Monthly Archives: April 2022

GBD “Special Shapes” 686 Restoration

By Al Jones

This 686 shape popped on on Ebay, incorrectly listed as a 646. I worked a deal with the seller and it was on it’s way to my work bench. This was a shape I had never encountered previously. John Fetter, the admin of the growing GBD PIpes Facebook, page collects these shape and shared this “Special Shapes” catalog page, that include below. If you are a GBD fan, you may wish to check out this passionate fan group page. Of the other pipes shown, I’ve had two 755 shapes in the past. John is currently looking for a 755, is anyone has one available. These shapes come in two of three over-sized pipes designations (Collector, Conquest and Colossus). The 686 is a Collector size, and at 57 grams, only slightly larger than a typical 9438. I guess that it would be considered a Rhodesian shape. Curiously, this one is in the New Standard finish, which is not listed as an available finish for the shape. The mysteries of GBD!

Below is the pipe as it was received. It had some slight build-up on the bowl top and a few handling marks on the briar. The nomenclature was in excellent shape, as was stem fitment. The stem was heavily oxidized, with one tooth prick that was revealed when the oxidation was removed. It has the brass rondell and straight line COM stamp of the pre-Cadogan era.

I used a worn piece of scotch-brite to remove the bowl top build-up. The bowl was reamed and soaked with alcohol and sea salt. I steamed out the minor handling marks on the bottom of the bowl.

The stem was fitted and oxidation removed with 600, 800, 1,500 and 2,000 grade wet sandpaper. I used a popsicle stick to get up against the button crease. I used a tiny drop of black superglue to fill the tooth prick near the button, the sanded smooth. The stem was buffed with White Diamond and Meguiars Plastic polish.

The bowl was buffed lightly with White Diamond and multiple coats of Carnuba wax, which brought back the color finish nicely.

Below is the finished pipe.

Cleaning up a Crown Duke, Dr. Grabow Bent Billiard for a Memory Box of Dad

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Blog by Steve Laug

I received an email a while ago from a lady who wanted to have one of her Dad’s pipe cleaned and restored. As we emailed back and forth it was clear that it was one of those pieces that was filled with memories. I pressed to see if she was sure that she wanted it cleaned as it would remove the remnants of debris and tobacco from her Dad’s use of the pipe. She was clear that she wanted it cleaned up to look as good as possible because she was going to make a shadow box to hold the pipe and a photo and other memorabilia of her late Dad. When it finally arrived here in Vancouver I could see why she wanted it clean. The pipe was very dirty and there was a crack in the shank. The pipe had not been smoked for a long time and there was no tobacco smell in it at all. There was a hard thin cake in the bowl and lava on the rim top. The stem was oxidized and had calcification on the button end. It was a filter pipe that had been smoked without a filter so the insides were dirty. The pipe was stamped on the left side and read Crown Duke [over] Dr. Grabow. On the right side it read Imported Briar. There was a blue Grabow Spade on the left side of the taper stem. It was dirty and worn looking with some obvious fills around the bowl. I took some photos of the pipe before I started to work on it. I took a photo of the rim top and bowl to give a clear picture of what I was dealing with. I also captured the crack in the top of the shank in the photo (I have outlined it in a red box). Other than being incredibly dirty the stem was in decent condition with light tooth chatter and light marks near the button edge.The stamping on the shank sides was faint but readable and reads as noted above.I took a better photo of the crack in the top of the shank and have included it below. It was quite wide open but came to an end in the squiggle at the end toward the bowl. I would need to glue and band it to make it solid again.I took a photo of the pipe with the stem removed to get a sense of the look of the Bent Billiard.I picked a band out of my box of bands. It is far too deep so I will need to take it down for a proper fit on the shank. I started the process by using a topping board. I then used my Dremel and sanding drum to remove the full amount I wanted gone. I finished the shaping of the band on the topping board.Once I had the fit correct, I removed it from the shank and cleaned up the area around the crack with alcohol and cotton swabs. I filled in the crack with clear super glue and clamped the crack shut. Once the glue cured I heated the band and pressed it onto the shank. I took some photos of the repaired shank and band. Now it was time to clean the bowl. I have often done the process in reverse but I really wanted to stabilize the crack before I worked on cleaning the exterior and interior of the bowl and shank. I did not want to chance making the crack worse. I reamed the cake out of the bowl with a Pipnet pipe reamer and took the cake back to bare briar. I cleaned up the reaming with a Savinelli Fitsall pipe knife and sanded the bowl walls smooth with a piece of dowel wrapped with 220 grit sandpaper. I wanted the bowl to be smooth for the display. I scrubbed the exterior of the bowl with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush. I was able to remove the debris and grime around the bowl and clear off the lava on the rim top. I dried the bowl off with a cloth and took these photos. You can see the dark fills and spots around the bowl sides. The largest was a rough fill on the front of the bowl that was pink putty. I repaired the pink, rough fill on the front of the bowl with clear super glue. Once the repair cured I sanded it smooth with 220 grit sandpaper. It was now smooth to the touch. It would be interesting to try to blend it into the surrounding briar once I was staining it. I sanded the entire bowl with 1500 grit micromesh at the same time.I cleaned out the airway in the shank and the stem with cotton swabs, pipe cleaners and isopropyl alcohol. It took quite a few to get the tars and oils out of the airways.I buffed the pipe on the buffer with Blue Diamond and then stained it with a light brown stain. I applied the stain and then flamed it to set it. I used a black and brown Sharpie pen to stain the pinkish fill on the front of the bowl.I set the bowl aside for the stain to cure and turned my attention to the stem. I sanded out the tooth chatter and marks on the stem with 220 grit sandpaper and started the polishing with 400 grit wet dry sandpaper. It is actually beginning to look much better. I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped the stem down after each pad with an Obsidian Oil impregnated cloth to give the pads a little more bite. I polished it with Before & After Stem Polish both Fine and Extra Fine and gave it a final rub down with Obsidian Oil. I set the stem aside to dry and worked on the bowl again. By this time the stain was dry and I was able to tackle the bowl again. I wiped it down with alcohol on paper towels to make the stain more transparent. Because of the fills in the bowl I decided to leave it dark as it did a good job masking them. I buffed the bowl on the wheel with Blue Diamond to further aid the transparency. It is hard to see in the photos but in person the grain is there and not terribly hidden. The fills are hidden and other than the large one on the front of the bowl they look good. I put the stem on the bowl and buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel. I was careful when buffing around the stamping and the logo on the stem. I had decided to leave some of the nicks and marks in the briar as they were a part of the story of the pipe and its owner. I wanted it to still bear his definitive marks so that when it was in the shadow box those who knew him would remember the story of the pipe. I did not want the pipe to look brand new as that would remove the story from it. The nickel band worked well to bind together the crack in the shank. The aluminum spacer on the stem sits up against it and looks quite nice as a joint with the band. It almost gives the band the look of a ferrule. The pipe came out quite well. The darker stain is very similar to what was originally on the pipe when it was new. It also did a good job of masking the fills around the bowl. I will soon be packing it up and sending it back to the pipeman’s daughter so she can build her tribute to her Dad. Thanks for reading the blog.

Sometimes the “pipe gods” smile on you – Finding an UNSMOKED/NOS Kaywoodie Connoisseur All Briar 13 Dublin

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Blog by Steve Laug

It has not happened to often to me but it has happened more than once! I am not looking for a particular pipe and low and behold in a lot of pipes Jeff and I purchase we come on one that is absolutely a pipe that is not often seen. In this case it was an All Briar Kaywoodie. I have worked on several older Kaywoodie All Briar pipes over the years and always been intrigued with them. There was just something about the idea of a briar stem and a briar bowl. I think that everyone of them has had issues with chewed off and broken off pieces of briar from the stem. They have taken a lot of work to rebuild and reshape. The briar stems just did not handle chompers and biters well so that when they arrived at my desktop the bowls were ok and the stems were all but destroyed. Then Jeff and I were given the opportunity to pick up a rare example of one of these All Briar Kaywoodies and if you can believe it – the pipe was brand new and unsmoked. We swooped for it and paid the price. I don’t even recall when it arrived. It was in a nondescript brown paper box so we looked it over and were pleased with the find. But I have to be hones and tell you that at least I promptly lost track of it in the sheer volume of pipes that I have here in need of restoration. I put it in a drawer with other unsmoked pipes that would one day get my attention and totally forgot about it.

Last evening I opened the drawer where I had put it. I have worked through all of the pipes in the drawer and posted them or put them on the rebornpipes store. This was the last box in the drawer. You can see that nothing about the plain paper box announced what was inside of it. It was literally a worn paper box with no stamping or marks. I brought it to my desk and took a photo of it. I have learned that when I have something like this that I have held onto I generally have a reason for it. Here is what I saw.I carefully opened the lid of the hinged box and this is what I saw on the inside. The lid of the box is covered with a gold foil and reads in nice script – Kaywoodie – Connoisseur. Under that to the right it reads Kaywoodie Company over New York – London. The bottom of the box also had the gold foil lining. Sitting on top of that was a light blue Kaywoodie Pipe Sock that read KAYWOODIE [over] Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. No. 154986 (It is very hard to read as the ink has blurred on the fabric. I cannot find anything listed with anything near this number on the US Patent Search site). [over] Connoisseur [over] The World’s Best Smoking Pipe. Underneath is a Cloverleaf logo. Inside the pipe sock was the pipe pictured below – a beautiful All Briar Dublin.I took the pipe out of the box and took photos of it to try and capture what I saw while I looked at it. It is really a beautiful pipe. It was made between 1952-1955 which appears to the only time frame that these pipes were produced – so it is amazing that it remains unsmoked and in flawless condition some 70+/- years later (https://pipedia.org/images/3/3d/Kaywoodie_Pipe_Names.pdf). I took photos of the rim top, bowl and the stem surfaces to show the condition of this beautiful unsmoked pipe.I took photos of the clear stamping on the shank sides. On the left it read ALL BRIAR [over] Kaywoodie. On the right it read ALL-IMPORTED BRIAR [over] the shape number 13. On the top of the briar stem is an inlaid black cloverleaf in a white circle. I unscrewed the stem from the shank and took a photo of the pipe. The aluminum is lightly oxidized but will polish up and look great. It is a stunning looking pipe.I have read a lot of information in the past on other Kaywoodie pipes I have worked on and spent time on the Kaywoodie Collectors Forum to help educate myself on the various lines and historical periods of Kaywoodie production. On Pipedia.org there is a helpful summary of the history of the brand that has been condensed in one place. It is called the Collectors Guide to Kaywoodie Pipes (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Collector%27s_Guide_to_Kaywoodie_Pipes). I found the All Briar line of pipes included in the section of the Guide for 1955. I quote here the pertinent sections with the references to the All Briar pipe underlined and highlighted in bold.

The line-up of pipes in the 1955 catalog (Table 3 below) was more extensive than in previous years. The catalog presented an expanded line of meerschaum pipes and introduced a 4-pipe set of Matched Grain Pipes, as well as several pipes with “special features”. The number of shapes available… was not substantially different from the number offered in the 1947 catalog…

The Twin-Bowl Kaywoodies were available in an all-meerschaum model (two removable inner bowls of meerschaum) and a meerschaum and Flame Grain model (outer bowl of flame grain briar and removable inner bowl of meerschaum). Other meerschaum pipes presented in the 1955 catalog included the Gourd Calabash; the Coral (“dimpled”) Meerschaum; the All Briar (briar bit) and Flame Grain pipes with inlaid meerschaum bowls; and the “Doctor’s” pipe…

Included in the guide was a helpful list of pipe grades and prices. I have included the list below and noted the pipe I am working on by highlighting it in bold print and underlining the reference. It is in this list that I found confirmation that Kaywoodie made an All Briar with a meerschaum bowl insert and an All Briar without the meerschaum insert. The All Briar I am working on is not meerschaum lined. It is fascinating for me to see that the addition of a meerschaum bowl was only $2.50 in 1955. The pipe I have is marked as Connoisseur which I have highlighted in red below in the list and as an All Briar Stembiter (also highlighted).

Table 3. 1955 Kaywoodie Pipe Grades and Prices

Meerschaum Character Pipes: $100.00

Block: 15.00-50 (According to size)

Meerschaum Twin Bowl: $35.00

Meerschaum/Flame Grain Twin Bowl: $25.00

Sandblasted “Doctor’s” Pipe: $25.00

Centennial: $25.00

Coral Meerschaum: $20.00-25 (According to size)

Gourd Calabash: $15.00-25 (According to size)

Ninety-Fiver: $20.00

Oversize: $10.00-25(According to style and finish)

Connoisseur: $15.00

All Briar w/Meerschaum Inlaid Bowl: $12.50

Flame Grain (Meerschaum Inlaid) $12.50

Export Pipes: $5.00-15 (According to grade)

All Briar (Briar Bit): $10.00

Flame Grain: $10.00

Fit Rite: $10.00

Silhouette: $10.00

Carburetor: $7.50

Relief Grain: $7.50

Chesterfield: $5.00-15 (According to grade)

Chinrester: $5.00-10 (According to grade)

Stembiter: $5.00-10 (According to grade)

Streamliner: $4.00-10 (According to grade)

Super Grain: $5.00

Carved Super Grain: $5.00

White Briar: $5.00

Standard: $4.00

Filter Plus: $4.00

Drinkless pup: $3.50

Drinkless Tuckaway: $3.50

Drinkless In-Between: $3.50

Two-Pipe Companion Setsb: $10.00-25 (According to grade)

Matched Grain Set (4-Pipes): $50.00

Matched Grain Set (7-Pipes): $125.00

Further reading on Pipedia under the general listing for Kaywoodie Pipes provided me with a magazine advertisement that included the All Briar pipes. It is a great Father’s Day Ad and the bottom items in the ad show the All Briar line. I have included both the link and a copy of the ad for your reading pleasure (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Kaywoodie)
The finish on the briar was clean and good but was a bit rough to touch from the time spent in storage. I polished it with micromesh sanding pads and wiped it down with a damp cloth after each pad. It really is a nice piece of wood. I decided to look on my other go to site – PipePhil (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-kaywoodie-1.html) to see what added information I might garner from his site. Under the Kaywoodie All Briar listing it said that the pipe had a twin-bore stem, meaning that instead of a slot in the button there were twin holes that formed a Y with the airway in the stem itself. The pipes were made between 1952 – 1955. It included a series of pictures of a typical briar Kaywoodie stem that showed a vertical hole near the button that was an innovation that they called Stembiter to prevent a stem biter from gnawing through the stem. The Stembiter innovation came out in the early 1950s as well so now I had confirmation of the period when the pipe was made. I have included an advertisement for the Stembiter innovation following the photo below. I know that at present I will not be able to reproduce this feature on the stem when I rework it.Now that I had a clear picture of the drilling and the function of the set up of the All Briar stem I polished it with micromesh as well. I dry sanded it with 1500-12000 grit pads and wiped it down after each sanding pad with a cloth impregnated with Obsidian Oil. After each pad the pipe stem took on new shine and depth. I also polished the oxidized aluminum four hole stinger at the same time. I polished the entirety with Before & After Pipe Stem polish – Fine and Extra Fine. I gave it a final rubdown of Obsidian Oil and let it sit to dry. I rubbed some Before & After Restoration Balm into the briar of the bowl and stem. I worked it into the surface with my fingertips. It works to clean, protect and preserve the briar and I figured this was a piece worthy of doing that! I let the Balm sit for 15 minutes and then buffed it off with a soft cotton cloth. The Balm seems to work magic with dry briar. With the polishing work done on the All Briar Kaywoodie Connoisseur Dublin, I put the pipe back together again and gave it a quick buff with Blue Diamond on the wheel and then gave the entire pipe multiple coats of Carnauba Wax. I buffed it with a clean buffing pad on the wheel and then a hand buff with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. It is a beautiful pipe. The grain and the lines of the pipe are eye catching. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 6 inches, Height: 2 inches, Outer Bowl Diameter: 1 3/8 inches, Chamber Diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 34 grams/1.16 ounces. This is one that I plan on adding to my own collection as it is a great addition. I am still undecided if I will fire it up and enjoy a smoke in it. We shall see. Thanks for walking through my meanderings as I worked on this old timer. Much appreciated!