Briar storage - Temperature

[PeskyPrussian]

Hello All,

I live up in the North and was thinking to myself about whether it would make more sense in terms of the long-term stability and health of the briar that I have to store it inside in the room temperature warmth or outside in the quite bitter cold of my usual workspace. My initial impression is to store the blocks inside where the temperature remains controlled and constant throughout the year as opposed to outside where humidity and temperature (particularly here in Michigan) changes wildly. My concern with this approach is that the sudden thermal cycle of bringing a block from inside to outside to work on it could be just as problematic.

Has anyone had any experience with similar situations?

[caskwith]

If you can I would suggest storing in your shop.

[sandahlpipe]

I live in Minnesota. I keep my briar in the shop where it's kept just above freezing in the winter and air conditioned part of the time in the summer when I'm out there. Haven't had an issue with cracking or anything. I figure if it's gonna crack,it will crack. That's why I wait a year or more before using anything I buy. That way it cracks before I try making a pipe from it.

[Sasquatch]

One thing worth considering is the humidity. If your shop is real cold, the humidity is probably not real high. So you make a pipe out of wood that is pretty well dried out, say 10% moisture content, then you send it to someone's house and it sits at 50% rh for a month or two and suddenly the stummel is 1/32" bigger than it used to be and the stem falls out.

There probably isn't a hell of a lot you can do about it one way or another, too moist or too dry, when shipping a pipe across the world. I wouldn't worry about the blocks being cold though... I wouldn't freeze them, that never helps anything, but if they are cool it's no big deal of itself.

[PeskyPrussian]

Thanks for the considerations. I'll go with keeping them in the shop area for the time being. As sas mentioned, having the briar freeze "never helps anything" which I can understand. My workshop is, for all intents and purposes, outside. So leaving all of my briar in the shop means they will likely get below freezing for significant periods of time.

[Alden]

There probably isn't a hell of a lot you can do about it one way or another, too moist or too dry, when shipping a pipe across the world.

Yeah, I've tried to guess and compensate for what I think the weather will be like in another region, and it never seems to work out. Try to make it a little tighter, then the customer cant get the stem out, try to make it a little looser and it won't stay put. Now I just try to keep the environment in my shop relatively stable, make it fit right here, and hope for the best on the other end.

[oklahoma red]

Use a military mount for EVERYTHING and sleep well
Or, make a shank extension out of acrylic. Attach this to the briar shank with a mortise and tenon joint. Use a Delrin tenon on the stem. Since neither the acrylic or the Delrin are hydroscopic the fit should theoretically be stable for the life of the pipe.

[sandahlpipe]

There's also the possibility of stabilizing the mortise and the tenon. I leave my pipes in the car often when it's below zero outside or even 90 above and my pipes fare just fine with a briar mortise and snug-fitting stem.

And rather than using an acrylic extension, you could also sleeve the mortise with delrin if you're really worried about it. But as long as your tenon is precisely fit and the briar properly dried/aged, temperature and moisture should have minimal effect if any.

[LatakiaLover]

Store you briar in an oven, gents. Set to 400 F and forget about it until you need a block. That shit'll be good 'n' dry. And light, too!

[caskwith]

Ok if you workshop is outside and/or rarely used then store your wood in the most temperature/humidity stable place you can, take the blocks to workshop to work on them and then take them back to storage inbetween sessions.

[Sasquatch]

There's also the possibility of stabilizing the mortise and the tenon. I leave my pipes in the car often when it's below zero outside or even 90 above and my pipes fare just fine with a briar mortise and snug-fitting stem.

And rather than using an acrylic extension, you could also sleeve the mortise with delrin if you're really worried about it. But as long as your tenon is precisely fit and the briar properly dried/aged, temperature and moisture should have minimal effect if any.

Age seems to have nothing to do with this. 2 quick examples: one is a Ser Jac I have and it's a coral dot, so you can date it to about 20 years ago. Moves all over the place.

Likewise I just sold a guy a pipe and I've had the wood for years. Fit in my shop was good, but not real tight. Goes to his house, it's raining, been raining for a week. Week and 10 smokes later, the stem is falling out cuz the wood has absorbed so much moisture, as a whole, not just the mortise.

So I think stabilizing the mortise is a great idea, no harm there at all, but I also think that the idea we can control this movement is wrong. I've got pipes that don't move hardly at all seasonally, and pipes that do, and I have no idea what the difference is.

[sandahlpipe]

What I meant by age wasn't whether it's 2 or 20 years, but rather whether the wood has had enough time to air dry. If you get the wood right from the cutter and make a pipe while it's still wet, you're going to have some movement.

The one thing I do know that integral tenons are subject to is that they do tend to get loose if they're already on the looser side of snug and someone smokes the pipe hot enough to warm up the tenon and (the finishing move) removes the stem while it's still warm. This combo will almost certainly lead to a loose fit. This can be helped on the pipe making side by (a) making sure the fit is on the tighter side of snug) and (b) Heating the tenon and then letting it cool without touching it and afterwards (if necessary) taking the final pass on the tenon. Heating and allowing the ebonite to return to its natural state relieves any internal stress caused by the heat or friction of turning and decreases the likelihood of a stem becoming loose. If you've properly stabilized the tenon and mortise and the fit is snug, I think you can minimize the movement, even if you can't completely control it.

[LatakiaLover]

Sas is right in my experience.

If a piece of wood is gonna move, it will; and if it isn't, it won't. Utterly unpredictable, and completely unrelated to (presumed) wood quality. I've worked on multi-thousand-dollar showpieces made by mega-name carvers whose stems went from perfect fit to frozen in 48 hours; were then fixed, and did the same thing AGAIN a week later. I've also worked on 75-year-old shape chart mid grades I bought for ten bucks that have been as stable as bedrock for 30 years.

[Alden]

But as long as your tenon is precisely fit and the briar properly dried/aged, temperature and moisture should have minimal effect if any.

I do admire how matter of factly you state your information, regardless of whether its bullshit or not.

[Sasquatch]

I agree, it's really nice to get it right between the eyes even if he's making it up.

[sandahlpipe]

In four years of pipe making, I've had 3 pipes that had loose tenons. One I attribute to having the mortise too close to the chamber, so the tenon was heated enough during smoking to where it came loose. The other two became loose because I didn't have them tight enough when I sent them out. Alex Florov told me his procedure for turning tenons and since I've adopted that method, I haven't had an issue. Maybe I'm just making it up or maybe not, but whatever it is, it seems to be working for me. Y'all can heckle all you want.

[scotties22]

No heckling at all, actually. They are pointing out some pretty bad misinformation. Temperature and moisture play a HUGE roll in pipes. Maybe you luck out and get a magical lot of briar and none of the pipes made out of them ever have a problem. Maybe you go the way of Sas and have a unicorn pee on your blocks to stop them from moving (sorry for giving away your super duper top secret, Todd).

I'm all for stabilizing tenons and morti. I really am. But representing something as fact that the wood working world has known is wrong for millennium is just wrong. Wood moves, some times a little and some times a lot. You do the best you can to prevent it and move on.

[Sasquatch]

Jeremiah, it's not "heckling". You mean well, you're a nice guy, and you pretty frequently give out advice as a sage veteran when you simply aren't. The words you used in this case were simply ridiculous: "What I meant by age wasn't whether it's 2 or 20 years, but rather whether the wood has had enough time to air dry. If you get the wood right from the cutter and make a pipe while it's still wet, you're going to have some movement."

Your suggestion is either that my 30 year old pipes haven't air-dried, or that dryness is a factor which is irreversible. Both of course are nonsense. In fact I have the opposite problem you do, and it's because my blocks are TOO DRY. EVERYWHERE in the world that they get shipped, the humidity is 40% higher, for 6 months of the year. You don't face that. If you have had no issues, it's because you're lucky. Truth is, I've had FEWER reported issues than you in 10 years and 500 pipes, and it's because I understand wood. Professionally.

Wood expands with high humidity, shrinks with low humidity, and only axially wrt growth, and some cuts do it more, sapwood does it more than heartwood, etc. There's lots of factors here that you simply have no idea about. Dryness and stability are not related.

Now I'm not being mean, but you don't know what the fuck you are talking about here, and that's apparent to those of us who have owned pipes for a longer time than you've been on the planet. Or had them anywhere but placid North Carolina where conditions don't vary as much as they do in Texas, Montana, Arizona, Alberta, Montana, etc. I make seasonal adjustments to many of my pipes, have for 20 years.

I'm actually better off to take a fresh cut of briar, make a pipe, and ship it to coastal california where it will stay at 85% RH, than to take a block I've had for 10 years and do the same. And the reason I know this, is, I've done both a pile of times.

Do as you please, but your success rate with stability is due neither to skills nor knowledge, just to your luck in where you live. Perpetuating demonstrably incorrect ideas about dryness is a community dis-service.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

[sandahlpipe]

Sas,

I appreciate you taking the opportunity to educate rather than just saying I'm wrong and moving on. I haven't claimed to be a veteran pipe maker. Perhaps I come across that way on the forum, but I don't think that of myself. I am as always willing to accept notions as false when, as you have done here, they are demonstrably so. I appreciate you taking the time to correct me.

[mightysmurf8201]

Does anyone know if Steve Norse carries denatured unicorn piss? I prefer it to be organic if at all possible.