It is nice to know all the woods ... and i think this kind of information is a must knowledge for any pipemaker...it is a subject also for new post...
woods
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OldCorps
- Posts: 14
- Joined: Thu Jul 31, 2014 8:00 am
- Location: Pennsylvania's beautiful Cumberland Valley
Re: woods
Although there are many woods which would likely be ultra toxic, I think you will find that there are some others which are non-toxic and can be used in pipe making: three which I would bet on would be Rock Maple (from the Sugar Maple tree), Apple, and Mesquite. Missouri Meerschaum sells a line of pipes made from Maple, and if Apple and Mesquite were toxic I would have been dead long since, considering the amounts of meat I've eaten in my seventy-six years, that has been heavily smoked with Apple and Mesquite. Not to mention the volumes of smoke I've inhaled while grilling.jmoss wrote:Thank you very much W.Pastuch...
It is nice to know all the woods ... and i think this kind of information is a must knowledge for any pipemaker...it is a subject also for new post...
As to the longevity of these other woods, I cannot testify, but I am in the process of making pipes from some very well aged Rock Maple and Mesquite, the durability of which remains to be seen. I do intend to use some sort of bowl coating to help protect the wood until a cake is built, but I believe the longevity of any pipe has much to do with the way it is smoked and cared for. That goes for any pipe, briar or otherwise. I have a Cherry Wood pipe that was made over a hundred-years ago by the father of a late friend. My friend was born in 1904, and she told me she remembered him smoking that pipe almost constantly, and making new reed stems for it, often. I knew the old guy briefly when I was a kid, and I remember him filling it with Five Brothers and blowing smoke rings to my delight. Except for some natural charring around the rim of the bowl, the pipe is still quite smokable with no burnout. When it was given to me the cake was so thick that it would hold only about a cigarette's worth of tobacco. I carefully reamed it to a bit over a half-inch and still, occasionally, pull it out and smoke a bowl just for old time's sake and it smokes as well as any of my briar pipes.
I believe you would be perfectly safe in using any of the woods mentioned here, but I would do much research before venturing into others. I've been a woodworker all my life, and know from experience that many woods are toxic even to handle, much less setting fire to them and breathing the smoke—sort of like tobacco, eh?
Life is too short to be drinking cheap whiskey, smoking bad tobacco, and failing to constantly strive for perfection.
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mcgregorpipes
- Posts: 177
- Joined: Sat May 12, 2012 9:07 pm
- Location: Manitoba, Canada
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Re: woods
this comes up occasionally where a new pipe maker asks about different materials, here's my 2c
if your objective is to make high end pipes that demand a premium on pipe store store shelves, pipe shows or online sales etc then briar or less common morta, strawberry wood meerschaum are the options. they're all high end rare and expensive woods. briar has absolute superior working properties, I haven't worked with the other 3 but I can guess they're more like other woods.
many pipes throughout history were not made from those woods. ropp was making half a million pipes a year in the 1920s from cherrywood. all the less ultra high end woods seem to have fallen out of popularity at some point, maybe pipe smoking became more elite than something everybody did.
pipes made from fruit wood and probably a short list of others work. they hold up and they smoke great. but they're different to work with and sell at a lower price because they're less popular or common and the material wasn't ultra expensive. if you're starting out or you want to make one pipe a pre drilled briar block is the right advice. having said that fruit woods are exciting to work with, the color and grain can be wildly different from one block to the next. grain can be a challenge because its just different, it can be arrow straight or run in multiple directions. you can have knots. grain orientation can make things like drilling without tear out and wandering bits more challenging. cherrywood is soft and easy to shape, janka is 950. it burns in red and smells like cherries if you use dull sand paper. applewood by contrast is hard, janka is 1700 but there's hardness variation between blocks and in the same block whick can make it a challenge to stain, but you can also get great dark chocolate brown and creamy light sapwood contrast in a block, so it takes well to natural finish or rustification. heat and humidity could have more of an effect depending on grain around the mortise so I keep shanks thicker and recently starting stabilizing the mortise.
if your objective is to make high end pipes that demand a premium on pipe store store shelves, pipe shows or online sales etc then briar or less common morta, strawberry wood meerschaum are the options. they're all high end rare and expensive woods. briar has absolute superior working properties, I haven't worked with the other 3 but I can guess they're more like other woods.
many pipes throughout history were not made from those woods. ropp was making half a million pipes a year in the 1920s from cherrywood. all the less ultra high end woods seem to have fallen out of popularity at some point, maybe pipe smoking became more elite than something everybody did.
pipes made from fruit wood and probably a short list of others work. they hold up and they smoke great. but they're different to work with and sell at a lower price because they're less popular or common and the material wasn't ultra expensive. if you're starting out or you want to make one pipe a pre drilled briar block is the right advice. having said that fruit woods are exciting to work with, the color and grain can be wildly different from one block to the next. grain can be a challenge because its just different, it can be arrow straight or run in multiple directions. you can have knots. grain orientation can make things like drilling without tear out and wandering bits more challenging. cherrywood is soft and easy to shape, janka is 950. it burns in red and smells like cherries if you use dull sand paper. applewood by contrast is hard, janka is 1700 but there's hardness variation between blocks and in the same block whick can make it a challenge to stain, but you can also get great dark chocolate brown and creamy light sapwood contrast in a block, so it takes well to natural finish or rustification. heat and humidity could have more of an effect depending on grain around the mortise so I keep shanks thicker and recently starting stabilizing the mortise.