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Creating Pipes From Morta: Difference between revisions
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'''Creating Pipes From Morta, by [[Trever Talbert]]''', from his [http://talbertpipes.com/mortacreation.shtml website], and used by permission. | '''Creating Pipes From Morta, by [[Trever Talbert]]''', from his [http://talbertpipes.com/mortacreation.shtml website], and used by permission. | ||
== Finding and Harvesting Morta == | |||
[[Image:map1.jpg|thumb|250px|The Briere]][[Image:mortacreation-briere1.jpg|thumb|250px|]]The process of obtaining morta is one of the biggest differences between the creation of a morta pipe and the creation of a briar pipe. Briar is an active industry emplying legions of workers and large mills for the most efficient harvesting and cutting of the wood, and a pipemaker can simply order pre-cut briar blocks by the bag at highly competitive prices. Some pipemakers, myself included, pay additional costs for purchasing handpicked blocks or traveling to the mills to choose their own, but this is still a relatively simple affair by comparison to the procurement of usable morta. In the map below, the large green area represents the Briere parkland: | |||
=== The Briere === | |||
This area is roughly 16 miles across, and it is a trackless wasteland of marshes, fens, and open moors dotted with ancient standing stones. It is a vast area to search, and for most of the year it is inaccessible because the water levels in the crisscrossing aquaducts rise high enough that the open areas cannot be walked for morta. During the Fall, however, the water levels fall and during a narrow window from September to November one can (with wading boots) traverse through the moors. The morta lies under the moist surface packed in peat and mineral-rich clay, and can be 4' deep or more. It is found in the form of huge logs in the process of petrification due to the lack of oxygen required for the wood to rot, which it normally would have done long ago. | |||
The morta is found by walking the soft earth and "poling" - driving a long iron spike into the peat in prospector-fashion, to see if it strikes the hard log of a tree. Once a tree has been located and identified by repeated spiking to confirm that it really is a tree and not a random rock, the area is marked and the search continues. Once several trees have been located, the digging begins and it is a hard and laborous process. The earth must be dug out to reveal the black logs and make it possible to remove them, and they must either be sawn into movable pieces or lifted out with a portable crane and chains. This requires the rental of a truck for transporting the large and heavy sections of wood, plus a lot of hours of labor carrying the stuff across the marshes. | |||
== Drying and Cutting == | == Drying and Cutting == | ||