found briar~

[devilshornpipe]

Bonanza! (This will make your mouth water . . .)

In the early 1970s, I found a seller at a Tucson swap meet selling plateaux briar blocks out of a five-gallon bucket. Knowing nothing about briar, I purchased one(!) block (50 cents), took it home, marveled at the beautiful "figure" in the wood, and made a pipe.

It turned out nicely, so next time at the swap meet (same gent was there) I noted that he appeared not to have sold any more briar (pipemakers not plentiful, apparently), and asked what he wanted for the entire bucketful. We negotiated the price down to $7.50, and I went home with about five dozen well-aged briar blocks.

I made a handful of pipes and sold them to fellow newspaper reporters. Lost interest after a while, and ignored the rest of the briar.

Reawakened pipemaking interest a half-century later (I'm now retired), and -- to my utter amazement -- realized I still had the "original" bucket in storage -- still nearly full of briar!

Noting that today's plateaux blocks seem to sell for about $30-$35 each, I was doubly thrilled! (Not quite the same as a metal detector stumbling onto a trove of Roman coins . . . but almost . . .)

(Sorry, but, nope, they're not for sale . . .)

p.s. Atop the briar was a plastic bag with about two dozen black stems I'd purchased. "Frosting on the cake."

Just a small story to point out that "the world's still OK . . .

[caskwith]

Hopefully they have lasted ok, briar doesn't always store well unless you know what you are doing, you might be lucky though.

[DocAitch]

When I restarted making pipes after a hiatus of 40 years, I found some ebauchons in my basement that I had put aside to make a chess set. My brother in law also gave me a couple of plateau blocks that he had salvaged from my father in law’s basement ( I left them there years ago).
Not quite the treasure that you unearthed, but it did allow me to get back into making pipes while I floundered around acquiring materials and tools in the modern pipe making world.
Nice find.
DocAitch

[LatakiaLover]

Fair warning to the OP: briar blocks with that much "shelf age" can, and usually do, get really hard. Like, you can't believe it's the same stuff hard.

Most pro pipemakers don't use it because of the extra work involved.

[devilshornpipe]

Lat -- Having found it at a swap meet, I have no idea how hard it may have been when I found it 50 years back. I make free-style pipes (vs. lathe) using Dremel sanding sleeves, and the removed material is wood dust, so it's no problem either way. You pros probably can tell its place of origin, but I don't have the experience to do so. LOVE the grain pattern, though . . . dev

[Sasquatch]

AFter 50 years it all looks and smokes the same, it will be hard as hell to cut, and it will smoke dry with a sort of musty sweetness. It almost petrifies, it's kinda neat.