Yet another one of the pipe bowls that came to me in the gift box was a Ropp Cherrywood. It is stamped on the bottom of the bowl on a polished smooth portion, Ropp over Everest over Made in France. The wood was dirty and tired looking but still solid. The bowl was caked but not burned. The rim had a carbon buildup on it but was not burned or scorched. The drilling on the pipe was perfect. At first I thought that only the bowl had been included and I was scheming about the kind of stem to put on this one. But in the bottom of the box I found the original stem. It had a vulcanite 90 degree angle portion attached to the end of a cherrywood branch that fit snug in the hole in the bowl. At the other end of the cherrywood branch/shank was the stem. It bore the Ropp emblem and was badly oxidized. There was some tooth chatter on the stem near the button on the top and the bottom. The tenon on the stem had been coated with a brown wax to ensure a snug fit in the shank.

I scrubbed the exterior of the bowl and rim with Murphy’s Oil Soap and cotton pads to remove the dirt and grime that had built up on the bark and wood. There were several places where the bark had a pitch build up on the outside that had hardened and was black. I was able to scrub away all of the carbon buildup on the rim and bring it back to the natural colour.

I scrubbed the shank carefully with oil soap on cotton pads so as not to damage the leather wrapping that was on it. There were two cords – one red and one green that were interlaced around the length of the shank. A plastic ring was glued on the shank on both ends to anchor the leather cords. On the bowl end of the shank there were two roundels of leather that acted as tassels.

I reamed the bowl with a PipNet reamer. I find that the heads of this reamer fit most of the bowls that I work on. I cleaned out the ash from the bowl and then swabbed the bowl out with cotton swabs and alcohol. I also cleaned the airway on the bowl with cotton swabs.

The 90 degree angle vulcanite connector between the bowl and shank was oxidized. It was hard to sand with micromesh pads or sanding sticks so I used a fine grit sanding sponge to break up the oxidation and then scrubbed it with Meguiar’s Scratch X2.0 – a plastic polish to remove the oxidation. It took a lot of scrubbing to get through the oxidation. I applied the polish with my finger and when it had dried scrubbed it off with cotton pads. While I worked on the connector I also applied the Scratch X2.0 to the stem and let it sit.

I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper, medium and fine grit sanding sponges and then with the usual array of micromesh sanding pads. I wet sanded with 1500-2400 grit pads and dry sanded with 3200-12000 grit pads. I buffed the stem with White Diamond. I left some of the wax buildup on the stem once I found that to remove it made the stem very loose.

I buffed the bowl and stem with White Diamond and then gave it several coats of carnauba wax and buffed it with a soft flannel buff. I hand waxed the shank with Halcyon II and then a shoe brush. The finished pipe is shown below. I am looking forward to experiencing a smoke in a Ropp Cherrywood Oom Paul.

The final two photos were taken with my cell phone to show my Ropp Threesome – a Volcano, the Oom Paul and the newest Frankenpipe that I wrote about earlier. They make an interesting subset of my pipe collection and now they occupy shelves in my study. I think in the long run at least the two larger pipes will be primarily display items (though I plan to try them all out at least once).