02 | January | 2015 | rebornpipes

Blog by Andew Selking

I have a weakness for Kaywoodies, especially those from the 1940’s or earlier; the briar is just amazing. I read somewhere that Kaywoodie was the largest pipe maker prior to WWII and used 100-year-old briar. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but this pipe was one of their mid-range pipes, yet it doesn’t have a single fill. Additionally, it weighs exactly the same as my Heritage Heirloom with the same shape number. (As an aside, the Heritage pipes were made in the 1960’s to compete with Dunhill. According to their brochures, only one pipe out of 300 made the cut.)

Here is a picture of the pipe when I received it. It had some heavy cake, tar build up on the rim, and a few dents in the stem. Cake doesn’t scare me, my reamer makes quick work of it, and tar build up often protects the rim from damage. The only problem from a collector’s standpoint was the stinger had been cut. I think pipes smoke better without the stinger, so that wasn’t a huge issue for me. One of the things that I do to make reaming heavy cake easier is soak the bowl in alcohol. Here’s the bowl getting dropped into the bath. After a good long soak, it was time to remove the cake. My Castleford reamer effortlessly removed the cake. I like to multi-task, so while the bowl was working, I soaked the stem in Oxyclean. I used a fuzzy stick and Oxyclean solution to get the worst of the gunk out of the stem. Here is the first pass. Although I usually retort the shank and stem separately, the screw in stem prevented that. I ended up retorting the whole pipe. The inside of the shank and stem were nasty. Next I turned my attention to the rim. It had some scars that necessitated topping.

I used 150 grit sandpaper on a piece of glass to remove the damaged section. To fix the dents in the stem, I used a three-pronged approach. First I used steam to raise the dents as much as possible. I have an old kitchen knife that I heated with my heat gun. I placed a wet cloth over the area and pressed the hot knife blade onto the stem. It raised it a little bit. This is after the application of steam. Next I used 400 grit sand paper. The underside of the button was kind of messed up, so I dressed it with a file. I still had a small dent, so I filled it with clear super glue and applied a drop of accelerator. The accelerator comes in a spray bottle, which I find makes a mess. My solution is to take the sprayer out and use the end as an applicator. I also use a thumb tack to apply a small amount of glue. I’m not very neat when using glue straight from the bottle and using a thumb tack gives me more control (it also means less material to sand after the glue dries). Once I had the stem sorted out, I used 400 grit wet/dry with water followed by 1500-2400 grit micro mesh with water. I used a progression of 1500-12000 micro mesh on the bowl. Next I used Pimo Pipe Supply medium walnut stain, cut with 50% de-natured alcohol, to make the rim match the bowl.

After an uneventful spin on the buffer (anyone who ever used a buffer to shine pipes understands the drama that can occur when the pipe gets away from you) this is the result.

Blog by Andrew Selking

I’ve had some good luck bidding on Dunhill pipes recently. This little Group 2 came in a lot of five pipes that included four Kaywoodies. With the exception of minor wear on the front of the rim and some oxidation, it looked very nice. Here’s what it looked like prior to restoration.

The pipe is so small they stamped the group size on the stem. I began the restoration process by soaking the stem in Oxyclean. While the stem soaked I reamed the bowl with the smallest head of my Castleford reamer. It had a loose cake that came out easily. Next I used undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap (an all-natural vegetable oil based soap specifically formulated for cleaning wood) with a tooth brush to get the grime out of the blast. This is what the bowl looked like after cleaning.

My biggest concern with this pipe was the damage to the front of the rim. I decided to use a furniture touch-up marker (thanks for the tip Steve) to see if I could make it look better. It worked like a champ, the marker was a color match to the rest of the pipe.

Now that the bowl was taken care of, I turned my attention to the stem. As usual, I used a fuzzy stick (that’s the politically correct term for pipe cleaners sold in the craft section of Walmart) to remove as much of the gunk while I still had the Oxyclean solution. If you’ve ever cleaned a black powder rifle it’s the same concept; stick one end in the liquid and draw the fuzzy stick back and forth. When it gets loaded with tar, I swish it in the liquid and wring it out. Here’s what the fuzzy stick looked like after the first pass. The inner tube did a good job of preventing excess tobacco build up. Next I tackled the shank. I use a retort filled with de-natured alcohol to loosen the gunk in the shank and the stem. I usually do the stem and shank separately for two reason, first it works very well and second when you have a wide button (like the one on this pipe) it’s difficult to fit the rubber tube over the end of it. I do the retort until the alcohol that goes back into the eye dropper looks relatively clean. In the case of this pipe, I did it three times. After the retort, I used a brush to scrub out the shank. This is why I like to retort the shank separately. I then used q-tips and fuzzy sticks dipped in isopropyl alcohol to remove the remaining gunk. Next I used the retort on the stem. If you do this make sure to plug the end of the stem, otherwise you will get boiling brown alcohol everywhere. After a couple of fuzzy sticks, the inside of the stem was clean. With the bowl and shank cleaned, my next step was to remove the oxidation from the stem. Any time I do a pipe that has inlays or stamping on the stem, I use 1000 grit wet/dry and water to remove the oxidation. Especially this pipe, with the group size stamped on the bottom of the stem. It takes a while, but the results are worth the effort. When removing oxidation with wet/dry sand paper and water, periodically dry the stem to make sure you’re getting everything. When it’s wet the stem tends to look really good, but when it dries out that’s when you notice everything you missed. After the 1000 grit, I used 2400 grit micro mesh with water. I used a progression of micro mesh pads, from 3200-12000 to prepare the stem for final polishing. I also polished the flat spot with the nomenclature with a progression of 5000-12000 grit micro mesh. I used Halcyon II wax on the bowl, which I buffed out with a shoe brush, and carnauba wax on the buffing wheel for the stem. Here is the final result.