The Briar Used in Dr. Grabow Pipes

The briar used in Dr. Grabow pipes is one of the rare subjects that allows a step-by-step look at exactly how a mass-production factory sorts its raw material. The company, making pipes in Sparta, North Carolina since 1943, still produces, by its own account, roughly two hundred thousand pipes a year from Mediterranean briar. The brand's model names aren't randomly chosen labels: which line a block enters is decided by two gradings it passes through after arriving at the factory. The practice described below belongs mostly to the period between the 1960s and the late 1980s and rests largely on the account of a source who worked at the factory.

Seven Grades by Flaw Count

Blocks that arrive by the sackful are roughly turned and sanded before going through dry grading. At this stage, grain isn't considered at all; only the number of flaws in the wood is the basis, and blocks are ranked from one to seven. Grade one is flawless, grade two's few small voids are easily filled, and grade three becomes a smooth-finish pipe with the help of filler. Grades four through six can only carry a rustic finish; grade seven is, in practice, scrap. This ranking explains why surface finishes in factory pipes are considered a matter of grading as much as of style.

Grain Letter and Model Line

Blocks in the first two grades also go through a wet grading: an alcohol-water mixture applied to the surface (reportedly a fifty-fifty methanol and water mix) makes the grain visible, and the result is lettered from A to H. A and E show full grain, B and F show roughly three-quarters, C and G show half; D and H fall below that. According to the same account, the letter directly corresponded to a model line: full-grain blocks went to top lines such as Emperor, Eldorado, Sculptura, and Starfire; three-quarter-grain to Regal and Silver Duke; half-grain to Willard's smooth-finish examples; and weak-grain blocks to stained models such as Color Duke and Color Viscount; Westbrook, distributed through R. J. Reynolds coupons, was also fed by full-grain blocks. Since this mapping rests on a single factory source, it shouldn't be taken as a definitive chart. The lines the brand carries today are named Duke, Lark, Grand Duke, Royal Duke, Riviera, and Savoy.

What's in the Sack

Mills sell briar in five selections: plateaux, Extra Extra, Extra, First, and Mixed. Plateaux blocks are cut adjacent to the burl's bark and so give regular grain, and are used mostly in freehand pipes; Dr. Grabow has almost never turned to this selection. The remaining four selections are distinguished by the proportion of top-grade blocks each yields: reportedly, roughly three-quarters of an Extra Extra sack falls into the first two grades, a ratio that drops to half in Extra, a third in First, and a tenth in Mixed.

Flawed blocks aren't simply discarded either. Those cut in Europe with a shortened shank allowance were used with a band; "chip top" blocks that fell short in height were lowered from the top; and pieces with one or a few narrow faces went to the factory's flat-panel-cutting machinery. Most of the squared-off Duke examples with no counterpart on the shape chart are said to originate here, and the small offcuts that never get graded at all are reported to be routed into the Duke and Lark lines. This is where the difference between factory pipes and artisan pipes becomes clear: in mass production, the real skill lies in finding a suitable place for every block that comes out of the same sack.

From Burl to Sack

Briar is the underground root burl of the Mediterranean tree heath (Erica arborea). The burl is kept wet until cut; at the mill it's first split in two, then divided into rectangular blocks called ebauchon. Blocks are boiled in large vats to be purged of tannin and sap, then air-dried and sacked. The direction of the cut is named along with the block: "M" is cut for straight pipes, "R" for bent and Continental shapes. The factory's briar is stated to come mostly from Greece, with the rest from Italy and Spain.