Probably a year or more ago, I picked up this pipe on EBay. It is stamped CAVEMAN over Singleton on the bottom of the bowl and shank. To me these old timers are ugly and never really look done. But they are smoked the way they are and often come with a good cake and a tooth marked stem. The stem bears an S in a circle as a logo. I keep an eye open for these pipes and try to snag them as they come up. I have found that they are easily finished and make a nice small group 2 sized smokers. The stems are usually a good fit and the briar is not too bad. I have reworked three of these Cavemen and all have become favourite smokers. When they arrive they are generally well smoked and thus already broken in so that part of my job is finished. All I have to do is to decide what shape I want the finished pipe to have and then reshape it meet my desires.

The first set of pictures below show the state of the pipe when it arrived in the post. I reamed the bowl and cleaned the shank and stem inside to make it a bit cleaner for me to work with. I generally sand the sides of the bowl and the top before I begin to get a feel for the grain on the pipe. Once it is sanded then I wet the briar with water to get a good look. From there I sketch a shape on the block and get my Dremel out with the sanding drum.

The next series of photos show the pipe after I have removed a large portion of the briar. I decided to play around with a wedge shape on this one initially. I had seen one on one of the pipe sites I frequent and wanted to give it a go. I knew that if I did not like it I could easily change the shape and try something new. But you can see the basic shape in the photos. The stem I flattened on the top and the bottom to fit the flatness of the wedge. I left the edges of the stem rounded and planned to do the same with the bowl.

The next series of photos show the pipe after I have sanded it and readied it to be stained. The wood is smooth and the stem is polished smooth. I sanded it with medium grit Emery cloth and then 280 and 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the sanding marks from the Dremel. Once it was smooth with those papers I moved on to sand it with 400 and 600 grit wet dry sandpaper and water. There was definitely a bit of grain present but it was fairly light so I would need to do a bit of contrast staining to get the grain to lift and be visible.

I decided to use some black aniline stain to make the grain patterns more visible. I stained it with the black, flamed it and restained it and flamed it again. I then took it to the buffer and buffed it with Tripoli to remove the excess stain and make the contrast visible. I had to sand the pipe a second time as well to remove more of the stain. I used the 600 grit wet dry sandpaper to do this. Once it was sanded I buffed it a second time with White Diamond to give it a shine. I gave it a top coat of medium brown stain diluted by 75% with Isopropyl alcohol. I wanted the brown to be basically a wash coat. I applied it with a dauber, flamed it, reapplied it and flamed it again. Then I buffed it with White Diamond. The series of photos below show the finished look of the newly carved and stained Caveman. It was a marked improvement in my opinion.

However, over the months though I smoked it quite a bit somehow the shape just did not do anything for me. I found that unless I intentionally took it out of the cupboard to smoke that I would never reach for it naturally. So today it was quiet around the house, I still have some time off until after New Years. The wife and daughters were doing banking and errands. I was home listening to the radio and cleaning my study. I finished that and decided I wanted to work on a pipe – either to refurbish one from my box or something else. I went to my cupboard and my eye fell on the little wedge shaped pipe. The time had come for me work it over and see what I could do with it. I got out my Dremel with the sanding drum and went to work on the pipe. I removed the sides of the wedge and squared the shank and the stem. I decided to make a tapered stem that continued the taper right up the shank to the bowl. It did not take too much time with the Dremel to get the shape close to what I was aiming for in my mind. The picture below shows the basic shape after the work with the Dremel. It still needed a lot of sanding to bring it to the final shape but you can see where I was heading with it.

The next series of pictures shows the pipe after I have sanded it with some medium grit Emery cloth. I sanded it until the shape was clean and smooth and the flow of the taper was at the angle I wanted to have when I was done. As I sanded the bowl I came upon the small flaw in the briar that is visible on the bottom edge of the bowl in the first photo below. Once I had the bowl sanded to the shape and curve I wanted I scraped out the flaw and opened it with a dental pick and then filled with briar dust and super glue. I figured that since I had a lot of sanding and smoothing to do that the time for the fill was this point.

The next four photos show the pipe after I have sanded both the stem and the bowl with 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads and water. I then used the Maguiar’s Scratch X 2.0 and rubbed it on and polished the stem. I wiped it off and then buffed the pipe and stem with White Diamond. I took it back to the work table and sanded it with the remaining 3200-12,000 grit micromesh sanding pads. The photos below show the pipe after the sanding.

I decided to stain the pipe with a medium brown aniline stain. I daubed the stain on, flamed it and then restained the bowl and shank a second time. I flamed it a second time and then took it to the buffer to remove any of the excess stain and give it a polish. I used Tripoli with a light touch and removed the stain. It was still pretty dark so I wiped the bowl down with an Isopropyl alcohol dampened cloth to lighten the finish and make the grain more visible. The next four photos show the pipe after the alcohol wipe.

After the wiped down I took it back to the buffer and used White Diamond. The White Diamond polished the pipe and gave it the rich brownish red appearance that is visible in the next series of photos. The feel in the hand and the mouth are much better with this newly revised shape. The richness of the colour is appealing to my eye. It seems that when I carve a pipe I keep going back to it to revise the shape and stain. This one has come a long ways from the original Caveman pipe that was pictured in the first photos above. Whether it is done or not I am never sure… in fact as I look at the enlarged photos I still see a few areas that may need some more work as some of the scratches that are not visible in the light of the shop show up really well in the flash. Ah well. That is the joy of having the tools and a bit of time on my hands this holiday season.