Blog post on the Great Disconnect

[TreverT]

I just posted an article about the sometimes vast & goofy chasm between pipe mythology and how pipes are actually made - might be interesting, as it directly addresses one specific item, the idea that all pipes MUST be finished with carnuba wax only or they're "bad".

http://www.talbertpipes.com/ppod.html

[LatakiaLover]

I suppose it's a matter of drawing inferences. If a solid plastic pipe is bad because it doesn't breathe, absorb gunk, etc., its polar opposite---an unfinished, porous briar bowl---must, by definition, be as good as it gets. Then, with that as the continuum, finishes are assessed for "goodness" by where they fall between the extremes.

(I'm not arguing for or against ANY finish, here, just taking a shot at explaining the persistence of the idea that wax-only is best.)

[LatakiaLover]

Fascinating subject.

I checked an original copy of Carl Ewha's The Book of Pipes & Tobaccos to see if he might have had a hand in the "creation of the myth." Yup.

page 125:

"After the pipes have been stained ... [etc. for a long paragraph describing the steps of finishing.] Then a new paragraph: "Certain manufacturers vary these procedures slightly, but the basic steps are the same. You will note that there is no mention of metal baffles or filters being inserted anywhere during manufacturing. The manufacturers of high-grade pipes do not use these gadgets, nor do they apply lacquer finishes."

Then again on page 131:

"The coloring of a new pipe is generally a reliable indication of its quality. Pipes that are ... [etc. describing color for a while] Then, "The final gloss that is applied to a pipe by the manufacturer is another clue to its quality. Quality manufacturers use only wax, which does not seal the grain. Varnishes and shellacs are used on lower-quality items..."

Then I checked Liebaert and Maya's, The Illustrated History of the Pipe, and found the same thing.

page 78:

"The ultimate phase of manufacture is the finishing. The best first-quality pipes are generally left in a "natural" state and are only waxed."

Whether these guys are correct or not isn't why I'm posting this stuff. I'm addressing only how the idea got in people's heads. (If you haven't read Trever's blog, that's most of what his recent entry is about, not what finish is best, per se.)

[RadDavis]

The thing is, briar really doesn't absorb very much.

I just got a pipe back that had a burnout. The guy had been smoking it for over a year, and the finish color had gone from light golden to *very* dark brown all over, so it has been well smoked.

I sawed it in half to see if I had made the bottom too thin. I had, but not *that* thin. ) It was between 1/8 & 1/4 inch thick where the burn occurred. The guy burned it out while hurriedly re-lighting what he thought was his last bit of tobacco.

Anyway, the exposed briar looked brand spanking new inside. No coloring whatsoever, even right next to the bowl walls.

Rad

[RadDavis]

Hey LL,

That's almost exactly what I remember reading in Hacker's "The Ultimate Pipe Book back in the 80s.

Back then, when I went looking in antique stores for $2.00 pipes, I would look first for the brand names. If there were nothing but no names, I would be looking at the finish first and then the wood.

I certainly was *not* going to buy anything that had a shiny fake finish!


Rad

[LatakiaLover]

The thing is, briar really doesn't absorb very much.

[...]

Anyway, the exposed briar looked brand spanking new inside. No coloring whatsoever, even right next to the bowl walls.

Either that, or it absorbs so much that it is "wicked" to the surface where it is deposited, and the reason the inside isn't dark is because there's never more than one "smoke's worth" of tars travelling through the wood at any one time.

There was a pro carver-maker who posted on Knox who actually set up a controlled test to try to capture/measure what's happening inside, but who never posted the final results. He did post some interim results about how long stain took to migrate through a 1/2" piece of briar, though, and it was shockingly fast. I'll see if I can find the thread and post a cross link.

[LatakiaLover]

That's almost exactly what I remember reading in Hacker's "The Ultimate Pipe Book back in the 80s.

Yeah. As great a guy and good for the hobby as Rick has been, I didn't want to quote from his book(s) because technical stuff isn't his thing.

[LatakiaLover]

Found the thread. It was Mike Brissett. Here's a representative slice:

In my previous post I failed to add that on approximately half the bowls, I weighted them down and submerged them in the dye up to 1/4" from the top of the bowl.

On the bowls that were submerged and the dye was allowed to penetrate from the outside, traces of stain began to appear on the inside of the bowls between 1 hr 15 min and 1 1/2 hours later . This was irrespective of grain pattern or density, and was somewhat of a surprise! Penetration of the thinner walled pieces was uniformly faster than the thicker walled pieces. No surprises here.

After 4 hours, about half the bowls had the inside surfaces completely covered with dye and the other half took several hours longer before the inner walls were completely covered. I will elaborate on the differences in the wood and offer some possible conclusions in a follow up post.

The remainder of the bowls had the dye poured into them and the dye was allowed to penetrate from the inside out. These showed drastically different results.

In no instance did the dye even show traces on the outside of the bowl in less than 8 hours. The majority needing at least 12 hours before the color appeared. After a full 24 hours, none of these bowls colored completely, the coverage ranging between 25% and 50 %. Again, I will elaborate on the differences in a follow up post.

For sake of comparison, the kiln dried Douglas Fir block showed a 10% coverage on the outside of the bowl after 48 hours and the air dried Maple bowl is still soaking after 48 hours with no trace of dye on the outside surface.

There is a whole lot more going on here than I expected and after I carefully examine the individual pieces and do some disection, I will follow up with more detailed observations and hopefully a few conclusions .
_________________
Mike B

Interesting, isn't it?

Here's the entire thread from the top:

http://forums.knoxcigar.net/viewtopic.p ... ght=absorb

[TreverT]

Keep in mind that there's a vast difference between the viscosity and penetration of stain and water, not even counting tobacco oils. While alcohol-based aniline is extremely thin and can pass through the wood via "wicking", water often will not, at least not in anywhere near the same time. If we consider that it can take 12-24 hours for the first signs of any pass-through, I don't think a smoker is going to see any wicking of his much-thicker tobacco oils during a half hour or hour-long smoke. Like Rad, I've done the slice-in-half thing before, with similar results - You just don't have "sodden" interior wood.... ergo, surface finish level isn't going to be an issue.

Basically, though, it boils down to making your choice - Either the Ehwa book and others are flat wrong, or Barbi, Eltang, Maenz, Bang, Bo, etc etc, are "low grade" pipemakers.

As far as sealing the wood, oils and shellac won't do it - Shellac in particular breaks down over time with heat. Actually SEALING the wood would require types of acrylic polymer applications, or some other finish that creates a solid surface gloss that's composed of interlinked molecules that lock together during drying. I don't know of anyone in pipes that uses anything like this, and I suspect it would bubble badly.

.... Speaking of, I've wondered if the occasional presence of bubbling is behind any of this stuff. If you apply shellac too thickly and then smoke hot, you can make the finish bubble. This has nothing to do with any mystery stuff passing through the wood and being trapped by the shellac, however - It's just surface moisture and oxygen being heated out of the wood and breaking the shellac's grip as it goes. Making the mix dilute enough in the first place allows this process to carry on through the shellac with no ill effects.

[LatakiaLover]

Trever--

Just guessing.

From what you said about the behavior of "sealer" type finishes when the wood isn't completely cured, it seems possible that in briar's early days as a pipe material, shellac was tried and found wanting. Not because IT was intrinsically bad, but because the wood wasn't dry. And a rest is how stuff like that goes... (To this day, 30 years after an erroneous news article, there are still many people who think eating food cooked in aluminum pans causes Alzheimers. )

The pipe book authors then merely repeated what everybody in the business knew to be true. Except it wasn't.

History is full of stuff like that. Drink alcohol to stay warm. Hot chilis will blister skin. Coffee will sober up a drunk. And on and on. None of them true, but for some reason people LIKE believing certain things, and cling to them stubbornly.

Kinda funny, actually.

[TreverT]

S'true! The trick is that most of these things CAN cause problems if applied improperly. Put your shellac on in too thick a mix, and it can bubble. Apply lacquer in too thick a mix and it can chip. Most of the annoying problems associated with these kinds of things are not the fault of the products themselves, but of the products being applied incorrectly. When an unknowing pipemaker applies marine varnish to his pipe and it smells wretched during smoking, and eventually starts peeling, people will say it's because varnish is bad, not that the maker used the wrong finish for the wrong purpose.

[hazmat]

Great article, Trever. Very well done and perfectly to the point. I hope you don't lose any bid-ness over it, but then again if you do, chances I might get the Talbert Briar I want would go up, as the ones I fancy seem to be long gone by the time I see them posted!!

Matt