What Is The Best Material For A Pipe Stem?

Bone-Animal Borne Shaped and Polished as a Stem Material in Some Old Briar Pipes & Meerschaum Pipes. Common material used for the stem, particularly in the last century mass-produced pipes. Ebonite is especially popular as the stem material of higher end hand made pipes. 

All of us here at BriarWorks who build hand-cut hand-made pipes mainly use ebonite for these pipes. The BriarWorks and Moonshine pipes both feature acrylic stems machined from solid stocks. The advantages of acrylic pipe stems are color diversity, and unlike vulcanite, acrylic does not oxidize. 

Meanwhile, most antique pipes had stems made from vulcanite, which is a synthetic rubber that you can polish to shine. The mouthpieces of most modern briar pipes are made from either vulcanite or acrylic. In many ways, though, the briar pipe is only as good as its mouthpiece or the hose. By far the most popular material used to create pipes today, briar is typically sourced from the root-burls of Mediterranean bushes. 

While briar pipes are definitely the most popular, a variety of other woods are used by pipe makers as well (cherrywood being an example). Pipes may be made of maize cob, meerschaum, olivewood, cherrywood, strawberrywood, old morta, clay, and possibly other materials, too, but briar is considered to be the final material to be used to create pipes. Unlike copper pipes, which were used in Ancient Egypt for the first time, the majority of pipes are made of briarwood, which comes from a root of the barrio. Tobacco pipes typically have bowls made from briar, meerschaum, maize, pears, rosewood, or clay. 

Although not common, most types of wood may be used to create tobacco pipes. The tobacco pipes stems and bits are often made from moldable materials such as Ebonite, Lucite, Bakelite, and soft plastics. Today, stems for pipes are typically made from Acrylics and other synthetic materials such as Bakelite, plastic, and even Ebonite. They may also be made of antler, ivory, and bone, all of which are fairly uncommon nowadays. 

Known as the Lucite Stem Acrylic mouthpieces are far easier to clean than Vulcanite, do not oxidize, and are extremely strong. Briar-wood stems, which may either be integrated with the bowl, making the pipe a whole, or may be separate stems which have a tenon of wood, bone, metal, or Delrin that connects it to the pipe bowl. Because it is molded instead of carved, clay may be used for an entire pipe or only for the bowl, but most other materials have separate, removable stems. This includes any parts of a pipe without the stem, no matter what material the pipe is made from -- briar, meerschaum, clay, corn cob. 

The one drawback is the acrylic gives the stiff feeling when you squeeze the pipe. Clays supporters argue that, unlike other materials, a well-made clay pipe produces pure smog, without any flavors added by the pipes bowl. In North America, many clay pipes were historically made of more common clays, colored with earthen colors. Alongside clay, meerschaum represented another common medium for pipes until briar was introduced as a preferred material in the mid-19th century.