Daily Archives: October 23, 2012

Another Piece of Tobacciana – A Hammered Metal Pipe Tobacco Humidor


I finally took some pictures of this piece of pipe history – or pipe accessories that I have in my collection. I love the look and feel of this jar. It is relatively useless in keeping tobacco humidified as it is not even close to air tight. Over the years that I have had the humidor I have tried various tobaccos in it. I have even put humidifying disks in the lid and in the tobacco itself with no success. I even tried some aromatic that seemed to never dry out on its own and in the jar it dried within a week to a nice crisp dry corn flake like consistency! So it is no good for tobacco. The look and feel of the piece is nice though. I have no idea of the age of the piece. I call it metal in the title as I do not know what metal it is made of. It does not feel like aluminum so I am guessing steel.
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In the past I also used it to hold pipe tools and baggies of tobacco but I decided to jar them instead as the humidor did not keep them from drying out even that way. So it has been retired from that activity and currently resides on my desk in the office at the Foundation. It holds some of the candy that I keep on hand for myself and the folks we work with. It works well for that!
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Refurbished Peterson Sherlock Holmes 1994


I worked on this Peterson Sherlock Holmes pipe with hallmarks on the silver band that date it to 1994. It has since found a new home and is being smoked and enjoyed by the new owner. The stamping on it was very light but still visible. The finish is in decent shape but very dirty. All of the crevices on the pipe were filled with grime and grit. The stem had oxidation and a light brown undercoating of brown throughout. The band was in great shape and just needed polishing. The bowl was a real question mark for me. It appears to have been drilled significantly larger. The bowl sides are smooth and they are still straight and clean. There was some blackening at the bottom of the bowl. I am thinking that the previous owner decided to open the bowl up and make it larger in order to hold more tobacco. The new owner says that it still smokes well so the drilling did not ruin the pipe.
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I scrubbed the bowl surface with some undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap and a soft bristle tooth brush to get the grime out of the crevices. I repeated it until it was clean the grime was gone. I know many people do not like oil soap as it removes some of the stain on a pipe. But in this case it worked wonders. Once I had finished scrubbing it I washed it off with warm water and dried it with a soft cotton cloth. When it was dry I polished it with Halcyon wax and buffed it on my buffer with a soft clean flannel buffing pad. The oxidation on the stem came off easily with my buffer and Tripoli and White Diamond. I finished the stem by buffing it with carnauba wax.
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