for awhile.

Congratulations Sas, big day. I just placed an order with Vermont Freehand and I can't wait to feel what you're feeling right now.

What size did you order?

As Sas makes the largest pipes known to man he always orders the largest blocks he can find. Ernie (from what I hear) has a small head and Sas needs as much mass as possible to throw...less likely to miss that way.

scotties22 wrote:As Sas makes the largest pipes known to man he always orders the largest blocks he can find. Ernie (from what I hear) has a small head and Sas needs as much mass as possible to throw...less likely to miss that way.

LOL I'm going to leave them both alone or they'll team up and start throwing stuff at me.

What I order usually is plateau (or Makis has this weird PLS distinction) pieces 100 mm x 50 mm x 60mm high or bigger.

The mixture of blocks that this yields allows me to make a lot of big bent pipes, a few smaller straight pipes, and select for grain the whole time. That's one reason I like big blocks even for small pipes. It's not problem to get a block big enough for a Canadian, for example, but getting a block where you can do straight grain on the bowl of a Canadian... takes a wide selection.

Smaller blocks are advantage for cost and also sometimes fineness of grain - I would guess that in 50 small blocks you'd find tighter than "average" grain in many of them. One of the reasons I like this vendor is that the blocks are big and the grain is pretty tight on most of them - it's a nice combination for me.

I think you'll be pretty happy with Steve's wood, Alfa. I got some very nice pipes out of the last stuff I had from him. My only complaint with the Algerian stuff (other than the business side) was that a lot of the blocks were sort of short and wide, and that's awesome for some things, but the big long curved shank pipes I like to to don't fit in em sometimes.

For the sake of disseminating information, TJ posted a tip on another forum that I assume was serious and here it is:

Put a loaf of bread into the bag and change out the loaf every week or so.

I think that's about right. Just thought that'd be useful in this arena.

That's just Todd's recipe for magic green bread.

Yeah, that sounds like. Recipe for moldy bread to me.

Sasquatch wrote:They weigh a ton, they feel cool, and I put them in that garbage bag and in 2 hours, the sides of the bag had condensation inside.

When you drill a chamber, there's a little bloom of moisture on almost any block. When you drill a wet block, this bloom is pretty apparent, lasts a while, and if you put your thumb into the fresh hole it will feel like a sauna.

You can cut pipes from this stuff, but the mortise will shrink quite a bit over then next month. So that's another option - cut the stummel and let the wood sit for awhile.

My uncle owns a sawmill and he tells the bowl turners that buy from him to bury the blocks in sawdust and that will quickly dry them without cracking or splitting. But he doesn't deal in briar so it may be different.