More than a few years ago now I was involved with an unfortunately short-lived local pipe club which held, among other things, a few swap meets where members could trade pipes, tobaccos etc. That is how this rather unloved-looking meerschaum pipe came to live in my box of refurbs-in-waiting.

I have pulled the pipe out, looked it over, mentally catalogued the scope of the job and put it back in the box several times over the years but decided that this was the time to see what I could do with it. This first series of pics shows what I was up against – this once handsome Block Meerschaum stummel had, at some point in its history, suffered a broken shank. Rather than toss it, some enterprising individual roughly squared off the broken end of the shank, installed an aluminum tenon and jammed a stem on to make the pipe…