by Steve Laug

Last week I received an email from my local pipe shop about a pipe that a customer brought in with a plugged airway in the bowl. I wrote and we arranged to have the pipe dropped off for me to work on. It was a small Bent Billiard that was stamped Savoy in an oval on the left side of the shank and the shape number 710 on the right side. Joe from the pipe shop said he thought it had a filter broken off in the shank. We looked at it in the sunlight and I could not tell. When I took it to the worktable I used a bright light to examine the shank further. It was dirty but I could see that the shank had a sump like a Peterson’s bowl and that the airway was drilled at the top of the sump. There was no broken filter in the shank and the pipe was not drilled for one. The shank was plugged in the airway rather than the sump. Now I knew what I needed to do. I fit a small drill bit in the chuck of my cordless drill. I set the drill at a slow speed and pushed the bit through the clog in the airway. It was open. You can see the “crud” on the place mat under the bowl. The plug was composed of rock-hard tars and oils. I cleaned up the bowl with 220 grit sandpaper wrapped around a piece of dowel. There was not much cake in the bowl and it was obvious that it had been recently reamed.The inside edge of the rim was damaged from the reaming and was slightly out of round. I used a piece of folded 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the edge a bit.I cleaned out the shank and airway in the pipe with 99% isopropyl alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners – both bristle and regular. It had been cleaned somewhere along the way so I removed the remaining debris from drilling out the clogged airway. I took the bowl to the buffer and buffed it with multiple coats of carnauba wax to protect the briar and give it a shine. I buffed it with a clean buffing pad to polish the wax. I then buffed it by hand with a microfibre cloth to deepen the shine. It is ready to go back to the pipe shop to be reunited with its stem. Here is the finished bowl.