Daily Archives: June 13, 2013

GBD Midnight 9456

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Blog by Greg Wolford

The last few months have been extremely busy for me. It is amazing how much a disabled, non-working person can be obligated to do; I think I had more “free time” when I was working full time in the car business! Ah, but I digress …

By chance, I found myself today with no obligations, no chores, no appointments, just a day to myself. Unfortunately it also stormed badly which flared up my arthritic joints but I was able, finally, to get to a project, if only a simple one.

I picked up this GBD Midnight about two weeks ago. It was a fair price and an interesting pipe to me; all of the Midnight models I had seen before had acrylic stems and this one had vulcanite. Some later research led me to believe that there were at least two productions of this line: the first with vulcanite stems shortly after the merger and another some time later with acrylic stems.

Although I forgot to take “before” photos the seller’s were quite accurate except for the oxidation was a bit more than I anticipated: it wasn’t thick or heavy but was even, all over brown. The seller said he had only smoked it a few times over the years and didn’t like it; he prefers a 9 mm filter pipe. He said there were a few tooth dents but not bad ones and that he had cleaned it; these things were accurate, if he meant cleaned the inside.

The too had a fair amount if tar build up but not thick. The stummel was dirty but not in bad shape at all. And the dents were mild as be had said.

I began with an alcohol soaked pad, wiping down the stummel, paying extra attention to the rim’s build up. It didn’t take a lot to get it cleaned up and the rim smoothed out. I then reamed the bowl, which needed it but wasn’t badly caked. I set the stummel aside and began to work on the stem.

I started by rubbing the entire stem well with Back-to-Black, which removed a lot of oxidation. Then I took some automotive rubbing compound and cotton pads and polished away almost all of the remaining oxidation. After the rubbing compound I took the stem to the heat gun to raise the dents. They came up pretty well but not completely. But they were now slight enough I decided to not sand them smooth; I wanted to finish this pipe and write this blog tonight, those things and the small dents left made this decision for me easy. I did wet sand the stem with 400 grit wet/dry paper to remove the last of the oxidation and the few scratches I saw.

I reassembled the pipe and went to the buffing wheel. I like to buff the shank-stem union together so as to keep a nice fit. I began with black buffing compound, about an 800-grit I believe. After the union was buffed I took the stem and stummel apart and buffed each piece. I moved onto brown tripoli, then white diamond doing the same process.

I had a small deviation at the end of the white diamond buffing: the wheel grabbed the stummel and bounced it off my table. It left two dents, the bounce across the garage, that totally irritated me. I then had to steam the the dents out; thankfully the dents weren’t bad and came out. I went back to the white diamond and re-buffed the stummel.

I reassembled the pipe and gave it several coats of carnauba wax, buffed it on a soft, clean wheel and, finally, hand buffed it wearing a pair of linen gloves I bought just for that purpose.

The pipe came out quite well I think. After cleaning and buffing it is a bit lighter on color, which I am very happy with; the grain, especially the Birdseye on the front of the bowl really pops now.

Hopefully the frantic pace of life will slow some over the coming weeks; I have many more wonderful old pipes that are patiently awaiting being brought back to life. And I am anxious to do the work an share it with you.

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Refinished Rims and Touch-Ups – Alan Chestnutt

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A while ago Alan posted this on Smokers Forums and I kept a copy of it. We spoke of the process and how well it worked. Since then I have been hunting for them in my area and so far no luck. I thought I would post Alan’s piece so that you all could read it and give it a try. Let us know how it works.

When restoring pipes, I nearly always like to refinish the rim. I think a nice clean sharp rim always sets a pipe off. As well as this it is just as easy to sand and refinish a rim as to try to remove tar and staining to the old rim. One of the problems though in refinishing a rim is trying to match the stain to the rest of the bowl. I always shied away from getting leather dyes, simply because you would need to be artist to be able to correctly mix all the differing shades.

I always remember my grandfather staining shoes and the smell of the dye always lingered in my brain. In more recent times that memory was triggered when smelling a sharpie marker, so my thoughts were that it must contain a similar alcohol based dye. I used a sharpie a few years ago to restain a black sandblast bowl and it worked a treat. “If only they were available in shades of brown” I thought to myself.

So while walking through a local discount store a few months ago, I spied furniture repair markers. Exactly what I had been thinking of.

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They come in 5 shades of brown plus black and cost £2 (about 3 bucks). I couldn’t wait to get home and try them. They are a chisel shape marker and apply a translucent stain exactly like an alcohol dye. Perfect! With the variety of shades a match can be made 99% of the time by application of a couple of coats or moving to the next darker shade. Simply cover the rim by wiping the marker over it and a few seconds later remove the excess with a soft cloth.

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A refinished Tilshead rim.

They are excellent for touch ups on other areas of the pipe and I often use them to just refinish the whole pipe to brighten up the grain. Needless to say I acquired a few more packs, but I have refinished literally hundreds of pipes and I am still on my first pack. Simple to use, no mess, a variety of shades and cheap. I class them as my best purchase ever for restoring pipes, so keep your eyes open for them. Available on eBay too, but at a premium.

They are excellent for touch ups on other areas of the pipe and I often use them to just refinish the whole pipe to brighten up the grain. Needless to say I acquired a few more packs, but I have refinished literally hundreds of pipes and I am still on my first pack. Simple to use, no mess, a variety of shades and cheap. I class them as my best purchase ever for restoring pipes, so keep your eyes open for them. Available on eBay too, but at a premium.

Mark Twain on Nicotine Nannies – The Moral Statistician

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I came across this old file on my computer and thought I would pass it on to you all. I always enjoy Mark Twain and here he takes on the nannies who would tell us how to live our lives. Incredibly refreshing to read!

Originally published in Sketches, Old and New, 1893

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I don’t want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it.
I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man’s health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years’ indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc. etc. And you are always figuring out how many women have been burned to death because of the dangerous fashion of wearing expansive hoops, etc. etc. You never see more than one side of the question.

You are blind to the fact that most old men in America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, they ought to have died young; and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine and survive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet grow older and fatter all the time. And you never try to find out how much solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he would save by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of people from not smoking. Of course you can save money by denying yourself all those little vicious enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can you do with it? What use can you put it to? Money can’t save your infinitesimal soul. All the use that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life; therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment where is the use of accumulating cash?

It won’t do for you to say that you can use it to better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and hungry. And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor wretch, seeing you in a good humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you; and in church you are always down on your knees, with your ears buried in the cushion, when the contribution-box comes around; and you never give the revenue officers a full statement of your income.

Now you know all these things yourself, don’t you? Very well, then what is the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and withered old age? What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you? In a word, why don’t you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying to seduce people into becoming as ornery and unlovable as you are yourselves, by your villainous “moral statistics”?

Now, I don’t approve of dissipation, and I don’t indulge in it either; but I haven’t a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices. And so I don’t want to hear from you any more. I think you are the very same man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of smoking cigars, and then came back, in my absence, with your reprehensible fire-proof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor stove.

Restoring and Reclaiming a Byford Prince

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I was gifted three old pipes by a friend on Smokers Forums. The first that caught my attention was an older Byford Prince. It was pretty worn but the wood was in good shape under the wear and tear. The stem was shot. It had a split along the stop side and was missing a few pieces. When I removed it I found that it was quite brittle. Once I took the stem off I found the most interesting system inside. The shank had an aluminum attachment which held two metal tubes inside of it. On the inside of the broken stem was a third metal tube. These formed three concentric, nested circles which wicked out the moisture of the smoke while not hampering the flow of air in the pipe from bowl to button. The photo below shows magnified picture of the interior of the stem and shank.

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The stem was so broken and damaged that I was not sure how the flow of the angles on the taper was supposed to look. I did not know what the button and the stem were supposed to be like. I did a search on the internet and found this photo of a Byford stem that showed the proper angles on the stem. I used the stem in the photo as a template for my replacement stem. I made one modification which I will speak about in the explanation of the restemming below.

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The next photo shows the interior of the stem and shank – the system part of the pipe. The tube in the stem sits between the other two tubes in the shank creating three rings on the inside of the shank and stem. It looked like this stem apparatus would be a bear to clean up. I would have to used cotton swabs, folded pipe cleaners and whatever I could to get in between the layers.

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The bowl was badly caked with a broken cake. It was soft rather than hard. There was also a buildup of some blue substance on the bowl. I am not sure what it was but it smelled suspiciously like a mold. The stem as you can see in the poor quality pictures below was damaged beyond repair. The aluminum band or shank end was oxidized and rough. Underneath all of the grime it was a beautiful piece of briar. The shape is a well executed prince. The old stem seemed a bit long to my liking so the new one would be slightly shorter and accommodate the lines of the one in the photo.

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I removed the old stem and went through my box of stem and found what I was looking for. The drilling on this had to be very wide to accommodate the apparatus on the system of the Byford pictured above. This older style stem had exactly the right fit. It slipped into place and looked good. It was a bit flared on each side and on the top and bottom so that would need to be sanded back to a flush angle. In the photo below you can see the fit of the new stem before I did any shaping on it. You can also see the blue/green substance on the bowl.

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I used a Dremel with a sanding drum to remove the excess vulcanite and shape the stem to the proper angles. I reamed the bowl with a PipNet reamer starting with the smallest head and working up to the third head which took the cake back to bare wood. I wanted to remove the cake and whatever the buildup on the bowl and rim that was there.

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After reaming the bowl back I sanded the rim and inner edge with a fine grit sanding sponge to remove the remaining blue/green substance. I also sanded the inside of the bowl smooth to remove any thing that was buildup on the inside edges. I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper to remove the scratches caused by the Dremel and sanding drum. I sanded the exterior of the bowl and the oxidized aluminum on the shank end with the fine grit sanding sponge as well. The next three photos below show the state of the bowl and stem at this point in the process.

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I wiped the bowl down with an acetone wetted cotton pad to remove the grime and the old finish. The next two photos show the bowl at this point. The cotton pad is below the bowl to show the amount of finish and grime that came off. I find that the acetone will even out the finish and clean up any remaining grime.

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I continued to sand the stem with 220 grit sandpaper and also cleaned out the shank apparatus with Everclear and cotton swabs. That was a challenge! The grime that built up in the concentric tubes took some bends and twists of cotton swabs and pipe cleaners to remove from the shank. I also scrubbed down the interior of the bowl with Everclear on the cotton swabs and then scoured it out with 0000 steel wool. I did not want any remnants of the blue/green stuff. While the bowl was wet with the alcohol I also flamed the inside with a lighter. The alcohol burns quickly and should destroy whatever remnants of the sludge that may have been resident in the briar. I sanded the aluminum with 1500 grit micromesh sanding pads to remove the oxidation and crust that had built up at the junction of the aluminum and the briar.

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The next two photos show the stem after the pipe and stem have been cleaned and after I had finished shaping the stem with the 220 grit and 340 grit sandpaper. The angles matched the photo above that I was trying to duplicate.

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At this point it was time to sand with the micromesh sanding pads. The next series of five photos show the progressive shine that comes through the micromesh. I wet sanded with 1500 and 1800 grit micromesh to remove the scratches and begin to give the stem a polish. I also sanded the bowl with these two grits as well. I followed up by dry sanding with the remaining grits of micromesh from 2400-12,000. I sanded the bowl, the aluminum shank end and the stem.

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Upon completing the sanding and polishing with the micromesh pads I took the pipe to the buffer and buffed the stem and bowl with White Diamond on the wheel. It brought out the shine and help highlight the grain. I wiped down the stem with Obsidian Oil to protect it and then gave the entire pipe several coats of carnauba wax and buffed it to a shine. The last series of four photos show the finished pipe.

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ADDENDUM 03/07/15
Just recently I discovered this interesting piece on the Byford pipes. They were originally made by Orlik. Here is a page from their catalogue.
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