Daily Archives: November 25, 2024

This Odd Looking Pipe Has Fins or maybe Feet – a Soren Hand-Carved Made in Denmark

by Steve Laug

This particular Freehand pipe was purchased as part of a lot from seller in Santa Cruz, California, USA on 05/28/24. It really is an odd Freehand pipe that combines a plateau rim top and shank end with feet like the fins of a rocket on the bottom making it a sitter. There is also a rusticated leaf on the left side of the shank toward the stem end. It is stamped on a smooth panel on underside of the shank and reads Soren [over] Hand-Carved [over] Made in Denmark. The finish is dirty but does not hide the beautiful grain around the bowl and shank. The pipe had a thick cake in the bowl and lava overflow on the rim top and inner edge of the bowl filling in some of the plateau. It is heavier toward the back half of the bowl. There was grime ground into the smooth finish and dust and debris in the plateau valleys on the shank end. The fancy vulcanite saddle was oxidized and had light tooth marks and chatter on both sides near the button. The pipe must have been a great smoker judging from the condition it came it. Jeff took photos of the pipe before he started his work on it. Jeff took photos of the rim top and the stem to show the condition of the pipe when we received it. You can see the cake in the bowl and the lava on the plateau rim top and inner edge of the bowl. The turned vulcanite stem was dirty and had light chatter and tooth marks on both sides near the button. He took photos of the sides and the heel to give an idea of the shape and the condition of the briar around the bowl. It really is a uniquely shaped pipe with the feet or fins on the bottom half of the bowl and the rusticated leaf on the left side of the shank. The next photos Jeff took shows the stamping on the underside of the shank. It is clear but faint and read as noted above. I needed to refresh my memory on the history and background of the Soren pipes so I went to a previous blog and reread what I had written. https://rebornpipes.com/2016/09/12/repairing-and-rejuvenating-a-soren-danish-freehand/. I quote from that blog post: I looked up the brand on Pipephil (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-s10.html) and found that the brand was carved by Søren Refbjerg Rasmussen. Pipes that he made for the European market were mostly stamped “Refbjerg” while those made for the US market were stamped “Soren”. Thus, I knew that one I was working on was imported into the US market.

I was once again working on a pipe made by Soren Refbjerg Rasmussen for the US market as it was stamped Soren. I continued to do reading on another of my go to websites, Pipedia. Here is the link for the article there. https://pipedia.org/wiki/Refbjerg. I quote some of the more pertinent information.

Søren Refbjerg Rasmussen founded a company in 1969, which employed an average of 8 – 12 craftsmen in the 1970’s. The semi-freehands they produced were traded under his prename Søren. Rasmussen himself finished only the very best pipes. So his way of pipemaking closely resembled the ways of Preben Holm, Karl Erik Ottendahl or Erik Nørding. Altogether more than 1,000,000 pipes were sold.

From that I knew that the pipe in my hands came from the 1970s. It bears the Soren signature stamp which also says that it was made for sale in the American pipe market. Armed with that information I turned my attention to restoring the pipe.

Jeff had cleaned up the pipe following his normal cleaning process. In short, he cleaned up the reaming with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He scrubbed the bowl with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap with a tooth brush. He worked over the lava and debris on the plateau rim top and shank end and was able to remove it. He rinsed it under running warm water to remove the soap and grime. He cleaned out the inside of the shank and the airway in the stem with alcohol, cotton swabs, shank brushes and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the stem with Soft Scrub and cotton pads to remove the debris and oils on the stem. He soaked it in Briarville’s Pipe Stem Deoxidizer. He rinsed it with warm water and dried it off. I took photos of the pipe once I received it. It really looked good. I took close up photos of the stem and the rim top to show both how clean they were and what needed to be addressed with both. The rim top and bowl still had some minor darkening on the plateau top and edges edge. The stem looked better and the tooth marks and chatter were still present. I would need to remove those to bring the stem back.I took a photo of the stamping on the underside of the shank. You can see from the photo that it is faint but readable. It is clearer on the top half of the stamp than the lower but it is still readable. I removed the stem from the bowl and took a photo of the parts to give a sense of the beauty of the pipe.I started my work on the pipe by polishing the briar with micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped the bowl down between pads to remove the sanding debris. By the final pad it was looking very good. The bowl was in such good condition after the clean up that I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the surface of the briar with my finger tips and a horse hair shoe brush to get into the crevices of the plateau and sandblast portions. The product is incredible and the way it brings the grain to the fore is unique. It works to clean, protect and invigorate the wood. I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. I sanded the stem with 320-3500 grit sanding pads to further smooth out the repairs. I wiped it down after each pad with an Obsidian Oil cloth. It was looking much better. I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding it 1500-12000 pads. I wiped it down with a damp cloth after each pad to remove the dust and polishing debris. I polished it with Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil and let it sit and absorb. I polished stem and bowl with Blue Diamond to polish out the remaining small scratches. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax and buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. I hand buffed it with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The pipe polished up pretty nicely. The plateau on the rim top and shank end and the smooth Dark and Medium brown contrast finish work very well with the black vulcanite stem. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. I have worked on several Soren pipes by Soren Refbjerg Rasmussen and several Refbjerg pipes over the years and I have always been impressed by his craftsmanship and ability to work a pipe to follow the grain of the briar. He does great work and is quite innovative in terms of shapes, flow and finishes on his pipes. The dimensions of this one are quite large but delicate at the same time. The Length: 7 inches, Height: 3 inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ½ inches wide and 2 inches long, Chamber diameter: 7/8 inches. The weight of the pipe is 79 grams/2.79 ounces. This one will be going on the Danish Pipemakers Section on the rebornpipes store. If you wish to add it to your collection let me know. It is a beauty! Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked over this Soren Freehand.

A Gold Star Diplomat 9486 from my Grandfather

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by Kenneth Lieblich

This pipe has a bit of a story to it. Every once in a while, I pull out a pipe from my late grandfather and clean it up. The pipe today is a charming hexagonal panelled billiard, with a square shank, and a straight square stem. I do not know where my grandfather acquired it (or under what circumstances), so I asked my father but he didn’t know either. It doesn’t really seem like the sort of pipe he would have selected, so I wonder if it was given to him. After my grandfather died, his pipes ended up wrapped in newspaper, in a cardboard box, in a basement – as so many grandfather’s pipes do. In this case, it was the basement of my parents’ home. About fifteen years ago, my parents had a small flood and this box (along with several others) got wet and stayed wet for a long time. This had ramifications… The pipe’s markings on the left side of the shank read Gold Star [over] Diplomat. On the right side, they read London England [over] 9486. Also, on the stem, there is a star enclosing the letters GS.Very little information turned up about the brand, Gold Star. Nothing from Pipedia. Over at Pipephil, they had the following:This suggested to me that the pipe was a Sasieni sub-brand. Crucially, however, Pipephil also included this line:

The pipes temporarily gathered under the “Gold Star” label obviously aren’t from the same maker.

This was important to me, because the shape number, 9486, didn’t seem to correspond to anything that Sasieni made. So, I did some sleuthing and figured out that, in fact, the name Gold Star was also produced by GBD. This did fit, and I found some examples of GBD 9486 online, including this one (among others) from Iwan Ries’ website:Clearly, my grandfather’s pipe was one of these and I can confirm that both Sasieni and GBD (at least) made the Gold Star name. I am pleased to say that this post has added that small tidbit to the collective knowledge of pipe making in the twentieth century.

Anyway, on to the pipe – and this poor pipe had some issues. Sitting in moist newspaper for as long as it did had some very negative effects. I don’t remember the crack on the shank being there in the past and I wonder if the water induced stresses in the wood that caused the crack. There were other small fissures in the bowl, I don’t think they were flood-related. Another problem related to the water was the colour of the wood – any staining this pipe had was long gone. Finally, as I was examining the pipe, I didn’t realize it in the moment, but the yellow stem would prove to be the biggest problem of them all. The effect of water on vulcanite stems is well known, but stems don’t normally sit in water for an extended period of time. Aside from the above, the stummel had the following problems: lava on the rim, charring to the rim, some cake in the bowl, and a few substantial fills. Meanwhile, the stem had its own set of problems (besides its colour): tooth marks and scratches, and a filthy stinger. The stinger was first on my list. It went for a soak in some lemon-infused isopropyl alcohol. I let it set for several hours and then cleaned it off and it looked much improved. I then finished it with some 0000-grit steel wool and moved on.I wiped down the outside of the stem with oil soap on some cotton pads. That did next to nothing. I took my BIC lighter and painted the stem with its flame. This helped a bit, but not much. Then, I cleaned out the insides with pipe cleaners and isopropyl alcohol.Now it was time to remove the horrific yellow on the stem. I used some cream cleanser on the outside to remove the oxidation. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. Then, the stem went for an overnight soak in the Pipe Stem Oxidation Remover. The following day, I cleaned the de-oxidizing mess off with alcohol, pipe cleaners, et cetera. I scrubbed again with cream cleanser on some cotton pads to remove the leftover oxidation. This worked only so well. I put the stem down, thought about it for a while, and decided to repeat that entire procedure: scrub with cream cleanser, soak overnight, and scrub with cream cleanser. This made the stem so much better than before, but still not great. Steve reminded me of an additional technique to try: soaking in Oxyclean. Again, this helped a bit, but it was just not going to be enough. This stem was definitely improved, but would always show the signs of its time in the water.I then used all nine Micromesh pads (1,500 through 12,000 grit) on the stem to make it look as good as possible. I also used Obsidian Pipe Stem Oil in between each pad scrubbing.On to the stummel. I used the KleenReem to remove the built-up cake, and followed that with 220-grit sandpaper to remove as much as I could. I wanted to take the bowl down to bare briar to ensure there were no hidden flaws in the walls of the bowl. Fortunately, there were none. I then proceeded to clean out the insides of the shank with cotton swabs, pipe cleaners, and isopropyl alcohol. There was quite a bit of filth inside this stummel – it took many pipe cleaners et cetera to clean it out.I decided that a de-ghosting session would be a good idea. I thrust cotton balls into the bowl and the shank and saturated them with 99% isopropyl alcohol. I let the stummel sit overnight. This caused the oils, tars and smells to leach out into the cotton. I followed that up by cleaning the insides with some Castile soap and tube brushes. I then moved on to cleaning the outside of the stummel with oil soap and some cotton pads. That removed any remaining dirt. The bowl was nice and clean after this. Having completed that, I was able to address the crack on the shank and the nicks on the bowl. This took some careful work. I filled the crack and the tiny divots with cyanoacrylate adhesive then let them cure. Now, with the nicks and crack filled, it was time to sand down the stummel. I used all nine Micromesh pads (1,500 through 12,000 grit) to sand everything smooth. Much improved. I felt that this pipe really needed a bit of colour – it had lost it during the flood. However, I only wanted a light stain. So I made a very dilute mixture of leather dye and alcohol. This didn’t really work well, so, instead, I simply put a drop (literally) at a time on my dauber and gently coated the wood with theat. I flamed it with my Bic lighter and let it sit overnight. Upon the morrow, I used isopropyl alcohol to wipe down the pipe and remove excess stain. I am very happy with the results.After that, a light application of Before & After Restoration Balm brought out the best in the stummel’s grain. What a difference that made! Then it was off for a trip to the buffer. A dose of White Diamond and a few coats of carnauba wax were just what this pipe needed. The lovely shine made the wood look great. This Gold Star Diplomat 9486 panelled billiard has an elegant feel to it. It took a lot of work – and the results were not exactly what I had hoped for – but I am proud of it and the final product is (hopefully) worthy of my beloved grandfather’s memory. Obviously, this is one pipe that I am keeping for myself and adding to my collection. I hope you enjoyed reading the story of this pipe as much I as I did restoring it. The approximate dimensions of the pipe are as follows: length 5⅛ in. (130 mm); height 1½ in. (39 mm); bowl diameter 1¼ in. (32 mm); chamber diameter ¾ in. (19 mm). The weight of the pipe is 1 oz. (31 g). 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.