Daily Archives: April 21, 2024

Repairing and restoring a Kaywoodie Campus Apple

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Blog by Steve Laug

Last week I received a text from Robert about restoring three pipes his brother had found in Eastern New York. There were two Kaywoodies and a Churchill. The Kaywoodies included a small apple stamped Campus and an octagonal pipe stamped Kaywoodie Standard. The Churchill 999 Pot shaped pipe. He sent along two photos of the pipes. You can see the condition of the three pipes. They are dirty and worn. The last pipe in the photo, the Campus has what appears to be a broken shank and a potential repair. It looks to be poorly done. Robert said that he was fairly certain that the stem was glued onto the shank with the repair. On Saturday he brought the pipes by for me to look at. The Churchill 999 Pot and the Kaywoodie Standard Oxagonal billiard were dirty but were in good repair. The one that got my attention was the little Campus with the cracked shank. I looked it over carefully and Robert was correct it appeared that the stem had been glued in the shank and it was overclocked. The repair was odd. It appeared that half of the shank that fit the depth of the metal threaded insert had cracked completely off. It had been repaired with what appeared to be white wood glue. It did not fit well and there were gaps on the top and bottom side as shown in the photos. There was also a moderated cake in the bowl with tobacco debris. There was some lava on the rim top that was quite thick but the inner and outer edge looked very good. The finish was dirty but otherwise showed some nice grain underneath. The stem was overclocked and dirty with light tooth chatter on both sides ahead of the button. I have seen other Kaywoodie Campus pipes but other than a faint memory was not clear where they fit in the line and when they were made. I turned to Pipephil’s site to refresh my memory and see what he had on the brand (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-kaywoodie-1.html). I did a screen capture of the pertinent section and have included the side bar information below the photo.The Campus Kaywoodie line was introduced in 1957 and these pipes do not bear the 2 digit shape code. Campus and Colt series are Kaywoodies smallest pipes (to be smoked between two classes). Although the Campus pipes have a Synchro Stem like screw-in attachment, the stinger itself is not of the Drinkless type (see enlarged view #2 – http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/lightbox/images/next.png)

I learned that the line was introduced in 1957 and did not have any shape numbers. The pipes were designed on the small side to give a quick smoke between classes on campus. The tenon/stinger was not a typical Drinkless type but the fit to the stem was the same threaded type of attachment. From that I knew that I was working on an older pipe.

Now it was time to work on the pipe. I started my work on the pipe by seeing if I could loosen the stem from the shank. I used a cotton swab to push acetone into the cracked area and the metal fitment on the shank. I repeated the process then soaked a cotton pad and wrapped it around the shank connection. I let it sit for 30 minutes while I worked on another pipe.I once again tried to turn the stem on the shank and it easily came free of the shank. The threads were very dirty but I could see no glue visible on the threads. I took some pictures of the shank repair at this point in the process. You can see how the white glue that filled in the cracks around the shank had begun to dissolve showing the damage clearly in the shank fit.I soaked the crack with more acetone using a q-tip. It did not take much for the broken piece to come free of the shank. I took a photo of the pipe at this point. You can see the cracked portion still glued to the metal insert in the shank. You can also see the grime in the threads of the tenon and in the ridges on the insert. It is dirty.I soaked the broken piece of briar in a small bowl of acetone to loosen the briar from the metal shank insert. It did not take long for the glue to soften on the shank piece and it floated free of the metal insert. I cleaned up the broken pieces of the briar and glued it in place on the shank. I pressed the parts together until the glue set. Once the repair cured I cleaned up the shank insert and painted the surface with wood glue then pressed it into the shank end. I let it sit until the glue hardened.I filled in the divots and cracked areas in the shank end with clear CA glue and briar dust to build up a smooth surface on the shank end. I sanded the repairs with 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the surface.I used a rasp to reduce the size of the metal insert edge and the high spots on the briar of the shank in preparation for fitting it with a repair band to bind everything together. I sanded out the file marks on the briar. Once I had it smooth enough for fitting the band I fit the band on the shank end and heated it with the flame of a lighter. I pressed it against a hard surface to push it fully onto the shank end. I took photos of the newly fitted band on the shank and it looked very good. Now it is time to clean up the pipe. I reamed the bowl with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife and took the cake back to bare briar. I sanded the bowl walls with 220 grip sandpaper wrapped around a piece of dowel. I smoothed them out and the bowl walls looked very good. There was no heat damage or checking on the walls.I scrubbed out the shank with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and alcohol. I had already done this to some degree when I had the pipe in parts earlier but I wanted to clean it up further. I also swabbed out the inside of the bowl with a folded pipe cleaner to remove the dust. I cleaned out the inside of the stem with pipe cleaners and alcohol.Quite awhile ago now, Mark Hoover of Before & After Restoration Balm fame sent me a sample of his briar cleaner. When it arrived it had leaked all over the package so there was very little left in the bottle. It was a mess to clean up so I just set it aside where it has been sitting for several years now. I thought I might as well scrub the briar with it. I scrubbed it down with a tooth brush and rinsed it off with some warm running water. I dried it off with a soft cloth. It looked much better. I touched up the stain on the rim top and around the end of the newly place band with a Cherry stain pen.I polished the briar with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down after each sanding pad with a damp cloth to remove the sanding debris on the surface. I rubbed the bowl down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the surface of the briar with my fingertips to clean, enliven and protect it. I let the balm sit for a little while and then buffed with a cotton cloth and shoe brush to raise the shine. I set the bowl aside and turned to address the stem issues. To address the scratches and marks in the surface of the vulcanite as well as some residual oxidation. I sanded it with 320-3500 grit sanding pads. I wiped it down after each sanding pad with a damp cloth. By the final 3500 grit sanding pad the rim top had a shine.The stem was in good condition to 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 Kaywoodie Campus Saddle Stem Apple cleaned up really well and looks very good. The Before & After Restoration Balm brought the colours and grain out in the finish on the pipe. It works well with the polished vulcanite saddle stem. I put the stem back on the bowl and carefully buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel using a light touch on the briar. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel. I followed that by buffing the entire pipe with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished Kaywoodie Campus Saddle Stem Apple fits nicely in the hand and I think it will feel great as it heats up with a good tobacco. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 ½ inches, Height: 1 ¼ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 inch, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is .81 ounces/23 grams. I know Robert is going to enjoy this pipe once I return it to him with the other pipes he dropped off. Thanks for reading this blog and my reflections on the pipe while I worked on it. m

Experiments with Pipe Mud

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Blog by Kenneth Lieblich

Welcome to another exciting episode of Kenneth Provides Solutions to Problems That Don’t Exist! In other words, it’s another installment of my Pipe Incident Reports. The idea, in general, is to provide a brief write-up – focusing on a particular pipe-restoration-related issue – rather than an entire restoration story. Today I’m conducting a detailed examination of the issue of pipe mud (aka pipe mortar, pipe plaster, pipe cement, etc.). Heretofore, the standard for pipe mud has simply been cigar ash mixed with a bit of water. This is what Steve uses and, undoubtedly, many, many other pipe men have used it over the years. Here is a link to an article Steve wrote about it and here is a link to an article Fred Hanna wrote about pipe mud, back when Adam was a boy.

The pipe ash mud is useful and simple, but could there be better mixtures? Maybe. The Pipes Magazine forums have a very interesting discussion on the use of ash in pipe mud and I recommend reading it here. What I have written below is absolutely not the first word on pipe mud (and it certainly won’t be the last). I am delving into only a small part of the world of mud.

Before we go any further, let’s answer this question for the uninitiated: what is pipe mud used for? There are several uses, but the most common for me include (1) filling in micro-fissures from heat damage in the walls of a pipe bowl, and (2) lifting the heel of a bowl in order to ensure that it’s more closely in line with the draught hole. For these purposes, we need a material that is simple to make, easy to manipulate, and – once it has dried and set – inert, safe, and hard.

I’ve set myself the challenge of testing several different mixes of pipe mud – in this case, only based on plaster of Paris. I also made a batch with cigar ash, as a control. For the engineers and other scientists reading this article, please know that I have no scientific background and I am not equipped to conduct scientifically accurate tests of compressive (or tensile) strength at my home. However, I’ve done my best to eliminate as many variables in the tests as is reasonable, and I’ve attempted to test the compressive strength of the muds by comparison (and without having access to methods of testing through numbers). Given the disparity in results (and, quite frankly, the frivolity of the project), this proved to be quite sufficient for my needs. The idea for testing mud came to my mind after watching a YouTube video with a particular recipe for what the creator called ‘pipe mortar’. I’ve used it once or twice — it was fine, but nothing special. I’ll discuss its contents in a moment, but as soon as I mentioned it to Steve, he had some issues with it. I also chatted with John Young of NebraskaPeteGeek about it and he also had issues.I first set about making the control mud with cigar ash. I burned a small cigar by Schimmelpenninck until it was fully ashen. I then mixed it with a few drops of water to make a paste and let it set. For reference, I used distilled water in all of the muds – not because I think distilled water is required in any way to make this stuff, but just to eliminate a variable in my production. It’s important to know that ‘hardened’ pipe mud (made with cigar ash) is NOT very hard until the pipe has been smoked several times. It is the oils and tars from the tobacco that actually harden this type of mud.I’m not going to belabour my description of the recipes or the results. The first recipe below comes from the YouTube video I mentioned above. I’m giving all recipes a letter name for ease of reference.

A: cigar ash, drops of water (sorry I don’t have precise amounts for this one)
B: 1.0g of plaster of Paris, 0.5g of salt, 0.6g of activated charcoal, 12 drops of water.Recipe B is the one that Steve and John talked to me about. The creator says that the salt helps in strengthening his ‘mortar’. Steve’s concern is that salt isn’t great for the wood. It can cause tiny fissures, etc. to expand – this is also one of the reasons why Steve and I do not use salt in de-ghosting pipes. Anyway, the amount of salt involved is very small, so I don’t know if this has any effect or not. John, who has a background in chemistry, added that the salt wouldn’t be doing much in the hydrated calcium sulfate reaction. His view was that the salt is unnecessary.

Here are the other recipes:

C: 1.0g of plaster of Paris, 8 drops of water.
D: 1.0g of plaster of Paris, one drop of white glue, 8 drops of water.
E: 1.0g of plaster of Paris, one drop of wood glue, 8 drops of water.
F: 1.0g of plaster of Paris, 0.5g of salt (pulverized), 9 drops of water. In case you’re wondering why I tested both white glue and wood glue, it is because I didn’t realize that they were both polyvinyl acetates. Anyway, in producing the four muds above, I didn’t do a great job of keeping the shape of the samples similar to each other. However, I don’t think this had an overly negative effect on the results at this stage. Definitely the worst of the four in compressive strength was F (similar to B). The middling mixture was C. The best were D and E. I’m giving the edge to E overall, but the difference between the two might just be in my head. They both had good hardness and compressive strength. I have some fine results, but there is an aesthetic problem: the best mud is white! It’s not the end of the world, but it doesn’t look great on the inside of a pipe one has just restored. A new test was in order. I made two new batches of E – but I added activated charcoal to one of them. These recipes look like this:

E: 1.0g of plaster of Paris, one drop of wood glue, 8 drops of water.
G: 1.0g of plaster of Paris, 0.6g of activated charcoal, one drop of wood glue, 9 drops of water.
For this test, I made a much better attempt to have the same shape of mud – a sort of cylinder. The result of the compressive strength test here was definitive: E was notably better. This was no surprise to John. He commented that the charcoal would weaken the structure of the plaster, as it would interfere with (rather than adhere to) the crystalline structure.One thing that I did not test – but probably should have – is mixing pipe ash with plaster of Paris and water. However, given the above results, I expect that it would also be inferior to E.

Here is my (slightly strange) conclusion: although E (perhaps along with D) was hardest and strongest, I am not advocating for YOU to use any particular pipe mud. I have my own thoughts on which mud is best for my work, but my opinion isn’t worth a hill of beans. My goal here is to present my amateurish results, hopefully for your benefit – and that’s it. It is your task now to take the results and do with them as you wish. Special thanks to Steve Laug and John Young for their words of wisdom.

If you make use of these results in your pipe work, please let me know how it goes. I would also be interested to know if you have a different pipe mud recipe you recommend. I hope you enjoyed reading this installment of the Pipe Incident Report – I look forward to writing more. If you are interested in 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.

Life for a Savinelli Italy Coral Finished Bing Billiard with a Specialty Sterling Band

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Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table has one of my favourite finishes – a deeply rusticated one with what appears to have originally been a natural finished. We purchased this one from an estate on 03/21/2024 from a fellow in Oregon City, Oregon, USA. It is a Savinelli rustication that really looks like a classic Capri Root Briar. The coral like rustication around the bowl and shank was filled in with dust and debris. The natural finish was dirty and the high spots are darkened by hand oils and grime ground into briar. The pipe was stamped on underside of the shank. It is stamped Savinelli followed by Italy. There is no shape number on the shank but the style is much like a Bing Crosby Pipe. The Sterling Silver Band on the shank has 925 in an oval followed by SA113. On the topside it is etched Le Mie Pipe over AS underlined in script. There was a thick cake in the bowl and lava overflow on the inner edges and the rim top. The vulcanite stem was oxidized and had tooth marks and chatter ahead of the button on both sides. Jeff took photos of the pipe to show its general condition before he did his cleanup. As I mentioned above the exterior of the pipe was very dirty – grime and grit ground in from years of use and sitting. The rim top was covered with a thin coat of lava that overflowed from the thick cake in the bowl. The rim edges looked quite good with no damage. The stem was dirty, calcified and oxidized with tooth chatter and marks on the top and underside of the stem at the button. Jeff took photos of the sides and the heel of the bowl to give a better feel for the condition of the briar around the bowl. It is a great looking piece of briar with a deep coral style rustication. The next photo shows the stamping on the heel of the bowl and the underside of the shank. It is very readable and reads as noted above.Jeff also took photos of the stamping on the Sterling Silver band. The top of the band on the shank reads as noted above – Le Mie Pipe over AS signature line. The underside of the is stamped 925 in an oval followed by SA113. I wrote my brother Jeff to see if I had spelled what I read on the stamping correctly. He sent me a response to my question affirming that I had spelled it correctly and also included a link that he had found while Googling for Le Mei pipes. It took him to a listing on Smokingpipes.com that defined the stamping and gave some context for it pipes made by Savinelli (https://www.smokingpipes.com/pipes/estate/italy/moreinfo.cfm?product_id=370851). I quote below from Jeff’s email with the info he found on the site:

Le Mie means “mine” in Italian. On smoking pipes.com, it talks about Savinelli Le Mie pipes. According to this, it says that the favorite finish of Achille Savinelli was said to be a rugged, coral-like rustication, but his preferred pipe to wear such a finish was an understated, long-stemmed, straight billiard. That being the case, when the marque made a series of briars in his honor, Le Mie, meaning “mine” in Italian, that’s precisely what was made. This piece also wears a handsome, silver accent band that displays the founder’s signature. — Angela Robertson

Now I knew what the stamping on the band meant – it is a pipe made in honour of Achille Savinelli. It was made in his preferred shape and with his favourite coral finish and a silver band with his signature. Hence, it is stamped MY PIPE (Le Mie). Armed with that information I turned to work on the pipe itself. 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 some close up photos of the rim top and the stem surface. I wanted to show what cleaned bowl and rim top looked like. The rim top and the inner and outer edges of the bowl were in excellent condition. The top of the bowl was in good condition. I also took close up photos of the stem to show the tooth marks and the remaining oxidation on the stem surface. I took a photo\s of the stamping on the underside of the shank and it is clear and readable. It is stamped as noted above. I removed the stem for the shank and took a photo of the bowl and stem to give a picture of what it looked like. The remaining oxidation is very visible.I rubbed the bowl down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the surface of the briar with my fingertips and a horse hair shoe brush to clean, enliven and protect it. I let the balm sit for a little while and then buffed with a cotton cloth and shoe brush to raise the shine. I set the bowl aside and turned to work on the stem. I touched up the golf club and ball logo stamp on the left side of the taper stem with a white acrylic fingernail polish. Once it cured I scraped off the excess polish and polished around it with a worn micromesh 1500 grit sanding pad. I took a photo of the whitened stamp.    I wiped down the stem with some Soft Scrub to remove the remaining oxidation on the stem. I worked very well to remove what remained.The stem was in good condition to 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. The stem was a filter stem drilled for 6mm filters. I fitted the tenon with a new Vauen 6mm filter so it is ready for the next owner to load and enjoy.This Savinelli Le Mie Pipe (My Pipe) Achilles Savinelli signed Crosby Billiard cleaned up really well and looks very good. The Before & After Restoration Balm brought the colours and grain out in the rusticated finish on the pipe. It works well with the polished vulcanite taper stem. I put the stem back on the bowl and carefully buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel using a light touch on the briar. I gave the bowl multiple coats of Conservator’s Wax and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel. I followed that by buffing the entire pipe with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished Savinellil Le Mie Pipe Crosby Billiard fits nicely in the hand and I think it will feel great as it heats up with a good tobacco. The tactile finish will add to the experience. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 6 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 1.16 ounces/33 grams. If you are interested in carrying the previous pipeman’s legacy with this pipe send me a message or an email. I will be adding it to the rebornpipes store in the Italian Pipe Makers Section. Thanks for reading this blog and my reflections on the pipe while I worked on it.