Cracks

[Anonymous]

The growth process in wood and briar boles entails stress. When the opposing stresses of of the material around it is removed, relaxing (especially when heat's involved) can create what you're seeing in the bowl crack. In twenty-five cent woodworker terminology, it's a "shake." And it happens in high end pipes as well as basket pipes, although the briefer curing of cheap pipes conduses to it more.

In the case of the shank crack, most likely somebody jammed the stem back into the stummel while the shank was swollen from the moisture smoking entails. Since the vulcanite tennon wasn't going to compress, and something had to "give," the briar did.

:face:

 

[Kyle Weiss]

Cool info, Yak, thanks. 8)

Is this growth stress due to the burl edging into a rock, harder/looser soil, drought, all of the above...? It's interesting. Sometimes it's easy to assume perfect conditions to the natural growth of anything, but the heath trees/bushes sure grow in some harsher environments than one might assume...