THE ART OF THE SANDBLAST
Another
in an infrequent series of articles concerning
THE
BRIAR PIPE
By
R. D. Field
Main
Entry: 1sand·blast
Pronunciation: -"blast
Function: noun
Date: 1871
: a stream of sand projected
by compressed air (as for engraving, cutting, or cleaning glass or
stone)
Main
Entry: 2sandblast
Function: transitive verb
Date: 1888
: to affect or treat with or
as if with a sandblast
- sand·blast·er noun
So
there it is- sandblasting was meant for engraving stuff or cleaning
stuff. If machinery got so dirty, so gunky that it couldn’t be cleaned
in any other way it was sandblasted clean. Building façades too. After
years of road grime, exhaust fumes, dust turned a building façade black
it could look like original after being shot with tiny particles.
So
how was this applied to wood, specifically wood smoking pipes? Who
thought of it? And why?
I
think we’ve got to look at Alfred Dunhill. This gent was really one
hell of an inventor- and marketer. He seemed to constantly try to
produce stuff that no one else had thought of, and he certainly had
successes. I’m sure he had a lot of failures too, but they’re buried
somewhere. And even some of his successes might have really been
failures, but no one knew so at the time.
When
Dunhill ran an accessories and harness leather shop for coaches, wagons
and motor cars he invented a “windshield” pipe- that is a pipe where
the bowl was higher in front than in back. The idea was to stop the wind
from blowing sparks about from the lighted pipe. I’m sure the pipe
worked in a completely open vehicle, but they didn’t have wind-tunnel
testing in those days- you know, like on TV where you can see the air as
it moves around a car. So I’m betting that it didn’t work all that
well once those open cars were made with windshields. I’m only talking
from personal experience here, but when I ride in my open car or my H-D
police bike (which has a windshield) I get the same effect- the air goes
up over the windshield and over the front of me- and curves around to
hit me from behind. I’m betting that if I had a lighted pipe in my
mouth sparks would fly, but from back to front rather than front to
back.
What
possessed Dunhill to try an engraving and cleaning treatment on wood? I’d
love to know- to follow his thought process. An old story goes that some
briar was left by the heating boiler for a time and when Dunhill saw it
he found that some of the grain had "shrunk" leaving a “relief”
pattern on the wood. I don’t buy that story for a second, except that
it makes for good marketing. And even if it was true why wouldn’t pipe
bowls be left next to little heaters so the grain could be brought into
relief. No- that won’t do. I can understand that he didn’t want to
say: “I use a powerful industrial process noted for taking crud off
metal.” Far better to romance the process as “…a combination of
heat and sand”. From nature… sort of like being lulled to sleep by
the surf as you lie on a sunny beach.
No
matter that the process was industrial- it worked. It left the pipe bowl
in beautiful, hard-grained relief. Or is it soft-grained relief? I’ve
had arguments with folks- down and out kicking and screaming arguments
about what part of the wood is actually left in relief. Dunhill
maintained it to be the hard grain- but this may be marketing (who wants
to think that they are left with the soft part of the wood to use as a
chamber for fire). I think it’s the hard grain because- well, because
it’s harder. My opponents swear it’s the soft grain but I don’t
remember the reasons they gave- although they were convincing at the
time.
As
far as I am aware Dunhill was the first to sandblast briar smoking
pipes. And I deduced that they (the Dunhill pipe factory at Notting Hill
Gate) didn’t really know what the heck they were doing at first. If
you look at the old Dunhill catalogs you’ll see page after page of
pipe shapes in bruyere (smooth finish) each with its assigned model
number or letter i.e. 59 (billiard), 137 (dublin) etc. When you come to
the sandblasted (shell) pipes there are no model numbers (or letters)-
only “example III” or “example X”. Why? The photos show shapes
that look like traditional shapes, but they are so misshapen, so
out-of-round that they were not assigned the traditional model
designations. Neat, eh? I mean I love this type of pipe. It’s got
character. But it doesn’t have real symmetry, and I guess this worried
some of the boys who put the pipes on sale. They didn’t want to chance
customers coming back to them saying things like “my Shell #59 doesn’t
look at all like my Bruyere #59 and I want an exchange”.
In
the meantime the geezers who did the sandblasting became more adept at
what they were doing; as a result bowls were less misshapen and more
identifiable . Lest we forget- these were craftsmen, not folks pulled in
off the street and put in front of a machine. They had pride in their
work and were eager to deliver what the market desired. So I suppose
that if folks really desired radically misshapen bowls they would have
delivered such. That they didn’t shows other forces at work.
Even
in the early 20’s Dunhill was known all over the world. How? Through
clever marketing. I tell you the guy was at least as good a marketer as
he was an inventor, and here’s a prime example. During the 1st
World War Dunhill would give away many many pipes, but only to officers in the British
military. He would also post pipes on approval to this same group. Most
readers of this article being American would probably ponder something
like “well, that’s nice- but hardly relevant”. Wrong! In Great
Britain during the 1st World War (and for some time after I
believe) all officers came from the aristocracy. They didn’t have to
earn commissions but were given them as birthright. So here we have
Dunhill handing out his pipes (and his cigarettes) to the folks that
will have money to spend once the war comes to an end. And the 1st
World War being in fact a world war here we have
these rich officers in places like France, Australia, Greece, New
Zealand, Turkey, Canada, etc. showing off their fine new Dunhill pipes
and establishing the name far and wide.
So
now we see that Dunhill is known for its pipes, among other things, over
most of the civilized world by the early 1920’s. What Dunhill has to
do, and does, is to gauge which of its markets like what products, and
how each of these products should be made for each individual market.
What they found I speculate is that most if not all their markets liked
sandblasted pipes with bowls that were not badly out-of-round. I deduced
this by having spoken, over the years, to pipe distributors, pipe
retailers, and pipe customers all over the world. After many such
discussions in shops and offices all over Europe, and parts of Japan and
Korea it appears to me that only we Americans , and really only we American
Serious Dunhill Collectors prefer what were the early examples
of the Dunhill Shell pipe.
Enough
of Dunhill- after proper homage is paid. Alfred Dunhill (as far as I am
aware) was the first to sandblast pipes, did one hell of a marketing job
promoting the process (did you know that early Dunhill Shell pipes cost
more than their counterpart Bruyere pipes?), and (in my opinion) made
the best sandblasted pipe in the world for a rather long period.
Why
sandblast a pipe in the first place? There are several reasons, any one
of which could be the predominate one depending on the time period in
question. There may be a sand spot or small flaw in the bowl and the
manufacturer decides it is more economical in terms of time to sandblast
instead of re-working the pipe; there may be a discoloration which
precludes even staining; there may be an excess of weight which
sandblasting can remove. A common misconception is that a sandblasted
pipe is a flawed pipe. Up through 1930 almost all smooth pipes were
stained burgundy or a dark walnut. These stains can mask most sand spots
and the smaller flaws which look like part of the grain pattern. Since
most smooth pipes of that era had a mixed or cross grain pattern it was
virtually impossible to find a sand spot without stripping the pipe of
its stain. I suggest that if we had only burgundy or dark walnut stained
smooth pipes today we would indeed have many more smooth pipes. But
tastes change and so the naturally stained pipe came into being. Even
these at the start had a natural stain of the darker variety than that
being used today, but it still proved much harder to conceal sand spots
or small flaws- hence the dramatic increase in sandblasting. Today many
makers use only the lightest of natural stains; these have a tendency to
highlight any flaw or spot at all, no matter how tiny. So, I put forth,
it is not that briar quality has decreased but that our standards have
changed as to what is acceptable in a smooth pipe.
There
are many sizes of sandblasting machines, but they all do the job in one
of two ways. Many of the smaller ones use vacuum as pressure- that is a
vacuum is created in one part of the unit and this vacuum is used to
force the particles through a nozzle onto the article to be worked.
Others, both small and large, use a compressor to build up pressure
which is released as the nozzle trigger is pressed. The vacuum type doesn’t produce much pressure- one atmosphere to
be exact, while the pressure type can be adjusted to any pressure the compressor can
generate and the rest of the equipment can handle. A good analogy is
that of espresso machines which operate in some ways like a sandblaster.
Here again there are two types- vacuum and pressure. The vacuum type,
operating at one atmosphere, delivers a thin, black espresso with no
crema, no essential volatile coffee oils. The pressure type can force
hot water through the coffee grounds at 12- 15 atmospheres, delivering
the essentials that are not possible with the vacuum machine.
I’ve
had some first-hand experience with both types of machines as I was with
Bill Ashton-Taylor when he investigated and then made a purchase many
years ago. We found ourselves in a huge building looking at machine
after machine- some so large that I could fit inside. When the gent
heard why Bill wanted such a machine he scratched his head, said “wood!
Never heard of anyone sandblasting wood before” and directed us to a
small vacuum pressure machine. “This’ll do” he opined. Well, it
didn’t; not by a long shot. We went from machine to machine till we
found one that was right. Not only right, but big. So big that I had to
stand on a stool to see inside. And that doesn’t include the
compressor which is both large and loud. Bill had to construct a small
outbuilding of brick outside his unit in order to house and sound-deaden
the thing.
A
divergence here- to explain a bit more about the various types of
sandblasting equipment as I know it. The machine described above uses a
fixed nozzle mounted above the spot where the operator has his gloved
hands. In this type of machine the operator uses a foot treadle to start
and stop the stream of particles coming from the nozzle while he
manipulates the pipe bowl with both hands. I have seen (and used)
another type of machine where the pipe bowl is manipulated with one hand
while the other hand holds a pistol
which, when the trigger is pressed, releases the particles. A third type
I have seen is more automated. Many pipe bowls are placed in a wire
barrel or rotunda. A fixed nozzle sprays the barrel with particles for several
hours as the bowls are turning. Because the bowls are always turning and
nudging one another, and because the pressure is not so great as the
bowls are being bombarded over a great amount of time the resulting
sandblast has a different appearance than that using the manual
approach. You will notice that the edges of some brands of sandblasted
pipes are more smooth, more round, not as sharply defined; this is the
major differentiating factor.
The
machine itself is just one aspect of sandblasting. Another is the
material used in the process. There are an almost endless number of
materials that can be used- from actual sand (silicon silicate I
believe) to glass beads, to tiny ball bearings, to walnut shells. The
wrong material creates the wrong look, or perhaps no look at all- so
some pipe makers have experimented until they found what they considered
the right material. And what may be right for one maker may not be right
for another, as sandblasting is really an art. It’s creating a pattern
or picture on a piece of wood. Some can create masterpiece after
masterpiece, while others just slide by.
Another
aspect may be the type of briar used. I say may be because I have no
definitive proof one way or the other. It used to be up through the
early 60’s that there were many magnificent deeply blasted cross grain
sandblasts- stuff that would really take my breath away. Briar sawmills
at that time were not paying particular attention to grain as they were
cutting blocks, with the result being that most pieces were of mixed or
cross grain. But since the
Italians (and to a lesser extent the Danes) have become a definitive
force in pipe making all the sawmills seem to cut solely for straight
grain. This shows up in sandblasted pieces as ring grain which to me is
not at all as interesting as the varying patterns of cross grain pieces.
The lack of depth in most sandblasts may be the world markets at work,
it may be the type of briar used, or it may be that many makers are not
familiar with the art of the deeply sandblasted pipe.
A
fourth aspect which may come into play is curing. Various makers have
various methods- air drying, kiln drying, oil curing, microwaving,
steaming, soaking, the list goes on. Certain makers with whom I’ve
spoken feel deeply that their method of curing absolutely enhances the
sandblasting process while others have told me that they’ve
experimented with various methods and could find no difference. I can
only state here that not all makers excel at all processes; Van Gogh
does not paint like Rembrandt nor visa versa.
The
final aspect in the art of the sandblast is true artistry. This is very
difficult to put into words although I do have firsthand experience
here- being allowed to play about with sandblasting both in England and
Italy. The sandblast finish is by far my favorite, and I wanted to learn
everything I could about how it is achieved. That I learned more of what
shouldn’t be done than what should is perhaps a foregone conclusion.
Almost anyone can sandblast a pipe; almost no one can produce a
magnificent sandblast finish. To produce such an extraordinary article
requires the correct touch using the correct machine operating at the
correct pressure using the correct particles to sandblast the correct
briar which has undergone the correct curing. And what is correct?
It differs from maker to maker. You are the final judge as to who are
the artists and who is pedestrian in the
art of the sandblast.
