I picked up the three pipes below at an antique mall in Washington. The third one is the one about which I am writing this article. It came with the two stems pictured with it below. Neither of them fit the pipe. I decided to work on a tapered stem for this one. The bowl as badly faded in terms of colouration. One side was darker than the other. The rim was darkened and tarred. What attracted me to this pipe was the interesting folk art carving on the bowl. There was a hand carved vine that was carved around the bowl top with and interesting line on the top and bottom of the design. There was also a sheaf of leaves on the front of the bowl. There were also the initials C. J. I believe carved in the front of the bowl. They were done in an old Germanic style script. The carving was nicely done and very folksy. I decided to pick it up rework it.

The first thing I did to it was to clean and ream the bowl. I wanted to have it clean to work on. I do what I call a field dress when I pick them up in the shops. I generally have a bottle of Isopropyl alcohol and a small reamer and pipe cleaners to get the major grime off. I have added some cotton pads to that kit. I cleaned enough to bring home with less work to do at home. I finished cleaning and reaming it. I scrubbed the top of the bowl with Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush until the tars and grime were gone. I scrubbed the carvings as well and wiped off the soap. Once it was clean I found a nice taper stem in my can of stems and fit the tenon to the mortise. I then used my Dremel to get the stem diameter to match the shank. When it was as close as I could get it with the Dremel I dropped the bowl in the 99% alcohol bath to soak while I worked on the stem with sandpaper – 240 grit, 400 and 600 grit wet dry and water – to remove the scratches and smooth out the surface and flow of the stem.

When I took the pipe out of the bath I dried it and looked at the shank. I kind of like the look of a nickel band on these chubby pipes so I pressure fit a band on the shank. I then restained the pipe with some medium brown Feibings Shoe Dye (an aniline stain). I flamed it to set the stain and then took it to the buffer to polish the new stain. The carving held a bit of the stain so they are just a shade darker than the rest of the bowl.

I sanded the stem with my micromesh list – 1500 – 6000 grit pads. Once done I buffed the stem (on the pipe) with White Diamond. I gave the whole pipe several coats of  carnauba wax to build a shine and make the grain shine.