Fills in Briar

I was asked:

>I have a Danish freehand that I bought in Denmark about ten years ago. >It has a nice close straight grain and smokes wonderfully. After a >few years of smoking I noticed three of four small fills on one side >of the bowl. Obviously it is not fashioned from a flawless piece of >briar. I wonder how common it is for fairly expensive pipes to have such >flaws. I imagine that some finishes could hide them better than others. >In this case they don't seem to affect the quality of the smoke. Aside >from appearance, do such fills have any disadvantages?

As long as a plug is not too deep it will not effect the longevity of the pipe. Fills in certain spots are more dangerous than others. Never buy a pipe that has a fill near the end of the shank it will certainly crack in the future. If a bowl is fairly thick, fills in the upper part will probably be inconsequential as most of the heat is concentrated in the lower and middle parts of the bowl.

As far as which of the major brands fill. Well... at the risk of getting some people upset. I've seen fills in Larsen's, GBD Virgins, Briar Workshop et al, Talamona to mention a few. Pipes I 've never seen fills in, referring to smooth pipes only, sandblasts and rough finish pipes don't count as the reason as they are finished in the fashion are flaws in the briar, are: Dunhill, Charatan, Upshall,(old) Barling, Costello, Ser Jacapo, top of the line Savinilli's, Ascorti, Cammineto, .I m not familiar with too many Danish, but I never seen any in a Celius.

I 've never actually found a fill in a Radice but I 've seen some suspicious looking spots that even under magnification I could' t be sure! As he s such a great artisan I wonder if he hasn' t come up with a way to hide them. Peterson fills baldly. As for American pipe makers, I 've never seen fills in a Wiley, Butera, Tim West. I myself do not on my American pipes.

Please don t take this to mean anybody I 've left out does or doesn' t. It also can mean I m wrong about some I 've absolved . This is what I 've seen and observed. There are so many pipe makers and brands that to list them all would take forever. Generally speaking any pipe under $100 is likely to be filled. Any pipe made by machine is likely to be filled. There are notable exceptions. There are some beautiful clean Kaywoodie's out there. Weber made a great line of naturals that were marketed under other names.

So what's this all mean. The only metaphor/analogy I can make to explain it would be; why not substitute cubic zirconium's for diamonds in all expensive jewelry? They look and function the same. Why do many people insist upon diamonds? There's something about owning a rare material, potentially flawed, hardly ever pristine, fashioned by hand that appeals to most of us. If a pipe is to be just a vehicle for burning tobacco, then little matter if it has cosmetic flaws. If smoking is to be something special, a totem, an art that transcends, what better way than a unique and flawless vessel to contain it. Mark Tinsky

American Smoking Pipe Co.
HC 88 Box 223
Pocono Lake, Pa. 18347
mt@AmSmoke.com

Return to Main Menu
Return to Pipe Musing Index