70 year old+ Briar pipes

If you can locate a nice looking pipe from the 20’s to the late 60’s on eBay or an antique shop at a reasonable price...and you like the style...buy it 👍👍

Back in the '50s thru '60s most pipe firms had 100 yo briar available to them back then. So if you have a BBB or Dunhill Shell made around 1960 and you are smoking it today you are smoking at least158 yo briar !   Now go out and buy nothing but 1960s pipes ! 

Buy a new Stanwell or Dunhill today and I'm sure 70 years down the line someone will enjoy his "estate find".

Ropp, Vermont Freehand, and a few others still sell pipes made of Algerian briar.

Briar pipes have such a very long life because the wood is so fire-resistant.  Briar can withstand temps of 700° farenheit...which is just one of the reasons that makes briar the best wood for pipe making.  I too have a couple pipes which are over 100 years old...and my guess is that they'll be handed down a number of times well after I'm gone. 

I don’t own a Comoy’s that I’d part with, they smoke superbly👍👍

I couldn’t agree more! I own both of my grandfather’s Dunhill pipes, they are good smokers, not as good as my Old restored Comoy’s 215 that also looks new👍👍👍

I like to think old is better being the owner of old pipes. Every once in a while I get a brand new pipe but most are estates that I clean up. Often abused and not perfect but proven tough by years of smoking.

The grain of my pipe was once bulging and prononced, but with smoking it has become fairly newer looking.

One of the things I love about the pipe community is its sheer dedication to myths, like the myth of 100 year old briar being somehow better, or Algerian briar somehow being better. In the case of Algerian briar, it was not considered the best quality for making pipes because it was more prone to cracking. On the other hand, it was a beautiful wood that could take a beautiful blast.

Barling used Algerian wood exclusively until they could no longer get it, but they did their own harvesting and curing, so they knew what to look for, and they carved thicker walled pipes to add some structural robustness. But the idea that 100 year old wood is the way to go is simply an advertising gag. In their 1920's literature, The Romance Of The Barling Pipe, Barling states that they're looking for burls between 35 and 65 years of age, which is still the standard.  Later, in their 1962 150th Anniversary Catalog the give the age range as 80 to 120 years for the briar they're using, but by that point they had lost their Algerian operations and were buying from everywhere.  And, there are a number of high end carvers today who wouldn't use wood that old because they consider it structurally weaker.

The age of a piece of briar is measured by the time it spent growing in the ground, not time in the ground plus however many years ago it was dug up.  When someone talks about 100 year old briar they're referring to a burl that has been developing in the ground for 100 years, not one that spent 30 years in the ground and 70 getting slobbered upon.  There are no brownie points for slobber.

Briar is wood, and like any wood it can be burned.  What keeps it so heat resistant is the silicate content embedded in the wood.  Want to know more, read this:

pipedia.org/docs/CharacteristicsOfBriar.pdf

As has been stated, many old pipes have been beaten to death by their owners.  But if cared for, a briar pipe can offer a long career of pleasurable service.  This Barling Magnum is 146 years young:



It was made in 1872 and is still in working order.  Fortunately it was well cared for by it's various owners. 

So, why do I like older briars?  I like them for any number of reasons.

I like the older shaping and proportions.  I enjoy the type of finish that many of the older pipes have, the ways in which the grain was employed, and the look of the briar that was used.  I enjoy the quality of smoking pleasure that I get off of a well made piece of Britwood.  And I like the sense of connection to the past that these pieces offer.

Getting back to the notion of 100-150 year old briar being superior, one of the Danish masters interviewed in Newcombes book poo-pooed it all, and if I remember correctly said that since he has been making pipes, andybody claiming to have 100 year old Briar is full of it.

I know, but one of the responses talked about including the age of the pipe in addition to the age of the burl and another referred to these old pipes being made of century old briar, so I addressed those issues.  Nothing to do with anything you wrote.

I would like to buy an antique pipe for a reasonable price... when I get to 100 posts ..

This made me think of my last visit to see my father. He smokes his pipes until they fall apart and then smokes them some more.

He usually has one pipe in good condition that he calls his "house pipe" the others are for smoking anywhere and at any time. Whether he's cleaning ice off the car in negative temperatures (Fahrenheit) or just walking to the store.

Here is a shot I snuck of one of his daily smokers.

i.imgur.com/47UaeWI.jpg

Would most people you run into on these forums smoke this pipe? Absolutely not. But he's been smoking this one and others just like it for 50 some years or something so who are any of us to tell him it's not a good pipe, ya know?