Monthly Archives: May 2015

Finding a Heart for an Aristocob Aluminum (Rhodesian?)

Guest Blog by Robert M. Boughton
Member, North American Society of Pipe Collectors
http://www.naspc.org
http://www.roadrunnerpipes.com
http://about.me/boughtonrobert
Photos © the Author

The Wizard of Oz: “As for you, my galvanized friend, you want a heart. You don’t know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.”
The Tin Woodsman: “But I still want one.”
― From “The Wizard of Oz” (movie, 1939)

INTRODUCTION
As a movie and trivia buff, not necessarily together, one of my favorite questions that comes up now and then in conversation and on quiz shows is “When was the Golden Age of Hollywood?” I like it because of the slippery term Golden Age, which implies years forming a great period of time with specific world-changing events and personages, as in the Bronze Age or the Age of Enlightenment. It’s also a trick question, the expected (but incorrect if often accepted) answer being 1939. Granted, in that one year, some of the great movies in Hollywood history were made, including “The Wizard of Oz,” “Gone with the Wind,” “Stagecoach,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and “Wuthering Heights”. But the true and more agreed upon answer would be 1930-1959, which encompassed “All Quiet on the Western Front” to “Anatomy of a Murder”.

All of this is my way of approaching a term I often refer to but did not coin, the Golden Age of Pipe Smoking. In my mind, although the exact timeline is sometimes said to have begun as long ago as the mid-1800s, this period was from the 1930s into the ’70s, when pipes were ubiquitous and respected all over the world, as reflected in motion pictures, TV and society in general. Below are a few famous Hollywood pipe men: Fred Astaire, John and Lionel Barrymore, Harry Belafonte and Fred MacMurray. My own dad and almost all of his friends enjoyed and in many cases had collections of the magic briar social lubricant. The subject of this blog, a brand of pipe named with perhaps tongue-in-cheek humor, is one of the quirkiest, most unusual examples conceived during this wonderful age that I believe is experiencing a renascence: the Aristocob, invented by Joseph W. Zarikta for the Al Cobb Corporation and granted U.S. Patent №. 3,292,639 on December 20, 1966. The Al Cobb Corp. became Al-Cob Corp. in Grand Haven, Michigan, and still later Aristocob Inc. in Caledonia, Michigan before being taken over by the Missouri Meerschaum Company in Washington, Missouri. Missouri Meerschaum made the corncob inserts from the early 1970s until 1983, and since then replacements have not been manufactured, but with dedicated searching some will, on occasion, show up when they are found and offered online. Even though I could not locate any for this restoration, I know they still pop up because of several sold-out listings I found on eBay. However, by most accounts the original inserts, or even self-styled replacements, are high maintenance contraptions that quickly become wet, mushy and, in short, nasty to use. Still, our esteemed host, Steve, emailed me the following message: “I love those old aristocobs. They are sweet looking retro experiments.” Indeed they are. I even found several sites where this pipe is given the high description of “art deco.”

Nevertheless, I believe I have found a more suitable and permanent solution to the problem, even if it does detract from the good, old timey flavor of the maker’s intent: briar inserts made to fit the Aristocob. [See http://www.owlpipes.com/#!new-collection/c1jn5.%5D For this restoration I ordered one, and considering I bought the beat-up old pipe itself for $2 at a yard sale, the $25 cost of the briar insert should be worth it. As timing allowed, the insert arrived on Friday but was too big for my home mailbox, where the package was sent due to a mix-up with PayPal, instead of the Post Office Box I use most often. And the Postman being too lazy to walk to my door (or just afraid to do so in my neighborhood), I picked it up at the Post Office Saturday.

This restoration, therefore, takes place in real-time, as I write this.

RESTORATION

SATURDAY

Before venturing to my neighborhood Postal Station, which is the local training site and therefore deplorable, I decide to do a preliminary clean-up of the metal. The oxidation on the bowl, in particular in the threads and deep grooves, comes off with ease using a pair of small, thin, cotton gun cleaning patches soaked in Everclear. I am able to use the same patches to clean the threaded lid inside and out. The identical process on the chamber removes most of the old tobacco juice and minimal oxidation except for the brown grime near the opening of the air hole. For that I dip a bristly cleaner in the alcohol and run it through the wide open, tubular shank and into the bottom of the chamber. The shank needs a second swabbing.

The pipe cleaner dipped in freshener that I run through the air hole of the bit comes out clear, but it doesn’t hurt to try. The outside of the bit, with almost no scratches, buffs up nicely using micromesh. I place the filter, in this case a Medico because it fits and I have a few – and with this pipe, a filter really will be necessary – into the stem.

And so the time to face the ordeal of the long, slow line at the Post Office comes. An hour later I am home again with my new briar insert and a surprise: a small key chain fashioned with a little chunk of lightweight, pale briar, both of them in a nice bag with a drawstring.

Now, something about the nakedness of the insert, being briar instead of the traditional corncob, just doesn’t sit right with me. Even when I test the fit by dropping it in the chamber and screwing on the lid, while indeed the briar is the correct size, the raw part of the rim that shows, beneath the top of the aluminum lid when I screw it on, is wrong. I ask myself (not out loud, but in my head – I’m not crazy, even if at times I ramble and digress), “Would I ever, even on the most rushed or easygoing project, conceivably consider leaving any rim unpolished?”

“Hell, no,” is my immediate response, though still silent. And so the next stage begins with what is intended to be just a quick sanding, micro-meshing and waxing of the rim. In point of fact, I try only the progression of micromesh, but that reveals the need for sanding, which I accomplish with 400-grit paper before re-doing the micromesh.

SUNDAY
But of course, once I start down that road – as simple as settling for the polished rim of the insert with its newly exposed even grain would be, given that it is the only part that will show through the lid – I simply cannot bring myself to leave the sides completely unfinished. Still, I approach this task with nowhere near the detail I would give a regular briar bowl. A fast sanding with 320-grit paper followed by 400, then micro-meshing, satisfies me, and it shows in the photos below. I consider doing the bottom of the insert, with a small hole drilled to allow moisture to pass in this most bizarre system pipe, but good sense does get the better of me, when my mind comes around to the reality of the resulting damage to anything sitting for long in the potential quagmire that the lucky buyer of this fine pipe might create even without the genuine, disposable corncob inserts.

Now, as midnight approaches, the second day of sporadic work on the Aristocob reaches its end and extends into another, as seems to be the nature of my life so often these hectic days. I need to run to the nearest Walmart anyway, to buy more distilled water, distilled white vinegar and baking soda to continue with the final few steps of this experimental restoration.

MONDAY
Having secured the necessary ingredients for the culmination of an exciting and hopefully successful restoration, the next stage is to soak the aluminum for ten minutes or so in enough of the pure vinegar to cover all of the metal. As I have never before had occasion to work with aluminum in this sort of project, I have not tried the unusual method of cleaning any part of a pipe, and must trust a fellow pipe club member who actually makes his living engaging daily in this process to remove dirt and other substances from industrial parts made of the same material, and at the same time brighten it. I do, at least, confirm online that the procedure is an established and excellent means of accomplishing the goal. While the aluminum soaks, I enjoy a brief respite from my toils, with a pipe-full of some of the last of my C&D Pirate Kake in a newly-acquired Castello Old Antiquari KKKK Sandblasted Bulldog. There is no doubt this is a bulldog compared to the dubious designation of Rhodesian that, with clear reservations, I suggest for the Aristocob by way of calling the art deco thing anything other than that.

Alright, then; the aluminum Rhodesian has soaked for 12 minutes now in white vinegar, and I am one step closer to seeing if the well-intentioned advice of my fellow piper has any merit to it. First giving the metal pieces a basic rinse with tap water, I replace them in the plastic container for a thorough dousing in a concoction of the same with an unspecified and therefore liberal amount of baking soda stirred in to rid the aluminum of any residual acidic vinegar.

After a long day involving far more than this restoration, which details I will spare the reader and try to make myself forget, I suspect the Old Antiquari is up for another ten-minute smoke, and I know I am.

Ten more minutes fly by, and the water and baking soda have done as much as they can to ensure the complete removal of vinegar. I rinse the metal again and dry the lid, bowl, shank and chamber with a cotton rag. I decide to use another cleaner to dry the inside of the shank and chamber air hole, only to discover that the combination of the vinegar and the following water-baking soda soaks has dredged up much more vintage grime. Both ends of the one dry cleaner, then a second dipped in Everclear and a third dry cleaner clear out the remaining mess, and I re-wipe the chamber with a rag.

The pipe is as ready as I can make it for reassembly. I drop the polished briar insert in place, screw on the lid and slide the bit with its new Medico filter into the shank, and give the whole thing a rubbing with the cotton rag.

CONCLUSION
Although not as shimmering as it once looked new in its package with a couple of spare corncob inserts, the vintage Aristocob Rhodesian, like the Tin Woodsman in Oz, has a new briar heart that matches the second part of “my galvanized friend[’s]” name. And this new transplant will last much longer than the original.

Restoring an odd Trom-bone Pipe

2 Replies

Blog by Troy Wilburn

I got this off eBay because it was an American made pipe and it was a poker. It came unsmoked. It gets its name from the unique way you slide the pipe apart to clean it. I thought it would be an interesting addition to my poker collection.

I don’t know much about the pipe other than that they were made in California. This seems to be one of those “let’s build a better mousetrap” ideas when there is nothing wrong with the old mousetrap. Like I always say, some things are rare for a reason.

The pipe is a Bakelite type of plastic with a briar insert. I don’t know if I will smoke it or not as I am not sure how the plastic can take the heat coming from the bottom of the bowl.

So here is the pipe in all of her weird glory after I did a little buffing.

I really didn’t think that this pipe would be that air tight and that it would have a lot of leaks. It doesn’t though. I can cap the bowl with my hand and blow and not hear or feel any air leaks.

Giving a no name Poker a new stem and a new look

9 Replies

Blog by Steve Laug

Over the past six or seven months I have picked this pipe up and looked it over at the small antique shop I visit regularly. Every time I put it back down and leave it there. There was really nothing redeeming about the shape with its one thin side and the odd shank that was not quite round. The stem was just plain ugly and unfinished. It was as if the maker or owner just turned a blank to fit the mortise and flared it backwards to avoid having to deal with a smooth fit to the shank as it was everything but flat and round. The sides of the stem still showed file marks and the diameter was markedly different than that of the shank. All in all it was one that I could do without that is for sure.

Then this past weekend I was in the shop again. I picked it up and looked at it once more. I don’t know if my mood was different or I was on the adrenaline high of finding the old Zeus at the shop before or what but this time I saw some possibilities in the pipe. I paid the $8 cash and the pipe was mine. Now what would I do with it?

When I got home I took some photos and weighed my options over Saturday evening and Sunday. I thought about making a freehand style stem for the pipe and ditching the old one. I thought about cleaning up and reshaping the old stem. I thought about facing off the shank end and giving it a more classic look. I took the stem off and looked at the shape of the shank, the shape of the shank end and tried to visualize it with a classic look. As you can guess by this point if you know my likes I went for the classic look.

I took a couple of close-up photos of the rim and the shank end to give an idea of how the bowl and shank were not round or close to it. The first photo of the dirty rim of the bowl shows the odd shape it was in. The right side of the bowl wrapping about half way around both the back and the front had a nice thick, even width while the left side tapered in from the thickness and roundness of the right, back and front to a thinner width. Besides that it also seemed to be a bit oval on the back and front but after measuring it I could see that it was an illusion. The second photo shows the shank end. It is a bit hard to see but the shank end was crowned and rounded over but inconsistently. The shank itself had the same problem as the bowl – it too was not round but was thicker on the left side than on the right; just the opposite of the bowl. This little pipe was going to be a challenge to make look correct.

I decided to face the end of the shank and remove the uneven crown and to flatten it to fit a flush stem. I used the topping board and carefully pressed the end of the shank into the sandpaper. I had to make sure that I held it straight vertically while sanding so that I did not slant the end of the shank and make things worse. I worked it against the 220 grit sandpaper until it was smooth and the crown was gone. I then used a medium grit sanding block to make sure the shank end was flat and even. I had an old Georg Jensen stem that fit on the right side of the shank perfectly. The left side and the bottom and top on that same side were off. I tried a saddle stem I had as well. No matter which stem I use the shape of the shank made a perfect fit impossible. The good news was that the flush stem fit snugly in the mortise and flat against the end of the shank. Now I would need to make adjustments to the shank diameter without losing the nice sandblast finish. I went through my bands and found one that would fit both the shank and the stem once it was in place. I used my Dremel and sanding drum to take down and round out the shank end so that the band would sit properly. I wanted to make the adjustments to the shank before the band so that once it was in place the stem would fit without adjusting the roundness of the stem to match the out of round shank. It took some work to round out the shank but the Dremel made short work of the process. I was able to put the band loosely on the shank to get an idea of the overall look of the pipe with the band. It appeared to me that it would work well.

I decided to heat the band with a lighter rather than set my heat gun to do the simple heat up of the band. Once I heated it I pressed it into place on the shank. The metal expanded slightly with the heat and by pressing the shank end against a flat surface I was able to push the band into place.

One problem was solved. The shank was now round at the end and the stem would fit tightly against the shank and the band made the match perfect.

I used a dark brown stain pen and a black permanent marker to touch up the raw briar in front of the band and blend it into the colour of the bowl and shank.

Once I had the stained matched, it was time to clean the sandblast finish. I used Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush to scrub the bowl and shank. I did it after the stain touch up as I figured that the scrub would help blend the stains together. I rinsed the bowl with fresh water avoiding getting it into the shank and the bowl. I dried it off and brought it back to the work table. I cleaned out the shank and the used stem with a few pipe cleaners and alcohol. The pictures below show the pipe at this point in the process. The stem needed some work to clean up the scratches and wear around the button. I wet sanded it with 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads and dry sanded it with 3200-12,000 grit pads. I rubbed it down with Obsidian Oil and then buffed it with Blue Diamond Plastic Polish on the buffing wheel. I gave it a quick coat of carnauba and took it back to the work table.

I gave the bowl and stem a light buff and rubbed the bowl down with a light coat of olive oil. When it dried, I hand buffed the bowl with a shoe brush to raise the shine. The finished pipe is shown in the pictures below. I think I achieved what I set out to do when I started this project. I took a pretty ugly poker with a misfit stem and with work transformed it into a more classic poker look. What do you think? Thanks for looking and giving your opinion on the new look.

Taking the idea that several readers gave regarding the straight stem I bent it this morning. I heated it with the heat gun and then gave it a gentle 1/8 bend. Here are the photos.

Refurbishing a 1978 Dunhill Root Briar 41041 Bulldog

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Blog by Steve Laug

This is another pipe that came to my work table. It is a beautifully shaped Dunhill Bulldog. It is stamped 41041 and Dunhill over Root Briar on the left side of the shank. The right side bears the made in England stamping with the date number that puts it at 1978. The bowl was in excellent shape and had been recently reamed and cleaned. The finished was dull but very clean. There were no issues with the briar. The stem was also in great shape other than being heavily oxidized on the top sides. There was a small tooth mark on the top side of the stem next to the button as well. What made this one interesting to me was the issue that I often see with diamond shank pipes. The sides all looked the same but were not when measured. The top left was slightly bigger than the top right and so forth. It was not an issue as I did not need to replace the stem but it was just an interesting tidbit and one thing I always look for when working on diamond shank pipes. The next series of four photos show how the pipe looked when I brought it to my work table.

I took two close-up photos of the stem to show the oxidation and the slight tooth mark on the topside near the button. The underside of the stem was not as badly oxidized but had slight oxidation.

I mixed up a batch of Oxyclean and put the stem in it to soak overnight.

While the stem soaked I decided to clean out the shank and airway. I used isopropyl alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners to remove the tars and oils in the shank. I have found that even when I buy a “refurbished” pipe on eBay I do this and am always surprised at the grime and oils that come out of the “clean” shank. I did not want to use the retort on this one as it was not terribly dirty and had been subjected to a pretty good cleaning before it came to me. In the morning when I took it out of the bath and dried it off much of the surface oxidation was gone and the mix had raised some more oxidation.

I put a plastic washer on the tenon and put the tenon in the shank so that I could clean up the edges/shoulders of the stem without rounding them. I sanded it with a medium and a fine grit sanding sponge to start with and worked on the oxidation.

I wet sanded the stem with 1400-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads. I worked on the scratches as well as the oxidation on the stem. I “painted” over the surface of the stem with flame from a BIC lighter to burn off some of the surface oxidation and then wiped it down with Obsidian Oil. The photos below show the stem after that process.

I went back over the stem with the 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads until the surface was freer of oxidation. I then wet sanded it with 3200-4000 grit pads and the shine began to show up.

I buffed the stem with red Tripoli and White Diamond before finishing with 6000-12,000 grit micromesh sanding pads. When I finished with the pads I rubbed down the stem with Obsidian Oil and let it soak in.

Once the oil had soaked into the stem I buffed the bowl and stem with Blue Diamond plastic polish being careful around the stamping on the shank. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax and then buffed it with a clean, soft flannel buffing pad to raise the shine and give it that like new look. The finished pipe can be seen in the photos below. It is ready for the next pipeman to load up his favourite bowl and have a smoke.

Thanks for looking.

A Unique Piece of Pipe History – A Zeus System Filter Pipe

11 Replies

Blog by Steve Laug

The morning of May 9th started as any other one does for me – a coffee and a plan. I got up early and roused the troops. We loaded the car and headed to the US to get to the border crossing before the long lines began. We were at our destination in Bellingham, Washington by a little after 8:00 AM. We had breakfast with the ladies in my family, dropped them off for a few hours of shopping and then did a few errands before heading to the “Junque” shops when they opened at 10:00 AM. I walked through the first shop and found a small no name pipe that was in very rough shape and decided to leave it behind. I went to the second shop and went through all of the cabinets and finally came to the one belonging to a seller that usually had something interesting in her cabinet. That is where I saw the oddly shaped rusticated briar pipe that was stamped ZEUS on the stem. The seller unlocked the cabinet and I took the pipe in hand and examined it. The stem came out easily and I could see the odd spikes at the end of the metal shank. It was an oddity that I had not seen before so I had to have it. I know it sound lame, but this find made my morning. I had found an unknown to me, odd-shaped system pipe and the pipe hunt had been successful.

The pipe is not large. The bowl is about a group 3 size and has a very wide shank. It extends for about an inch before it is joined by a metal oval tube. The tube was in great shape with no scratches and only minimal dents. An oddly shaped stem fit in the end of the metal tube. The stem bore a star with the words ZEUS stamped under it on top of the stem. On the underside it was stamped Made in U.S.A. There is a patent stamp on the short briar shank in a smooth patch on the left side. It reads U.S. Patent over 2,158,897. When I returned home I took it to the work table and took these photos.

The pipe appears to be in great shape. There is minor oxidation on the stem but no tooth marks. The metal tube had sticky glue areas that seemed to come from a label that had been stuck to the metal. I sure wish that they would not use these labels to mark pipes. The briar bowl exterior is very dirty with dust and grime pressed deeply into the rustication. There was a thick build up of tars and oils in the rustication of the rim. There was a crumbling thick cake in the bowl with the cake on the bottom portion of the bowl being much thicker. The airway was dirty as well and I had trouble getting a pipe cleaner through from the stem. It would be interesting to take this old timer apart.

I removed the stem from the shank and took the following photo. It was a twin bore stem that moved toward a single airway in the thinner portion. It formed a Y. The twin bores were quite large as can be seen in the photo. It made me wonder what I was dealing with. The metal tube portion of the shank was also removable and only took a little finagling to get it to come free. It was pressed into place and formed a fairly tight seal. Once it was free the end of the briar shank was visible. It had two imposing metal spikes and an airway entering from the bowl in the middle between them.

I took another photo of the three parts standing on end. You can see that the metal tube forms a chamber for the smoke and serves as the mortise area for the twin bore stem. The mystery to me at this point was the purpose of the spikes. It seemed likely to me that some sort of filter system was spiked on the points and extended from them into the twin holes in the stem. They would lie parallel to each other in the metal shank and the smoke would swirl around them in the chamber. I began to wonder if I was missing some key parts of this pipe. Were those parts lost somewhere along the way and what must they have looked like? Those were some of the questions that went through my mind at this point. I knew that the patent number on the shank would give me some help with this. I could search the US Patent site and possibly find the drawings and original proposal for the pipe that the inventor submitted for patent. But before I did that I did a quick search on Google for the ZEUS pipe. Of course the PipePhil site came up and there I found the following information. There were two photos of the pipe – one disassembled and one assembled. The stamping was identical to the one I had as was the patent number on both shanks. There was also a short line to the right of the photo that gave me the quick answer to what I had assumed about the pipe. The spikes and the chamber as well as the twin bore had a clear purpose and I was not missing any parts. The ZEUS pipe was designed to hold 2 halves of a cigarette to act as filters. The spike held them in place and the twin cigarettes extended into the mouth piece. The smoke would swirl around them and the tars and moisture would be absorbed in the cigarettes.

There was also a link to MODERN MECHANIX Magazine dated November, 1939 that was an advertisement for the pipe and gave a simple diagram of the interior of the pipe with the cigarettes in place. The advertisement text is interesting in spelling out the pipe designer’s intention for the design of the pipe. It claims that 80% of the nicotine is removed by this new pipe design. The ad says that smoke drawn from the pipe passes through the two cigarettes which act as filters to absorb the nicotine.
I love finding these old inventive pipes that were designed to deliver what at the time was a smoother, cooler, healthier smoke. This was one of the most unique designs that I have seen. From there I turned to the patent number on the side of the shank. I went to the US Patent website and did a numerical search for the patent number. Here is the link to the number search portion of the patent website: http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm I entered the patent number 2,158,897 and was immediately given a three page scan of the documents on the site for that number. I have included all three pages below. The first page is a series of conceptual drawings of the device. The second and third pages are the details linked to the Figure numbers in the drawings. It was filed May 21, 1937 by a G. Cippico in the category of Smoking Device. G. Cippico is later shown to be Giuseppe Cippico, Inventor from Rome, Italy. The patent was granted on May 16, 1939 almost two years later. These old Patent details are always an interesting read to me. The theory of how the pipe would work is spelled out and the rationale for it being a new and better pipe is detailed.

I put this information on two of the pipe forums that I frequent to see if I could garner any further information. I was particularly looking for the US manufacturer of the pipe. On Smokers Forum I received a response from Chris Chopin (flatticus). He included another advertisement from Life Magazine that he found. The advertisement is for a ZEUS Cigarrete holder that claims to absorb over 70% of the nicotine and tars. It also says in small print at the bottom of the ad under the $1 Ladies Zeus with choice of amberlike colored bits that there are also ZEUS pipes. The ad says that ZEUS is made by L. & H. Stern, Inc., 57 Pearl Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. With that it appears that the pipes were made in the US by LH Stern Inc.

Chris also writes; “There are ads from Stern for the Zeus filter in 1938 in Life Magazine (several times that year), Collier’s Illustrated Weekly, and Time. They start in March and April of 1938 with the filter noted as “A New Way to Smoke”. Then nothing for 8 full years. Not a single ad or mention of any kind I can find past December of 1938 except for a mention in the Rocky Mountain Medical Journal that may not be an ad.”

“Then, in 1946, ads show up in Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, The Rotarian, Newsweek, all over the place, advertising that the Zeus Filter Holder is back, now in aluminum. All but one of the 1938 ads say “Also Zeus Pipes” and not a single one of the 1946 ads does.”

“It’s an assumption, of course, but this makes me think that for some reason the Zeus pipes had a very short life, and you may have one of very few they made.”

Thanks for the advertisement and information Chris. Your post gave me some needed information on the brand and confirmed what I had already found from my own digging. It appears I found a bit of a rarity in this old pipe.

Armed with these details and a bit of historical background it was time to clean up the pipe and bring it back to pristine condition.

I took the pipe apart and put the bowl into an alcohol bath to soak and soften the cake before I ream and clean it. I put the stem and barrel in an Oxyclean bath to soak and raise the oxidation and start the sanitizing process.

When I took the stummel out of the alcohol bath after it has soaked for three hours I scrubbed it with a soft bristle brass tire brush to clean out the debris from the rustication. I scrubbed the top of the rim to remove the tarry buildup from that surface. I wiped the surface down with isopropyl alcohol on a cotton pad to remove the dust on the finish.

I reamed the bowl with a PipNet Reamer using the smallest cutting head. It was still slightly too big to get to the bottom of the bowl. I used a small sharp pen knife to work on the cake on the bowl bottom and sides. I wiped out the bowl with isopropyl alcohol on cotton swabs to remove the carbon that the knife and reamer let behind. The reamed bowl is shown in the photo below. I used the cotton swabs and alcohol to clean out the airway in the shank and to clean up the two points of metal on each side. I scrubbed down the briar surface that the metal tube slid over. I also scrubbed the metal tube out on the inside with alcohol. I used the sharp pen knife to scrape the inside of the tube and then rinsed it with alcohol. I inserted the dental pick in the airway to use as a handle and restained the stummel with a dark brown aniline stain. I flamed it and repeated the process until the coverage was even.

I set the bowl aside to dry and worked on the stem. I had dried it off when I removed it and the tube from the Oxyclean bath but still needed to do some work to clean out the airways. I used pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and isopropyl alcohol to clean out the stem airways.

I hand buffed the bowl with a shoe brush to smooth out the stain and to raise a shine on the briar.

The Oxyclean had removed some of the white in the stamping on both sides of the stem so I cleaned off the surface of the stem and then used a correction pen to reapply the white to the stamping on both sides of the stem.

When it was dry I sanded it with a fine grit sanding sponge to remove the excess white material and to polish the stem.

With the stamping repaired I worked on the stem with micromesh sanding pads. I wet sanded with 1500-2400 grit pads and dry sanded with 3200-12,000 grit pads. I buffed the stem after the wet sanding with red Tripoli and then rubbed it down with Obsidian Oil before going on to the higher grit pads.

When I had finished with the micromesh pads I buffed the stem with Blue Diamond Plastic polish on the buffing wheel and then gave the stem several coats of carnauba wax. I buffed the stem and bowl with a clean flannel buff to give a clean shine and finish the pipe. The completed pipe is shown in the photos below. It turned out really well and it will go in my display cupboard. I think one day I will have to light it up and see how it smokes but to do that I will need to find a couple of cigarettes to use as filters.

Thanks for looking at this unusual piece of tobacciana. It will join other odd pipes that I have found over the years that bear witness to the ongoing and ever-present search for the perfect smoke.

Restoring a Ben Wade Danish Hand Model Free Hand 400

4 Replies

Blog by Steve Laug

The latest pipe that I have on the work table was a beautifully grained Ben Wade Danish Hand Model 400 free hand. It has some amazing flame and straight grain all the way around the bowl. The flat bottom of the bowl has some great birdseye grain. There is plateau on the top of the bowl and on the end of the shank. There appeared to be a smooth inner rim that had been covered with tars and oils. The plateau on the rim was oily and tarry. The valleys were basically filled in and the rough beauty of plateau was hidden under the grime. The smooth bowl sides were dirty with dark spots where hand oil and grime had been rubbed into the finish. Fortunately there were not any dents or scratches on the briar.

The stem was Lucite and quite thick. There were tooth marks on the top and underside of the stem near the button and there was some calcification on the stem top next to the button. The airway in the stem was partially closed off and there was not much airflow being drawn through the stem. The shank airway was also closed partially with oils and tars. The bowl had been reamed before it came to me and was quite clean.

The next two photos are close up pictures of the stem and the bite marks. The first shows the calcification next to the button and the slight damage to the inside button edge. The tooth mark is visible just ahead of the white line on the stem. The stem was also lack luster and the shine was gone. The second photo shows the underside of the stem. It was slightly wavy like it had been pushed to heavily into the buffing wheel. There was a small tooth mark in the same spot as on the upper side of the stem.

I decided to address the issues with the stem first. I used a straightened paper clip bent to the angle of the stem to push through the airway. Pushing from the slot I was unable to get the wire through the airway. I pushed it through from the tenon and a large chunk of tars and pipe cleaner detritus came out of the button. I worked the wire around in the airway to clean the sides and remove any other build up. It appeared to be at the bend in the stem. I then used pipe cleaners and cotton swabs and isopropyl alcohol to clean out the airway and remove the remaining tars and oils in the stem and tenon.

I sanded the tooth marks on the topside and underside of the stem with 220 grit sandpaper until I had removed the damaged area. I also wanted to thin the thick Lucite slightly as there was plenty of material to work with. I sanded with a medium and a fine grit sanding sponge to remove the scratches and see if I had removed the mark. It took repeated sanding with the three grits of sanding material to remove the remnants of the tooth marks.

I continued to sand with the fine grit sanding sponge to minimize the scratches and then sanded the stem with 600 grit wet dry sandpaper. Once I had finished with the sandpaper I used micromesh sanding pads. I wet sanded with 1500-2400 grit sanding pads and dry sanded with 3200-12,000 grit pads. I rubbed the stem down with Obsidian Oil between the grits in order to provide the medium for the micromesh to cut better. When I finished I buffed the stem with Blue Diamond plastic polish on the buffing wheel and then gave it several coats of carnauba wax.

I set aside the stem so that I could work on the bowl. When the bowl was finished I would buff the two parts together and also give them another coat of wax. I used a soft bristle brass white wall brush to work on the buildup on the rim and plateau. It was quite thick on the inner edge of the rim. I have learned over time that the tar coat really protects the briar underneath. Once I had removed the tars I would see that. I scrubbed the exterior of the bowl with Murphy’s Oil Soap to remove the grime and oils that were all over the surface. I used cotton pads to scrub the bowl. Once I had removed the grime I washed the exterior of the bowl with running water to remove the soap. The photos below show the clean bowl of the pipe.

I cleaned out the shank with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and alcohol. I wiped down the plateau with alcohol on a cotton pad to remove any remaining dust in preparation for staining. I stained all of the plateau areas with a black aniline stain and flamed it. I repeated the process until the coverage was thorough. When it had dried I hand buffed the plateau with a shoe brush until the high points shone and the valleys were slightly darker. I buffed the pipe and stem with Blue Diamond and then gave the bowl multiple coats of carnauba wax. I finished by buffing it with a clean flannel buff to raise the shine on the bowl and stem. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. Thanks for looking.

A Dodgy Rogers: Restoring and Modifying a Rogers Standard

4 Replies

Blog by Anthony Cook

I was recently engaged in a conversation with another member of an online pipe tobacco forum and I learned that he had been smoking a pipe for six months and had only one pipe. I’ve been there, man. From what I’ve seen, six months seems to be the sweet spot for new pipe smokers. They’re likely to stick with it if they’ve made it that far, but everything is still new enough that even simple things can be a challenge. I’m sure that most of you will agree that smoking a pipe isn’t rocket science, but the initial learning curve can be fairly steep all the same. So, I offered to send him a pipe to give his faithful companion a break, reward his perseverance, and encourage him to hang in there.

I sent him a photo of a few pipes that I had on hand. I told him to pick one and I’d send it along. I half expected him to balk after seeing the photos. None of the pipes had been restored at all. If you’re not used to dealing with estate pipes, it can be difficult to see one as anything other than what it is; grime, tar, fills, and all. So, to ease any concerns that he may have I sent him a few before/after photos of some of my work and promised that I would make sure that his pipe was clean and pretty. He responded quickly with his choice, and to my surprise, it was probably the grungiest in appearance of the lot. Here it is… The pipe is a Rogers Standard. I think the unique shaping is what attracted him and I can understand why. The slightly longer shank paired with the short saddle on the stem give it a quirky look that’s still classy. Here are a few more photos to give you an idea of what I was working with.

The stem was stuck tight on this one, but a couple of hours in the freezer took care of that. Once the stem was removed, I found a grimy, spiral stinger in the tenon. It too was stuck. So, I dripped alcohol into and around the tenon to soften the tar that was gluing it in. After a few minutes, I wrapped it in several layers of soft cloth to protect it and pulled it out with a pair of pliers. I dropped it into a container of alcohol for about an hour, and then scrubbed it with a pipe cleaner until it was as good as new. I gave the stummel an alcohol bath to remove the old, lacquer finish. Several hours later, I removed it and wiped it down. Only about the top two-thirds of the bowl was caked to any degree, but what was there was thick, uneven, and harder than chicken lips. In the end, it took a group effort to ream the bowl back to bare wood the way I like it, but a T-handle reamer, a pipe knife, 400-grit paper wrapped around a Sharpie pen, and a little elbow grease got the job done.

I’ve added a retort to my tool chest since I last posted here, but I still like to scrub out the solid debris and lumpy build-ups by hand before using it. The Rogers took a whole handful of pipe cleaners, cotton swabs, and a couple of shank brushes before I was satisfied enough to move on. I set up the retort and flushed the stem and shank several times before setting it aside to cool for about 15 minutes. Then, I refilled with clean alcohol and flushed several more times. After the second retort, the alcohol was nearly clear. So, I considered the retort to have done its job and gave the stummel and stem one last quick scrub to remove any remaining tar. While I had been retorting the stummel, the stem had been soaking in an Oxyclean bath. I removed it and scrubbed it down with a couple of 1” cubes cut from a Magic Eraser pad to remove the oxidation. There is one thing to note though. I noticed that the paint had come out of the stem stamping during the bath despite my attempt to protect it with a dab of petroleum jelly. I’ve never really trusted this method of protection and I think I’m going to explore some others ideas in the future.You may have noticed from the photos that this pipe had a few fills. Okay… It had a lot of fills and the ones that concerned me the most were a few that were right inside the stamping on the shank. I was considering what to do about them when the thought occurred to me that it might be best to leave it up to the guy that was going to smoke the pipe. I contacted the future owner and presented him with a few option: (1) I could patch the fills with briar dust and CA that would blend well into the final finish, but some of the stamping would be sacrificed, (2) I could leave the stamping intact, but there would be some obvious fills on the shank of the finished pipe, or (3) I could rusticate the pipe, which would completely obliterate the stamping but the pipe would be unique. He chose to go with rustication.

So, once I knew the direction in which I was heading, I set up my topping surface to remove the scratches and charring on the rim. I sanded with a progression of 220-grit, then 320-grit, then 400-grit paper until I was satisfied that all of the scratches were gone. I also softened the inside and outside edge of the rim by light sanding with 400 grit paper (not pictured).

My rustication plan called for a round, smooth button on the right side of the bowl where there were few fills and some fairly decent bird’s eye. There were also a few dents in the area. So, I clamped the stummel in a vice and tried to steam them out by pressing a heated screwdriver into a wet cloth placed over the dents. Most of them were removed successfully, but one large dent with sharp edges still remained. You win some. You lose some. Nobody wants a pipe that looks like it has the measles and those pink putty fills will show through and ruin even a rusticated finish. So, I picked them all out. I also discovered that the wood inside the mortise directly beneath the shank crack was weak and spongy. I scraped it out easily with a pick, but left behind a disconcertingly large gouge in the mortise. I had been experimenting with pre-staining briar dust for patches and fills, but I hadn’t had the opportunity to put it into practice until this pipe. I dripped a couple of drops each of Fiebing’s black and oxblood into a bit of briar dust, and then added a few drops of isopropyl alcohol to spread it evenly. After mixing it up and sitting it under a warm lamp for about 30 minutes, I had a batch of stained briar dust. The stained dust and a bit of CA glue were used to patch the dent and a large fill on the right side of the bowl. I also used unstained dust and CA to fill in the area of missing wood in the mortise. The bowl patches were sanded out with 220-grit, then 320-grit, sandpaper. In the mortise, I used 240 and 320-grit sanding needles. When I inserted the stem to test the fit, I heard a sharp “snap”. Uh-oh.
When I flipped the pipe over I saw that the shank had cracked again. This one began about 1mm below the patched crack and was also longer than that one. I used a 1/32” drill bit to make a small hole at the end of the crack to stop the run. I didn’t drill all the way through, only a hair’s width below the crack. Then, I inserted the stem (after smearing petroleum jelly on the tenon) to widen the crack and filled the crack and drill hole with stained dust and CA. Once the patch had set up, I removed the stem, wiped the petroleum jelly from the mortise, and added more briar dust and CA there to add the strength that it obviously needed. The new patches were sanded out once dry and I used a strip of 400-grit paper to reduce the diameter of the tenon before trying to insert is again. The fit was snug but not overly tight, and best of all, there were no new cracks. Since the shank crack had been opened up and then filled, the overall diameter of the shank had increased slightly. So, I used 220-grit, then 320-grit, sandpaper to bring it back into register with the stem.

Then it was time to strike up the band. I selected a band from my box that was large enough to fit over the end of the shank, but not so large that I could slide it all of the way up by hand. With the band partially in place over the shank, I heated it with a heat gun to expand the metal, and then pressed it into place on a hard, cushioned surface. The mortise had been constricted by the placement of the band. So, again, I had to do a bit of sanding with 220-grit, 320-grit, and 400-grit paper to turn the tenon down enough to make a good, snug fit.

The heat gun was already set up. So, I used it to heat the stem to see if I could raise some of the tooth dents. It did a fair job, but a few still remained after the heat treatment. I also took the opportunity to add a few more degrees of bend in the stem to give it a more elegant flow (at least to my eyes). The stem button had a couple of chunks bitten out of it that needed to be repaired. I borrowed Andrew Selking’s idea of wrapping the area below the button with tape to keep a crisp edge before applying black CA glue to the gouges. The middle picture in the image below shows the button just after removing the tape. There was a bit of overhang at the lip that would have to be taken off, but the area where the button meets the stem is crisp and clean. That would save a lot of work. Thanks, Andrew!

I sanded out the lighter dents on the stem with 220-grit paper. For the deeper dents, I patched them with a bit of black CA glue applied with a toothpick. When the stem patches where dry I sanded them down with 220-grit paper, and used 320-grit and 400-grit to blend them into the rest of the surface and to shape the button. Then, I lightly sanded the entire stem with 600-grit paper to remove any scratches and pits in the vulcanite. I also used a grout pen to paint in the stamped logo. Some of the logo area had been worn smooth over time. So, the resulting logo didn’t look as good as the example over at PipePhil.eu, but I think it looks better than it did originally. For comparison, here’s the logo example from PipePhil.eu (first image), the original logo (second image), and the repainted logo (third image): The stem was polished with micro-mesh pads 1500-grit to 12000-grit. I applied a drop of Obsidian Oil to the stem, let it sit for a couple of minutes, and then wiped off the excess to finish up the work on the stem. I decided to go for three levels of texture in the partial rustication and hoped that would give the pipe a unique appearance. I used a felt pen to mark an oval-shaped guideline on each side of the bowl. I started carving with a Dremel and a 3/32” engraving burr. Basically, I just scribbled around the stummel avoided the areas that I wanted to leave smooth to create the base for the medium texture. Then, I used a variety of hand-cut bits and tools to really get in there and remove some wood to create the craggy texture around the ovals that I had marked. To finish up the rustication, I used a 1/32” engraving burr to touch up a few of the places where the rustication met the smooth areas. It turned out to be a rather lengthy process to get the final color and finish the way that I wanted it. So, I won’t go into a lot of detail, but here’s the gist of it:
1) Applied black stain, sanded smooth areas and rustication high spots with 400-grit, and buffed with Tripoli
2) Applied mahogany stain, lightly sanded smooth areas and brushed the rustication high spots with 600-grit, and buffed with a clean wheel.
3) Applied ox blood stain to the rusticated areas only, hand buffed, sanded smooth areas with 1200-grit (Not pictured below. Oops).
4) Polished with micro-mesh 1500-grit to 2400-grit, applied red stain to smooth areas only, buffed with a clean wheel, continued polishing smooth areas with micro-mesh 3200-12000. After the final micro-mesh polish, I reattached the stem and buffed the entire pipe with White Diamond. I then applied Halcyon II wax to the stummel and carnauba wax to the stem and buffed the pipe with a clean wheel. Lastly, I painted the walls of the chamber with a sour cream and activated charcoal bowl coating to add some temporary insulation until a good cake could form.

The finished pipe is very different from what it was when I started. It has lost its pedigree, but it has gained a unique, one-of-a-kind appearance. I’m quite pleased with the way that it turned out and I’m hoping that the new owner will be too. It’s in the mail, Dustin. Smoke it well, brother!

Making a Simple Light Box

4 Replies

Blog by Andrew Selking

I saw a post by Andrew on one of the forums I follow and wrote and asked if he would post it here. It is something that I have been working on for a while now and to read Andrew’s work. Without any further ado here is the article.

Let me preface this by saying I am not a photographer and I only have vague memories of learning about light in science class. I’m also frugal, so when I started looking for ways to take better pictures of my pipes, cost was big consideration.

So let’s build a light box. First we’ll start with the materials:

medium size cardboard box
white tissue paper
white duct tape (you could also probably use white masking tape)
white poster board (the thin flimsy kind)
day light bulbs (14W compact fluorescent)
ideally three directional lamps

Cut out square sections on three sides of the box. Tape the top of the box and cut out a square section for the top. I used some of the scrap cardboard to reinforce the top. Next tape your poster board in the inside of the box. You will want it to curve from inside the box so that it makes the item you’re photographing look like its floating. Use the white tape to cover any cardboard that is inside the box. Finally, tape your white tissue paper over the openings on the two sides and the top.

I don’t have a fancy camera, but it does have a setting for slow flash to help give a better fill. I also use the close up setting. I was having problems getting my darker pipes to show up in the pictures. I tried more light and it still didn’t help much. I accidentally discovered that changing to a darker background makes the wood easier to see. I have an example of a pipe photographed with the all-white background and the same pipe photographed with a green towel in the background.

I know a lot of you out there do some really great work restoring pipes, while others have amazing pipe collections. This is an easy way to let others appreciate what you do. I hope you found this post useful and I look forward to some amazing pictures.

Conjuring a Makeover for a Carey Magic Inch

3 Replies

Guest Blog by Robert M. Boughton
Member, North American Society of Pipe Collectors
http://www.naspc.org
http://www.roadrunnerpipes.com
http://about.me/boughtonrobert
Photos © the Author

“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.”
― Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), French Impressionist painter

INTRODUCTION
I suspect there is some aspect of my basic personality that is incapable, to a degree, of not admiring the tenacity alone required to survive 67-years – and still going – in the admirable pursuit of providing affordable smoking pipes. Remember, this is an industry that has seen all manner of fly-by-night systems for dissipating the high heat of the all-important tobacco that has an inherent tendency to become moist and therefore brackish in the process of flowing through the basic designs of all pipes.

Notwithstanding the relative quality of pipes that evolve based on the periodic new patents from the ever-pioneering designers at E.A. Carey, which also owns the Duncan Hill Aerosphere brand, the system’s section that comprises the so-called “Magic Inch” has changed little since 1948, when the first billiard version was created and marketed. The system involves five elements: 1-2) the first two in the double-pronged tenon, the thin, hollow end of which attaches to the plastic bit and the typical part that slides into the shank; 3) the thin bit insert with six small drilled holes, two each on the top and bottom (when properly inserted) and one each on either side; 4) the newer Papyrate II sleeve (two-ply) – made of very thin, wet slices, from the roots of an aquatic plant, that are pressed together and dried – that fits snugly over the holes of the bit insert, and 5) six horizontal slits in the shank end of the bit, three on the top and three on the bottom. The photos of the bit show the used, brownish papyrate sleeve that came with the original pipe.

Back some months when I was snatching up pipe lots online, I bought one with 10 sundry examples of the craft, including a few nice finds such as a Kaywoodie Filter Plus metal pipe from the late 1950s, a Jobey Extra, a nice glazed clay pipe and others, with this Magic Inch among them. I put all of these in a small box “for later,” except for the beautiful unknown clay billiard that I cleaned up and added new cork in the shank with a hole drilled to fit the screw-in tenon attached to the acrylic stem, for my own collection.

By the way, not everyone knows that Carey does not only make Magic Inch pipes. Here are a few of the company’s representative standard briar pipes. But this blog concerns the vintage Magic Inch billiard, U.S. Patent №. 3,267,941 granted in 1966, shown in the lot above three rows down on the right. A few years ago, I owned, and for a while enjoyed, another Magic Inch, and it wasn’t – well, bad. But first, I have a few comments regarding Carey’s rather imaginative advertising.

Numerical data and the manifold methods of collection, arrangement and interpretation of them for publication as fact by the complex use of statistics in almost every facet of society – including but by no means limited to governmental and other political concerns, businesses and the news media – can be misleading at best and downright manipulative at worst.

Take, for example, the E.A. Carey Smokeshop claim [http://www.eacarey.com/ pipes.html] that it has sold more than one million of its Magic Inch pipes since 1948. That sounds impressive, and suggests that Carey’s pipes are superior to others. But that total averages to 15,152 pipes (rounded up, through 2014) per year. Then again, Carey changes the number of Magic Inch pipes sold in the same period to a vague “hundreds of thousands” [http://www.eacarey .com/magicinchinfo.html]. Allowing for hundreds of thousands to be a maximum of 200,000 pipes, which quite likely is stretching it, the average drops to 3,030. Somehow, I doubt that either annual sales figure engenders any impulse among the world’s other pipe makers to compete with the folks at the venerable Carey Smokeshop online, both in the U.K. [http://www.eacarey. co.uk/] and U.S.

Now, to return to the real subject matter, the purpose of this particular blog is to show how a pipe with a singular lack of attractive qualities can be transformed into something nicer.

RESTORATION
After removing and separating the bit and two-sided tenon, throwing away the old brown papyrate sleeve, on an impulse, I decided to give the old rusticated briar girl an Everclear soak. For some reason, this process took quite a while – say six hours. At any rate, when the old finish was stripped and the wood dried, I began a hand-buff with super fine steel wool followed by a progression of micromesh pads from 1500-3600.

I turned a reamer a few times in the chamber, followed by sanding with 200-grit and 320, and the chamber was almost good to go. Then I attached a suitable stem and retorted the shank and chamber.

Thinking the pipe, which was dreary in the beginning, deserved something more distinctive and in keeping with its natural reddish color, I chose maroon boot stain. After the quick application and flaming, I rubbed the wood gently with 3200 micromesh.

To clean the hollow plastic bit and tenon, I diluted – and I mean heavily – a little Everclear with a lot of water. I like to think of this as the Reverse Julia Childs Approach. The popular cook once said, “I like to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.” From what I recall of watching Julia in the studio kitchen on TV, I am not surprised that she seemed to have forgotten the apparent equal measures of wine expended in the food and down the hatch. Anyway, I bent a soft pipe cleaner in half and dipped it in the comparatively wimpy solution, which is like comparing wine to Moonshine, and inserted the folded end in the stem, turning it several times and finding it needed replacing. And so I repeated the action, but giving the inner bit the old in-and-out, scrubbing its sides. Only the slightest amount of grime came out on the second run, and I used the same cleaner to work through the slits on the top and bottom. I used a third, dry cleaner to finish.

The outer bit required very little work with one micromesh pad, although I forget the grade, to make it shine. Using a white china marker, I filled in the small, long-empty square with a three-sided C in the middle, forming all but one line of a second square. Thanks to a generous gift of a handful of papyrate sleeves from my good friend and mentor, Chuck Richards, I was able to complete the tenon for ultimate placement into the shank.

All that was left to do was buff the wood on the electric wheels, using white Tripoli and White Diamond, with quick runs on the clean wheel after each. At last, with a finger, I applied a thin, even coat of Halcyon II, and after letting the briar sit for 10-15 minutes, buffed it with the clean wheel.

CONCLUSION
Love ’em, hate ’em or really don’t give a hoot either way, the Carey Magic Inch has secured its place in tobacco pipe history, as well as giving many a smoker a start in the pleasures derived from fine tobaccos. And as far as I’m concerned, the Carey system works better than most far more complicated attempts.

Imagine, if you will, a special place in the Twilight Zone – an area so horrific only the most heinous attempts at pipe cooling ever make it there. Take, for example, the following specimen, a Jenkins, which, with its screw designed to hang while smoking like a broken appendage from the underbelly of the shank at a point just before the bowl, may never find its way back.

An Odd Yello Bole Imperial Nosewarmer Canadian worth saving

9 Replies

Blog by Steve Laug

The second pipe that Troy Wilburn sent me to restem was a short Canadian with a large bowl. It was a bit of an odd pipe – no shape number and no catalogue shape that matched it. It was almost like a Canadian that had been cut off somewhere along the way. However it was sent out from the factory like this. It is stamped on the top rolling down the left side of the shank with the older KBB in a cloverleaf. Next to that it reads Yello Bole. Underneath it reads cured with real honey and an R in a circle. Underneath that is stamped Imperial in Script with small block letters reading IMPORTED BRIAR.

It came to Troy as New Old Stock or NOS – unsmoked pipe. It had a strange tenon repair that someone had made some time in its history. The tenon had broken off in the shank and rather than remove it, the decision had been made to leave it in the shank. In the first photo below you can see the broken tenon and at the end of it is the YB stinger apparatus still sitting in the shank. There was a notch taken out of the shank on the left underside near the end of the mortise and in the mortise end. The repair that had been made was to smooth out the end of the stem and insert a stainless steel rod in the stem. The rod was the same diameter as the inside of the tenon. Effectively it was like the repair I did on Troy’s other pipe. The problem with this one was the very constricted draw due to the narrow airway constricted by the tenon. With the notch in the end of the mortise the fit of the stem against the shank was also compromised. This pipe was going to be a bear to get all of the alignments straight. The airway drilled in the stem for the metal tenon was slightly off centre and a little angular. The notch in the shank would need to be corrected or removed. The fit in the shank would need to be adjusted. You can see that this NOS pipe would take a bit of creativity to reconstruct. I began the reconstruction of a new tenon by addressing the constricted airway and broken tenon in the shank of the pipe. I used a drill bit that fit well against the end of the tenon that was stuck in the shank and slowly drilled into the broken tenon. My hope was that the drill bit would catch on the material of the tenon and I would be able to back it out of the shank. It worked on the first try. The bit stuck in the bit and I reversed the direction of the drill and the broken tenon came out on the drill bit. Once it was free I was able to shake out the stinger from the airway and the shank was clear. This unsmoked pipe now had an unconstricted airway. The first part of the repair had gone off without a hitch. The next photo shows the parts that were in the shank. The broken tenon piece and the spoon shaped stinger are to the left of the end of the shank. You can also see the short metal tenon that had been inserted in the stem end. I gripped the end of the metal tenon with needle nosed pliers and wiggled it free of the stem. It had not been glued but rather heated and inserted deep in the airway of the stem. With very little effort I was able to remove the tube from the stem. The next two photos give two different views of the tenon and the end of the stem. You can see in the second photo that the airway had been drilled open to take the metal tube tenon. It would not take much to open it slightly larger to put a repair tenon in place.

With the airway opened I decided to address the notch out of the end of the shank. I did this by using super glue and briar dust to build up the shank end. The trick was to keep the glue isolated to the shank end and not let it run on the finish of the shank bottom. I carefully put a few drops of glue in the notch and then packed in briar dust with a dental pick. I repeated this process until I had built up the notch slightly higher than the flat end of the shank. I then used the topping board and carefully stood the pipe against the sandpaper and slowly worked the filled area smooth with the paper. I repeated the process until the area was evenly built up and the notch was gone. There remained a little darkening at the edge of the repair on the bottom edge of the shank end but the notch was gone. Once the stem is repaired and is in place the notch will be virtually invisible. I cleaned up any of the glue bits and briar dust in the shank with the dental pick and a sharp knife.

The next three photos show the shank end from different angles to show the state of the repair at this point in the process. It still needs to be cleaned up and touched up once the stem is fit in the shank, however the notch itself is virtually gone and the stem (sans tenon) sits smoothly against the shank end.

I decided that rather than wait for a new tenon to arrive I would make my own. I had a very small stem that I knew would work well to fashion a tenon. I used a hacksaw to cut off a portion of the stem to use for the tenon. I purposely cut it long to give me material to work with.

The cut off portion is shown in the photo below. I held the smaller portion in the tip of a pair of needle nose pliers and used the Dremel with a sanding drum to bring down the larger portion to match the smaller one. I would sand until I had a vulcanite tenon that I could insert into the stem.

Here is a photo of the shop “foreman” sitting in my chair while I worked on the tenon. Spencer loves to hang out with me while I work. The thinner part of the tenon in the photo below will be the part I insert in the stem once it is drilled out. The larger part will need to be turned down to fit in the mortise.

I started by using a drill bit that was slightly larger than the airway that had been opened in the stem for the metal tenon. I worked my way up to a drill bit that would open the airway and deep enough to take the new tenon and provide stability. When I had drilled the opening in the stem as large as I could, given the taper of the stem I needed to take down the diameter of the replacement tenon I had made. I used a Dremel to take off the excess material to reduce it to the same size as the stem opening. Once I got close in diameter with the Dremel I hand sanded it to fit.

When the tenon end fit snugly in the stem, I squared off the end of the tenon and then superglued it in place in the stem. I coated the tenon with the glue and pressed it into place. The tenon itself would also need to be turned to fit the shank of the pipe. I used the Dremel and sanding drum to sand down the tenon and then used sand paper to get a snug fit. Once it fit well I polished it with fine grit sanding sponges and micromesh. The fit in shank was good and snug. It was at this point that the alignment issues became clear. I would need to do some work on the shank to clean up the repair and also get a good transition from the shank to the stem. The fit on the topside was slightly high and the fit on the underside was a little low. I needed to sand the shank anyway to clean up the repaired notch on the underside so to sand it a bit more was not an issue. I sanded the shank and stem with 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the transition between the two and to give a better flow to the taper on the stem.

I sanded the stem and shank with a medium and a fine grit sanding block to make the transition smooth and remove the scratches left behind by the sandpaper.

Once the transition was smooth I sanded the briar with micromesh sanding pads from 2400-4000 grit and then used the Guardsman brand stain pens to stain the shank. I used the lightest stain pen first and finished with the medium stain pen. Once it dried I buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond to raise the shine on the shank and to even out the stain.

I sanded the stem with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-2400 grit pads and dry sanding with 3200-12,000 grit pads. I buffed the stem with White Diamond and Blue Diamond and then buff the shank with the same once again.

I buffed the stem and the shank with Blue Diamond on the wheel and then gave the pipe several coats of carnauba wax. I finished by buffing it with a soft flannel buffing pad. The finished pipe is shown below.

The next two photos show a close up of the fit of the stem to the shank. I am pleased with the way it turned out.

The last two photos are of a regular sized Yello Bole Canadian (top pipe) and the little nose warmer (bottom pipe). I put these together to give a bit of perspective. The bowl on the nose warmer is larger and the shank is definitely shorter.

Thanks Troy for the challenge on this little Canadian. It was a pleasure to work on it. Each time I work on putting a new tenon on a pipe I learn something new. This time around, between the new tenon on the billiard, the insert in the cracked shank and the new tenon on this little one I had a good week in pipe school. They will soon be on their way back to you Troy. I hope they smoke well and you enjoy them.

rebornpipes

reclaiming old and worn estate pipes

Monthly Archives: May 2015

Finding a Heart for an Aristocob Aluminum (Rhodesian?)

Restoring an odd Trom-bone Pipe

Giving a no name Poker a new stem and a new look

Refurbishing a 1978 Dunhill Root Briar 41041 Bulldog

A Unique Piece of Pipe History – A Zeus System Filter Pipe

Restoring a Ben Wade Danish Hand Model Free Hand 400

A Dodgy Rogers: Restoring and Modifying a Rogers Standard

Conjuring a Makeover for a Carey Magic Inch

An Odd Yello Bole Imperial Nosewarmer Canadian worth saving

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