Daily Archives: March 16, 2024

Restoring a E 250 F/T Dunhill Shell Billiard

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Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table is one that showed up in the mail this week from a friend, Eric in Ontario. I sent him a message and got some background on the pipe. He purchased it from a small shop in his town and wanted me to restore it or as he said “Work my magic on it”. I have worked on quite a few of his pipes so I was not surprised. The pipe is a Dunhill Shell with a rugged sandblast finish. The pipe is stamped on the heel of the bowl and the underside of the shank on a smooth panel. On the heel it is stamped with the shape number E 250 F/T followed by Dunhill Shell followed by Made in England with no date stamp. Underneath the full stamp above it is stamped Patent No 417574/34. The pipe had been smoked and there was a moderate cake in the bowl with a light lava overflow in the sandblast on the rim top. There was a chip at the back of the bowl near the rim edge. The stem is oxidized and had light tooth marks on both the top and underside of the stem just ahead of the button. I took photos of the pipe before I started his clean up work. I have included them below. I took photos of the rim top, bowl and the surfaces of the stem to give a sense of the condition of the pipe. The rim top has some lava in the surface filling in the sandblast. The walls of the bowl had a moderate cake on them. The stem is oxidized and has light tooth marks on both sides ahead of the button.I took photos of the stamping on the underside of the bowl and the shank. It is clear and readable and read as noted above.  I took the pipe apart and took a photo of the parts to give a sense of what the pipe looked like.I turned to the dating key on Pipephil’s site (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/cledat-en1a.html) to establish a date for the pipe. I drew a red box around the pertinent information below. It fits the criteria of a Sandblast Dunhill stamping aligned with Shell. There was no suffix which puts it under 1950 which makes the pipe a 1950.Now it was my turn to work on the pipe. Armed with the facts that I am dealing with a 1950 Dunhill Shell pipe. I started my work on the pipe by reaming the bowl with a PipNet pipe reamer to take the cake back to bare walls. I followed that by using a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife to scrape back the remnants of the cake back to briar. I finished my cleanup of the walls by sanding it with 220 grit sandpaper wrapped around a piece of dowel. I used a brass bristle brush to clean up the rim top. I took photos of the bowl and the rim top as well as both sides of the stem to show the condition of the pipe before I started my work. It really looked remarkably good. I used pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and isopropyl alcohol to clean out the tars and oils in the airway in the shank and the stem. I also cleaned the outside and inside of the aluminum inner tube in the shank and tenon. The internals were quite dirty but cleaned up very well. I scrubbed the grime and oils off the briar on the sandblasted briar with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush. The briar looked much cleaner. I worked over the grime and tars on the rim top at the same time and was able to remove much of the build up. The bowl is beginning to take on a fresh look. I used some briar dust and clear CA glue to repair the chipped area on the back of the bowl edge. I built it up and once cured I used a brass bristle wire brush to knock of the high spots on the repair and blend it into the surrounding sandblast surface.I touched up the rim top, edges and the repaired area with a Walnut stain pen. The colour blends in very well with the colour of the surrounding briar.I rubbed the bowl down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the surface of the smooth briar with my fingertips and into the sandblast with a shoe brush. The product works to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I let the balm sit for 15 minutes and then buffed with a cotton cloth to raise the shine. Mark Hoover’s Balm is a product that I have come to appreciate and one I use on every pipe I have been working on. I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. Once I had it open I turned to work on the outside of the stem and remove the oxidation on the stem surface. I used some Soft Scrub cleanser to scrub of the oxidation on the stem surface. Once finished it looked much better.I started polishing the stem with 320-3500 grit sanding pads. It was great to see the shine really deepen on the vulcanite.I polished the vulcanite with micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. I used Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine to further polish the stem. I had cleaned up the inner tube and with the stem polished and ready I reinserted the tube in the tenon.This 1950 Dunhill Shell E 250F F/T Billiard has a beautiful, unique Dunhill Sandblast finish that is very deep and craggy. The rich brown/black finish highlights some great grain around the bowl and shank. It has some great rugged sandblast that Dunhill developed and specialized in making. The polished vulcanite taper stem adds to the mix. I put the stem back on the bowl and carefully buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel. It is critical to avoid buffing the stamping and to have a lighter touch on the sandblast briar. I gave the bowl multiple coats of Conservator’s Wax and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing it with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished Dunhill Shell E 250 F/T Billiard is quite stunning and feels great in my hand. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 ½ inches, Height: 1 ½ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 inch, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is .95 ounces/27 grams. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked over another beautiful pipe. I am going to be sending it back to Eric in Ontario later this week. I look forward to hearing what he thinks of it. Thanks for your time.

Restoring a Dunhill Shell Briar 4110 Liverpool

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Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table is a unique one and I think it is an older one. We purchased it from our contact in Copenhagen, Denmark 02/11/24. The pipe is a Shell Briar with a rugged sandblast finish. The pipe is stamped on the heel of the bowl and the underside of the shank on a smooth panel. On the heel it is stamped with the shape number 4110 followed by Dunhill in an oval.  Next to that it is stamped Shell Briar [over] Made in England 30. The 30 is the date stamp. The pipe had been smoked and there was a light cake in the bowl with no lava overflow in the sandblast on the rim top. The stem is lightly oxidized and had light tooth marks on both the top and underside of the stem just ahead of the button. Jeff took photos of the pipe before he started his clean up work. I have included them below. Jeff took photos of the rim top, bowl and the surfaces of the stem to give a sense of the condition of the pipe. The walls of the bowl had a light cake on them. The stem is lightly oxidized and has tooth marks on both sides ahead of the button. He took photos of the sides and heel of the bowl to give a clear picture of the depth of the sandblast. It really is a great looking blast that shows the grain underneath very well.  He took photos of the stamping on the underside of the bowl and the shank. It is clear and readable and read as noted above. I turned to the dating key on Pipephil’s site (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/cledat-en1a.html) to establish a date for the pipe. I drew a red box around the pertinent information below. It fits the criteria of a Sandblast with a year suffix and a Non possessive form Dunhill. The suffix is the number 30 which puts in the section below which notes 1960 + suffix to establish a date. In this case it is 1960 +30 making the pipe a 1990.From there I turned to the Dunhill shape chart to unpack the shape number stamp 4110 on the heel of the bowl (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/shapes.html). This gave me the information I needed to interpret the 4110 shape stamp. The first digit 4 is the size of the pipe – a Group 4. The second digit is the style of the stem which in this case is a 1 telling me that the stem is a tapered stem. The last two digits the 10 tell me that the pipe is a Liverpool. I have included the shape below and encircled it with a red box.Now it was my turn to work on the pipe. Jeff had done an amazing cleanup of the pipe. He reamed the light cake with a PipNet reamer and cleaned up that with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He scrubbed the internals of the bowl and stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the externals with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap and rinsed the bowl off with running water. He soaked the stem in Briarville’s Pipe stem Deoxidizer and once it had soaked rinsed it off with warm water to remove the residual solution. He dried it off and rubbed it down to remove any oxidation that was still on the stem. The pipe looked very good when I received it. I took photos of the bowl and the rim top as well as both sides of the stem to show the condition of the pipe before I started my work. It really looked remarkably good.I took a photo of the stamping on the shank. The photo of the stamping is clear and readable. I also removed the stem and took a photo of the parts of the pipe. It is a unique piece of pipe history.The bowl was in such good condition that I had to do some minimal work with it. I rubbed the briar down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the briar with my fingertips and a horsehair shoe brush to work it into the nooks and crannies of the sandblast finish. The product works to clean, enliven and preserve the briar. I let it sit for 10 minutes then I buffed it with a cotton cloth to deepen the shine. The briar really comes alive with the balm. I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. I sanded the surface of the stem smooth with 320-3500 grit sanding pads. It worked well to smooth things out and remove remnants of oxidation. When finished the stem looked much better.I polished the vulcanite with micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. I used Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine to further polish the stem. This 1990 Dunhill Shell Briar 4110 Liverpool has a beautiful, unique Dunhill Sandblast finish that is very deep and craggy. The rich brown/black finish highlights some great grain around the bowl and shank. It has some great rugged sandblast that Dunhill developed and specialized in making. The polished vulcanite taper stem adds to the mix. I put the stem back on the bowl and carefully buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel. It is critical to avoid buffing the stamping and to have a lighter touch on the sandblast briar. I gave the bowl multiple coats of Conservator’s Wax and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing it with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished Dunhill Shell Briar Liverpool is quite stunning and feels great in my hand. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 ½ inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 1.41 ounces/40 grams. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked over another beautiful pipe. I am going to add it to the rebornpipes store in the British Pipemakers Section. If you would like to add it to your collection let me know. Thanks for your time.

Cleaning Up a Charming Rossi Featherweight Acorn

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by Kenneth Lieblich

A fine gentleman from Washington contacted me recently and asked if I would restore some pipes for him. Of course, I was only too happy to oblige. This is the first of the four, and it’s the only one that doesn’t have major issues. This is a Rossi Featherweight 44P acorn pipe. It’s a pretty little pipe and I’m sure will serve its owner well. The markings on the pipe were clear and sharp. On the left-hand side of the shank, read Nino Rossi [over] 1886 – and to the right of that, a star. On the right side of the shank was the word Featherweight. On the underside of the shank, was 44P and, to the right of that, at 90 degrees, was the word Italy. On the stem was a stylized letter N. Rossi was founded by Ferdinando Rossi, in Italy, as Fabbrica di Pipe di Radica Rossi. The company dates from the mid-to-late 19th century. I would encourage you to read the Pipedia article on the company – there’s quite a bit of information: https://pipedia.org/wiki/Rossi. The article includes an important detail regarding this particular pipe:

From, approximatively, seventies, until 1985, Rossi pipes were marked with “ROSSI”, into an oval (sometimes there was also “ITALY” on the shank); on the stem, there was “ROSSI”. In these years, appeared the signature “Nino Rossi” (in cursive font): he was the last heir of the factory.

From this point, we can deduce that this pipe is from the 1970s or ‘80s. Here is in an image capture from Pipephil:The pipe was in good condition and just needed some TLC to bring it back to working order. The stem was a bit dirty and thoroughly oxidized. The stummel was in decent shape, but it had a strange residue on the rim. I’d need to look into that more closely. First, I cleaned out the inside of the stem with pipe, cleaners and some lemon infused 99% isopropyl alcohol. It was pretty dirty, but not too terrible. I was more concerned about the oxidation, which was pretty heavy. I scrubbed it down with some SoftScrub cleanser and then tossed it in my deoxidizing fluid to sit overnight. The next day, I managed to scrub off even more oxidation with more SoftScrub. Before sanding the stem, I took out some nail polish and made sure to add it to the stylized N on the left side of the stem. I let that dry before moving on.I also repaired a few small nicks in the stem with some black cyanoacrylate adhesive and let it cure. That done, I proceeded to sand down the stem with my nine micromesh sanding pads. I also used some pipe stem oil during the sanding to bring out some extra lustre and beautify the stem. Just like the stem, I cleaned out the insides of the stummel with pipe, cleaners, cotton swabs, and alcohol. Took a bit of work, but I got it clean. In order to sort out the stuff stuck to the rim, I took a piece of machine metal and gently scraped it away, not wanting to do any more invasive work than I needed to. It came away reasonably easily and I carried on. I then set it up for a de-ghosting session. I put some cotton balls in the bowl and in the shank and saturated them with 99% isopropyl alcohol. I let that sit overnight to allow all of the lingering smells and stains leach out into the cotton. After that it was much improved. I wiped it down with some Murphy’s and finished up by scrubbing the insides with soap, and some tube brushes. I sanded down the stummel with my micromesh pads to make it smooth and lovely. Of course, I added some of my restoration balm to the wood and let it sit for 20 minutes or so. BUT, there was a bit of a problem. The sanding and application of balm revealed some mottling on the surface of the briar. Clearly, there was some remnants of an old lacquer or shellac. It looked awful and I couldn’t let it be. I couldn’t get rid of it with any solvents, so, unfortunately, I had to re-sand the whole thing. That worked and it looked much improved.Finally, I applied some another batch of Before & After Restoration Balm and buffed it with a microfiber cloth. This balm does beautiful things to the wood and really generates a beautiful shine. I then took the pipe to my bench polisher and buffed it with White Diamond and a few coats of carnauba wax. Wow – the pipe really looks lovely.This Nino Rossi Featherweight 44P acorn will suit my friend in Washington very well and I’m sure that he will appreciate smoking it for many years to come. I hope you enjoyed reading the story of this pipe as much I as I did restoring it. If you are interested in more of my work, please follow me here on Steve’s website or email me directly at kenneth@knightsofthepipe.com. Thank you very much for reading and, as always, I welcome and encourage your comments.