Blog by Steve Laug

I picked up this older BBB Bulldog on EBay because I liked the shape of it. The bowl definitely needed some work as the lava had erupted over the front rim and down the contours of the pipe. The pictures below show the state of the bowl when it arrived. But that was not why I am writing about this pipe. That kind of refurbishing is part and parcel of buying older pipes on EBay. They always are pretty much in the state that this one was in. All of them require the same kind of procedures to clean them up and return them to a state of readiness for the new owner. But have a look at the button on the last three pictures below. It was virtually gone. I could have fit a new stem on the pipe but I wanted to retain the brass BBB logo and did not want to move it to a new stem. I also wanted to try to build up the button and see what I could do with it.

I have used Super Glue or Krazy Glue to repair bite throughs in the stem but had not use it to do repairs this extensive. I love the process of trying to devise a workable fix and so I decided to give it a go. I greased a fluffy pipe cleaner with olive oil and inserted it in the airway at the button. I do this so that the glue does not fill the airway and grease it so that the pipe cleaner is not a permanent feature of the stem as the super glue will stick to anything including your fingers if you get it on them. (By the way there is a solvent that is available should that happen to you.) The surface of the button was dirty and oxidized so I cleaned that with my dental pick and some acetone. I clean the surface before putting in the glue. I also sanded it to roughen the surface so the glue would bond well. In the top picture of the stem you can see that the top of the button is indented and the lip is worn smooth. The second stem photo shows the underside and you can see the major dent that needed work and the lip that was pretty well gone. I filled the hole on the underside first so that it would bond. Then I gradually built up the dent, letting it dry between applications of the glue. I believe it took 5 or 6 applications of the glue. Once it was filled I added more to build it up so that I could re-cut the button. In the picture below the patch is clear. It is a very rough surface but it is ready for the sanding and filing that will go into restoring the stem to normal. I built up the deep dent and also built up the missing portion of the button. On the top side of the stem I also built up the button in the same fashion.

I set the stem aside to dry until the glue patch was very hard and turned my attention to the bowl. You can see in the pictures below that I took off the lava and tars on the top and cleaned the inside and outside of the entire bowl. By the time I was finished with the exterior of the bowl and shank and cleaned out the bowl and the inside of the shank with pipe cleaners and a reamer the stem was ready to work on. I reassembled it for the picture below.

You can see from the two profile pictures above that the button is present once again. The idea is to build up the end of the stem to the degree that the profile shows the button as it would have been on a pipe of this age. It took a layering process with the super glue to get it to the point it is in the above pictures.

The two photos below show the bottom of the stem as I worked on it with the files and the sandpapers. I used my small files, both the flat and the wedge file to cut away the material that I had built up to give a sharp button edge as differentiated from the surface of the stem. In the first picture you can see the initial cuts and the smoothing that I did to the surface of the stem with the files. I used 220 and 240 grit sandpaper to remove the rough surface of the glue on the stem and bring it to the right profile. The glue is very hard and it takes quite a bit of sanding to smooth it out. In the second picture you can see the final shaping that was done to the button and the surface of the stem is once again smooth. From this point all that remained was to sand it with 400 and 600 grit wet dry sand paper and then use the micro-mesh pads 1500, 1800, 2400, 3200, 4000 and 6000 grit on the stem. As usual I kept a bowl of water next to me to keep the pads wet as I sanded the stems. Each progressive grit polished the stem and button to a more clean and shiny stage. I also reworked the surface of the entire stem. Once that was done I took it to the buffer and used the Tripoli buff followed by the White Diamond buff to bring it to a sheen.

The last three pictures show the finished pipe – both the bowl which had been cleaned and polished with White Diamond and a light touch and then finished with some carnauba wax to complete it. The stem is completed in terms of bringing back the button and the stem profile. The area around the logo on the stem will need to be worked on with the edges of the micro-mesh pads to get in close and remove the remaining oxidation. Then the entirety will need to be lightly buffed and waxed. The main reason I posted these pictures is to show that the profile is now clear and the new button is clearly visible. The last picture shows the top of the stem and the button is clearly visible. There is a bit of oxidation in the button that I will need to work on with the pads as well but at least the old BBB Bulldog is now very smokable.