This morning I am asking that question because sitting on my work table is an old Tinderbox Monza, made in Italy by Lorenzo. This old pipe has definitely seen better days. The bowl is over an inch in diameter and the cake in the bowl had choked it down to the point that I could not get my little finger in the bowl. The rim looked as if the pipe had been used as a hammer to the point that it had a chunk out the rear outside edge and a crack that went down the outside of the bowl with a visible fissure across the top of the rim and beginning to drop into the inner rim. The top half of the bowl looked like someone had carved at the cake with a knife and done a poor job of it. Fortunately the cake was as hard as rock so it did not do too much damage to the bowl. All of those issues are not enough for me to pitch a pipe and not work on it.

But the damage on this Monza did not stop there. The bottom of the bowl had been victimized by the self same knife wielder and he had carved over half of the bottom of the bowl away in his poor attempt at cake removal. The bottom of the bowl now flowed from the airway at a steep 30 degree angle with a jokerish gash along the front right bottom edge. At that point the bottom of the bowl is dangerously thin. You see the cake was all around the middle of the bowl like a girdle choking off the pipe but the top and bottom somehow had been miraculously purged of the cake by the knife wielding pipe abuser. This bottom of the bowl gives me pause – I could drill out the bottom of the bowl and insert a bowl plug or I could fill the bottom with a plaster of Paris fill to level it out and then coat the bottom with pipe mud. But would it be a waste of time? Would it be worth the effort?

I am not done enumerating the damage on this old pipe. The exterior of the bowl, the finish was ravaged. The front edge of the bowl was worn down like the heel on a hard playing boy’s pair of shoes. The angle and extent of the damage covered the entire front of the bowl. The striated finish, which was meant to look like tree bark was totally filled in with grit and grime to the point that it was almost smooth. It felt sticky to the touch and the smell was atrocious. I am surprised that my bride let me have it in the house. The striations on the shank were as filled in as those on the bowl so the true shape of the pipe and its finish were absolutely hidden.

But I am still not finished. The stem looked as if it was clean other than minimal oxidation… things were looking up. Maybe I would at least be able to cannibalize a stem out of this disaster. But no, it was not to be. I turned the stem over and it had a gaping hole – a chunk taken out of it that went back almost a half inch into the surface of the stem. The entire button was missing and the gap went from one side of the stem to the other – left to right. But that was not all of the damage to that poor stem – it looked as if the opening had been further opened with the self same knife. Yes the mad knife wielder had carved a slot into the airway at the bottom of the hole. The carving left the bottom of the airway paper thin. It looked as if after doing this “master” surgery the fellow had put a rubber bit protector on the stem as the calcification line on the stem was thick. Doing that after the surgery is like closing the door after the horses have left the barn!

All of these wonderful discoveries met my eye as I examined the pipe before I even considered working on it. I took the pipe apart at this point in my examination and put on the rubber gloves to probe the internals. I was pretty concerned at what would greet me when I took off the stem – if it would come off at all. With the goop that was all over this pipe it was a fair chance that the stem was “welded” in place. But to my great surprise it twisted off quite easily – no drama in this process. I peered down the shank with a penlight to see what creatures and mayhem awaited me inside the shank. I fully expected to see the interior carved by the knife wielder as he sought to make the pipe work “better” after his surgical excavations. But I literally had the wind knocked out of me when I saw a pristine shank. The shank was actually clean! The wood had a veritable glow to it as the light reflected back to me. It was not only clean but there were no tars and oils in it. This totally did not match what the condition of the bowl and externals had led me to expect. What an anomaly. Why was this so? What was going on here? These were just a few of the questions that ran through my mind as I held the bowl, sans stem in my hand.

With that discovery my thoughts regarding the fellow who had so drastically carved up this poor pipe and virtually ruined it took a turn. Rather than seeing him as some sadistically sick individual who took obvious evil delight in so ruining this old pipe to make it questionable if it could ever be restored; I began to soften in my assessment of him. I looked again at the externals of the pipe and stem. I looked at the carved and cracked bowl, the carved and ruined stem, the left over remnants of the rubber softie bit and I began to wonder if what was in my hands was the old pipe smoker’s favourite pipe. As it became harder and harder to smoke he took more drastic measures to make it last. Mind you they are not the same measures that you or I might take but they nonetheless obviously worked for him. Maybe rather than see the fellow as a pipe butcher I should see him as someone who loved this old pipe. He was going to smoke it until it truly gave up the ghost.

I began to wonder if he was not of the old school of pipe smokers who had one pipe and smoked it literally to death and threw it away and started on a new one. This one must have been a grand smoker to have been put through the trauma that it showed in it body. You can see now the tact that my mind was taking me. It would be inevitable that I clean up this old pipe – it would be an act of honouring the old briar and the old pipe smoker who had inflicted so much damage to just get the last bit of life out of his pipe. So it is with this in mind that I reamed the bowl, soaked it in an alcohol bath, scrubbed the finish with a wire brush and topped the bowl to begin the process of bringing it back to life. I have it sitting on my desk next to me now – I will need to fit a new stem on it and then refinish the bowl but it will once again deliver at least one smoke for me to explore my new theory.

So you might ask me, “When is a pipe not worth repairing?” I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. Even an hour ago I would have said this one was a goner. But now, I have “heard” the story of the pipe as I examined it looking at all of the abuse that had been inflicted on it. Now I see with different eyes. You see, that is the problem with pipe refurbishing. When others see a pipe as irreparable there is something that catches my eye that says to give it a try. I guess I have only met a very few pipes that were so damaged that they could not be brought back to life for a new season. And to be honest I still have several of them in my cupboard “seasoning”. I guess I truly don’t know the answer to the question I posed in the title.