BriarWorks' Founding Story: the Workshop That Built Its Own Machines

BriarWorks is an American manufacturing venture founded in Tennessee by pipe makers Todd Johnson and Pete Prevost, aimed at combining mass production with workshop craftsmanship. What sets the brand apart from its peers is less its products than its production setup: the lathes that shape its pipes weren't bought ready-made — they were designed and built in-house, within the workshop itself.

Almost everything known about the founding process rests on Johnson's own account, shared on a maker forum and passed on to Pipedia before 2015; since it has no counterpart in independent records, the details below are given based on that account.

The Lathe Before the Pipe

According to Johnson's account, the founders' first obstacle was that no machine park existed on the market capable of turning out shapes considered unusual for factory-produced pipes. The needed lathes were first commissioned from an outside firm, and when the work delivered after roughly six months wasn't deemed adequate, the pair took the job on themselves. What made this decision possible was that Johnson had spent years building custom cars and motorcycles, and Prevost had a background in welding. According to the same account, the first lathes were welded together over two and a half months, starting from hand-drawn sketches, and production began after the prototyping and testing period that followed. Four more lathes were added in subsequent years, with each new machine's design revisited in light of the ones before it; at the time the account was written, monthly production was said to be around two thousand units.