Iroko, can I smoke in it?

Carl · Post by **Carl** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 7:04 am

Hello everyone, my name is Carl.

I never crafted a pipe before and I decided to start work on one with the wood I have laying around, the only hardwood I have that is thick enough for a pipe is Iroko.
Not sure how many people know about it, all I know is that its hard as rock a bit brittle but lasts for ever, rain or shine.
According to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroko_%28hardwood%29 it is also known as African Teak, there is also a sentence on that same page that says:

"In the UK there are trade restrictions on the machining of this timber as the dust is known to be carcinogenic."

Now I know smoking tobacco isn't exactly what the doctor ordered but I don't want to make it worse or get unwanted side effects from smoking in this wood. From my experience working with the wood it releases a very strong but aromatic smell when burnt by power tools.

So if anyone out there has better knowledge of this wood I would appreciate your opinion.

Also since this is my first pipe I was wondering what thickness should the air passage be, is it a matter of personal preference?

Charl · Post by **Charl** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 1:22 pm

Made one from iroko years ago when I new even less and just made pipes from everything I thought could work. Smoked OK and grain was just marvellous, sort of golden pinstripes. But rather don't use it for a pipe, I'd say.

Carl · Post by **Carl** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 8:19 pm

Charl wrote:Made one from iroko years ago when I new even less and just made pipes from everything I thought could work. Smoked OK and grain was just marvellous, sort of golden pinstripes. But rather don't use it for a pipe, I'd say.

Thanks, I do love the grain on iroko wood too and being into bow building I am sort of obsessed with straight grain lol so not a big fan of snaky grain, not to say a well made brair pipe is not beautiful but personally I'd rather see clean straight pinstripes!

What makes you say not to use iroko for pipes? Does it effect the quality of the smoke or just an aesthetic preference?

Charl · Post by **Charl** » Mon Feb 28, 2011 1:35 pm

I suppose being carcinogenic, it doesn't mean much to a pipesmoker. Somewhere on the forum are posts on lists of different woodtypes and their toxicity. I'm sure you'll find it if you do a search.
But all said, go for briar. It's cheap enough and in the pipesmoking world briar is king.

Sasquatch · Post by **Sasquatch** » Mon Feb 28, 2011 6:29 pm

The general form of the argument is that briar is boiled to remove a lot of yucky sap/resins so it is flavor-neutral. Other woods are not. Many woods contain oils/esters/resins that are allergy sensitizers or outright allergens or outright poisons. Heating these oils up and sucking on the vapors is a stupid thing to do. It might not hurt you the first or the twentieth time. Then again when you go to cut your next piece of Iroko and your throat swells closed you'll also have a good idea as to why.

Carl · Post by **Carl** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 7:44 pm

Sasquatch wrote:The general form of the argument is that briar is boiled to remove a lot of yucky sap/resins so it is flavor-neutral. Other woods are not. Many woods contain oils/esters/resins that are allergy sensitizers or outright allergens or outright poisons. Heating these oils up and sucking on the vapors is a stupid thing to do. It might not hurt you the first or the twentieth time. Then again when you go to cut your next piece of Iroko and your throat swells closed you'll also have a good idea as to why.

Since I posted this I read your "why use briar" post and the boiling thing makes a lot of sense to me but with all due respect, I doubt a shrub root is stronger than straight grained hardwoods, yes it has a weak spot but if one plans the grain direction properly I bet any hardwood pipe would be stronger than briar.
As for heat resistance I do not know, but I do know Iroko is very resistant to weather, I have pieces that have been standing outside for years rain or shine and they barely look weathered, so that must mean it will not suck that much moisture during smoking and probably won't let off any oils either.

About the boiling process, I guess it could be done with woods too?

I smoked the Iroko pipe I made last week(first time I smoked a pipe) and coming from a cigarette smoker I must say it was the 'purest' smoke I ever had, no woody taste or any taste/smell that reminds me of working on the wood. It was not as good as a quality cigar because the tobacco I used was Golden Virginia rolling tobacco, but the point is that I can clearly taste the rolling paper of a cigarette but the pipe did not have any taste at all.

I would have tried Briar but you see I live in Malta(you might have heard about us on the news recently) which is a tiny island so postage would be a bitch, add that to the not so cheap briar... I do not want to spend 100Euro(137.739USD) on a small block of wood.

Anyway I hope I do not come across as an arrogant fool, I certainly do not mean to be arrogant and as for a fool... well I may be proven to be one after a few weeks of smoking non briar pipes, but until then I am not sold on briar. When I'll go buy some pipe tobacco I will buy a briar pipe if I find one, that way I can compare it with iroko.

mredmond · Post by **mredmond** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 10:51 pm

Carl, I think you might have a misconception about briar. It is a densely straight grained hardwood. The term briar is an English bastardization of a French word, bruyere, and refers to the root ball/burl of the (mostly) Mediterranean white heath tree. It's not the root of the scraggly, thorny shrub that many think of as "briar". I might have misunderstood, and you may know all this already. A friendly warning though...expect to hear people tell you to use briar, around these parts. The vast majority of pipes are made from it for a reason, and the experienced makers around here will strongly suggest you use it for a number of reasons.

Good luck with the Iroko, though. If that's what you like, have fun with it.

Micah

Sasquatch · Post by **Sasquatch** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 12:14 am

"if one plans the grain direction properly I bet any hardwood pipe would be stronger than briar."

You lose the bet, it turns out, but the only demonstration I can offer will be time. Briar is unbelievably tough and unbelievably strong, and I say this coming from a woodworking background.

There have been, are, and always will be acceptable alternative pipe woods. But if the goal is something that looks nice and performs for a long time, briar is very hard to beat.

But do as you please, of course.

PS for 100 euro you can have at least six good blocks and probably 10.

Carl · Post by **Carl** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 8:07 am

mredmond wrote:Carl, I think you might have a misconception about briar. It is a densely straight grained hardwood. The term briar is an English bastardization of a French word, bruyere, and refers to the root ball/burl of the (mostly) Mediterranean white heath tree. It's not the root of the scraggly, thorny shrub that many think of as "briar". I might have misunderstood, and you may know all this already. A friendly warning though...expect to hear people tell you to use briar, around these parts. The vast majority of pipes are made from it for a reason, and the experienced makers around here will strongly suggest you use it for a number of reasons.

Good luck with the Iroko, though. If that's what you like, have fun with it.

Micah

No actually I did not know that, I found very little information about briar and most seem to agree that it is some sort of root fungus that grows on a bush, if you know a good article about briar I would love to read it.

I would give it a try if it was readily available like other woods, its not that I think other woods are better but at the moment briar is not economically viable for me.

Thanks for the info.

Sasquatch wrote:"if one plans the grain direction properly I bet any hardwood pipe would be stronger than briar."

You lose the bet, it turns out, but the only demonstration I can offer will be time. Briar is unbelievably tough and unbelievably strong, and I say this coming from a woodworking background.

There have been, are, and always will be acceptable alternative pipe woods. But if the goal is something that looks nice and performs for a long time, briar is very hard to beat.

But do as you please, of course.

PS for 100 euro you can have at least six good blocks and probably 10.

Apparently I am not that well informed about the properties of briar and I never even held a piece in my hands so I will take your word for it.

You see, this whole "briar is king" thing reminds me a lot of the misconception that lasted for decades when most people thought Yew and Osage orange are the only woods that make a real bow and Osage orange is to be used only if Yew is not available/too expensive. Today we know most woods can make a good bow as long as the bow is designed according to the particular wood used.

That said I am just a hobbyist woodworker and you probably have a lot more experience and knowledge of woodworking so later on I might look back and grin at my naiveness on this matter.

As for prices I was going off this website http://www.briarblocks.com/pipes/index.htm the cheapest small blocks seem to be 20Euro/4 blocks, I am not sure what the terms mean but I guess those are the less desirable cuts. Obviously less than 100Euro but they are small and I don't like buying raw materials online, for the same price I can buy four 8' hardwood 2x4's which I can inspect before buying. Not sure about Iroko prices since what I used was sort of donated from a family member who had no use for it, but it doesn't haveto be iroko anyway.

Maybe I'll buy a block sometime, and I heard that there is actually someone who makes briar pipes where I live, I might give him a visit and maybe buy some briar off him.

Sasquatch · Post by **Sasquatch** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 10:23 am

Yeah if you can visit a pipemaker that would be the quick/easy for you.

It could well be that thinking briar is the best pipe wood is a misconception but it's one that has persisted for 200 years now, and there are a few of us who have used other woods, even searched fairly intensively for good replacements, only to come back to briar because every other wood has some or other basically fatal shortcoming in it's performance.

But for now, for your budget and skill level, just making pipes is the important thing, and you can buy some good quality briar later on maybe.

Sorringowl · Post by **Sorringowl** » Thu Mar 10, 2011 7:44 pm

"Since I posted this I read your "why use briar" post and the boiling thing makes a lot of sense to me but with all due respect, I doubt a shrub root is stronger than straight grained hardwoods, yes it has a weak spot but if one plans the grain direction properly I bet any hardwood pipe would be stronger than briar.
[/quote]

Hey Carl, I know where you're coming from. As a new pipemaker myself, with limited resources and a nice supply of hardwood, I've made three pipes out of Walnut. I love these pipes. I love smoking from them, not so much because they're the best made pipes in the world, but because they're different from briar; different taste, different smell, different qualities (lighter, for instance)--and also because I made them with my own two hands (how cool is that? to make your own pipe). However, as I am now beginning to make pipes out of briar, I find I'm less interested in using alternative woods. It's not that I won't ever use them again, but, eventually I would like to sell my work and the market for Walnut pipes seems, well, pretty non-existent to very limited. So, for me, they were good as a pre-cursor to cutting my chops on briar and for figuring out the tooling I need for pipemaking, and also because if I totally screwed them up, so what? At least I didn't ruin a piece of briar. No big whoop.

That aside, there are other more important reasons for using briar, I'm beginning to understand, and the strength factor of a wood suitable for pipes (as you've alluded to), is just one. But, strength, as Walter Sobchak might say, "is not the issue here, Dude." If you were making a violin soundboard and you had the choice between spruce and ebony, you would be wise to choose the spruce. Why? Because ebony (although prettier, denser and much stronger than spruce) sounds like shit.

Luthiers, after many years of experimentation, have found Spruce to be the best, most resonant wood, and therefore, most suitable wood for violin tops. Just like pipemakers (and pipe smokers, btw) have found briar to be the most suitable wood (as opposed to, say, meerschaum, which is an entirely different pipemaking material) for making pipes.

As one of many beginning pipe makers that come from a woodworking background (and I think you mentioned the same), I used to think, well, who cares what you make a pipe out of, as long as it's wood?. But, the downside of coming from a purely woodworking background (or, furniture making, more specifically) is when, in the past, I've made a piece of furniture, say, a chair, I never think, "how is this going to sound?" or, if this were a pipe, "how would it smoke?" I only need to make sure (aside from aesthetics) that it's strong enough for its intended purpose so that it functions well, and use the materials best suited for that. It's the same with a pipe, with the exception that, unlike a chair, it has to smoke well, ideally, smoke well consistently and hopefully, for a long time.

Sure, you could probably make a pipe out of any wood, and, don't get me wrong, some pipes I've seen made out of other hardwoods are beautiful (like Charl's African Blackwood pipes--which I love (and which someday, g-dammit, I will own) but most of Charl's pipes are made out of briar for a reason. Briar just works best. It may just be tradition, as you mention, but don't get fooled into thinking that tradition does not result from years and years of study, experience and observation from makers and smokers alike.

Again, I will probably always experiment with other woods, safe woods, like Walnut and Cherry and such for pipe making. But, now that I've started working with Briar, I'm really enjoying it. And part of that is feeling connected to an age old tradition of using briar. That said, dude, I would stay away from teak, which has been known to cause allergies just by virtue of touch.

Anyway, I don't want to beat a dead horse, or come off as preachy or assholish, just wanted to share some of my observations with you.

That said, if I could make a chair completely out of briar, I woud do it...now I just have to find a block big enough...

Grammaton · Post by **Grammaton** » Thu Mar 10, 2011 8:54 pm

Sorringowl wrote:Luthiers, after many years of experimentation, have found Spruce to be the best, most resonant wood, and therefore, most suitable wood for violin tops. Just like pipemakers (and pipe smokers, btw) have found briar to be the most suitable wood (as opposed to, say, meerschaum, which is an entirely different pipemaking material) for making pipes.

At the risk of injecting myself into this argument, how much experimentation do you think there was in history? People historically decided whether an easily sourced material was suitable for a product, not what material was the absolute best. Eventually, makers look for exotic materials to differentiate their products in a crowded market.

Bob Benedetto has made an archtop guitar from knotty pine. He says it's the same as his other guitars. The people who have heard it, say it's the same as his others.

Consumers decide what material is best, and they vote with their dollars. If a famous maker decided the best material for a widget was rubber coated aluminum instead of the traditional plastic coated gopher-wood, then people would follow his lead - if he didn't go broke before critical mass in the market.

Traditional woods are just that - traditional. Possibly better at the time of adoption, but more likely just exotic. A way to differentiate a product from competitors.

Established makers believe briar is the best, among other acceptable species. And that's the way of the world. There's no changing it.

Prepared briar is a really good material for the task of pipemaking. It's very dense, but easily worked because it's soft, and not resinous (like an evergreen). It can be very pretty. Whether it's the best for pipe-smoking has been decided by the market, which is made up of consumers.

None of us who make pipes from alternative materials is going to change the market, because of who we are (or who we are not), not because we use inferior materials.

Again, sorry for rambling, and sorry for injecting myself. I'm just a bit contrarian, apparently.

Post by **KurtHuhn** » Thu Mar 10, 2011 10:59 pm

The debate between briar and all other woods has raged for the better part of the nearly decade I've been cruising this board.

Take it from a true antiestablishmentarianist (just ask Rad

), briar has no equal in pipes.

There are woods that smoke well. I personally like sugar maple and cherry, but they don't hold a candle to briar. This isn't because I have deemed it so, but because in 20 years as a pipe smoker, I've had a lot of time to experiment and make objective (and subjective, admittedly) conclusions on various pipes and the materials they're made of.

And when I shop for an acoustic guitar, I ALWAYS look for a solid spruce top. Just like when I shop for an electric, I ALWAYS look for a set neck, minimum of two piece body, and various specific electronics. It's not because someone told me so, but because my experience has shown me that this is the best sounding guitar for me. I've found that the top material on an electric has very little impact on sound. At least for the music I play.

RadDavis · Post by **RadDavis** » Fri Mar 11, 2011 12:16 am

You see, this whole "briar is king" thing reminds me a lot of the misconception

You're starting to be "that guy".

Rad

Sasquatch · Post by **Sasquatch** » Fri Mar 11, 2011 1:27 am

Which guy, the guy that hasn't ever handled a piece of briar yet knows that dingleberry wood is better for pipes, or the guy that asks a question just so he can tell the person who answers his question that the answer isn't right?

Grammaton, you are ignoring one or two really important points in your analogizing. Briar has a whole bunch of physical properties that make it superior to most other woods - burn temperature and an almost total lack of ability to wick tars are among them. The longevity of a maple pipe, for example, is not the same as briar. This is not opinion. It is, in your words, the way the world is. So if being capable of withstanding heavy use for a couple of years is a valuable property in a pipe (for example), then a briar pipe is better than a maple pipe. This isn't speculation or hearsay. While pine may stand in for spruce in a guitar, it won't stand in for a low-slope ceiling beam. Eventually the physical differences show out.

The thinking being presented here, that pipemakers have somehow conned the world into thinking the briar is better is absolutely backwards. Rather, by a process of elimination a bunch of traditional pipe woods have fallen by the wayside, leaving briar as the front-runner for reasons that have been outlined here and elsewhere. Pipes were made from beech during World War II because the mediterranean areas were inaccessible. But beech pipes are not as durable as briar pipes, so as soon as briar was available again, beech pipes became dispreferred.

There's no secret handshake here, boys. The physical empirical facts are what they are. What a guy chooses to do in order to make pipes is up to him. But every single time someone stands up and says "Well, I've never made a briar pipe but I know damn well Bubinga is better." I'm going to fight it, because it's bullshit.

Sorringowl · Post by **Sorringowl** » Fri Mar 11, 2011 3:12 pm

Grammaton wrote:
Sorringowl wrote:Luthiers, after many years of experimentation, have found Spruce to be the best, most resonant wood, and therefore, most suitable wood for violin tops. Just like pipemakers (and pipe smokers, btw) have found briar to be the most suitable wood (as opposed to, say, meerschaum, which is an entirely different pipemaking material) for making pipes.
At the risk of injecting myself into this argument, how much experimentation do you think there was in history? People historically decided whether an easily sourced material was suitable for a product, not what material was the absolute best. Eventually, makers look for exotic materials to differentiate their products in a crowded market.

Bob Benedetto has made an archtop guitar from knotty pine. He says it's the same as his other guitars. The people who have heard it, say it's the same as his others.

Consumers decide what material is best, and they vote with their dollars. If a famous maker decided the best material for a widget was rubber coated aluminum instead of the traditional plastic coated gopher-wood, then people would follow his lead - if he didn't go broke before critical mass in the market.

I hear what you're saying Gram, but I will have to disagree, even though I know we're getting into "chicken and egg" territory.

People (consumers) decide what material is best based on what makers find (through experimentation) is the most suitable. Best and most suitable are two distinct things.

Antonio de Torres, the maker of the modern day classical guitar, started making guitars out of simple woods (such as pine, cypress, and other "lowly" woods) after noticing that the best sounding violin tops were made of simple, straight grained woods. At the time, the guitar market was made up of fancy guitars built from exotic woods that looked pretty but sounded like crap. Once well-renowned players of his day started hearing about his experiments with better sounding instruments and they began playing his instruments and giving him feedback to further improve the instrument, thus giving us the prototype for what we now know as the classical guitar. He made beautiful sounding guitars out of knotty woods as well (and it doesn't surprise me that Benedetto's knotty pine guitar sounded good--it looks to be made of very close grained pine [which is a softwood, just like spruce] and the knots are small--now, if the knots were huge and the grain very wide--it might sound not so good, but who knows?...but I digress...)

My point is that makers and those knowledgeable on any given instrument (in this case, the pipe) decide what material is most suitable (based on a lot of experimentation) and the consumer, in effect, takes their word for it, not the other way around, and not based on purely economic reasons. The maker, based on the market at any given time, takes into consideration economic concerns but still must always choose the most suitable material (which may or may not be, the best, which, in the end is very subjective).

Okay, now I'm rambling. I'm gonna' go make a guitar out of briar now...

Sasquatch · Post by **Sasquatch** » Fri Mar 11, 2011 9:05 pm

A tiny guitar, or do you have a source for blocks that we need to talk about, Owl?

Abi Natur · Post by **Abi Natur** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 5:39 am

Comrades,Carl,
time will tell anyhow as it has spoken so eloquently through the bruyere root and olive wood before it.But let us not exclude so uniformly other traditionally used materials from some geographical sources were some of them have been used for centuries,like the olive wood from Montenegro .
The tradition of pipemaking did not begin from one place with one kind of wood.Bruyere evolved in time ,went through positive practical changes in the processing and a omnipotent marketing strategy through gifted pipemakers.

Here in Europe i talked for instance with some German store owners in the third generation who did witness as young boys that olive wood pipes did have a a fair share of the market in the first half of the 20th century.The manzanita wood of North America had also a big comeback in the period of the IIWW ,as bruyere was not readily available from the Mediterranean area .
Not every olive wood is of the same qvality, there are great differences in the hardness,grain and aroma depending on were it grows.You will never find the availability of olive wood for pipes as you will with bruyere.I got may biggest share of knowledge and a shortcut around errors from my great grandpa and that helped a lot in saving time .

Carl save your time and money and get a few bruyere blocks for your pipes,if you wanna sell em' some day

Best,
Abi

Sorringowl · Post by **Sorringowl** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 10:16 pm

Sasquatch wrote:A tiny guitar, or do you have a source for blocks that we need to talk about, Owl?

I was thinking I'd need about 30 ebauchons to make a solid body electric, with one removable one that I could actually smoke. I don't know but I think that pretty much tops Keith Richards' burning cigarette in the headstock, coolness wise.

or maybe I should make 30 pipes that you can puzzle together so that it turns into a guitar...it'd be cool too if I could get all of them going at once, while doing a solo...WINNING!

RadDavis · Post by **RadDavis** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 1:27 am

Sorringowl wrote: I don't know but I think that pretty much tops Keith Richards' burning cigarette in the headstock, coolness wise.

The first time I saw this was at a Peter, Paul and Mary concert, a few years before the Stones came along. It was either Peter or Paul. Mary didn't have a guitar.

Keith Richards is just a copy cat.

Rad

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