Daily Archives: December 26, 2025

New Life for a 1975 Dunhill Root Briar 131 Diamond Shank Billiard with a Taper Stem

by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table is another one that came to us from the seller in Caldwell, Idaho, USA on 07/12/2025. It is a Dunhill Root Briar Diamond Shank Billiard with a vulcanite diamond taper stem. It is in dirty but in good condition as can be seen in the photos below. It is stamped on the left side of the shank and reads 131 [followed by] Dunhill [over] Root Briar. On the right side it is stamped Made in England15. The stamping is clear and readable. The pipe has rich Root Briar Finish with a blend of brown stains on a richly grained smooth finish that the shape follows well. The finish was dusty and lightly dirty with grime ground into the finish. The bowl had a moderate cake and there was tobacco debris in the bowl. The rim top had a thick lava coat on the rim top and edges. The original white spot saddle stem is dirty and oxidized with light tooth marks and chatter on both sides. I took photos of the pipe to show what it looked like before I started working on it. I took photos of the bowl and rim top to show the thickness of the cake and the lava coat on the rim top. There was some tobacco debris in the bottom of the bowl. The stem photos show the condition of the saddle stem ahead of the button.The stamping on the sides of the shank are clear and readable as noted above. I took a photo of the pipe with the stem removed to give a sense of the proportions of the pipe. It is a real beauty. One of the first things I like to do is to unpack the stamping and understand each element in it. I turned to Pipephil’s helpful site (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/shell-briar1.html). The stamping is interpreted as follows: The 131 is the shape of the pipe which is a Diamond Shank Billiard. The Dunhill Root Briar is the finish. Following the Made In England15, the 15 gives the year that the pipe was made. Following the date stamp it reads 4 in a circle R. That tells us that the pipe is Group size pipe with the R signifying that it is a Root Briar.

From there I wanted to pin down the date stamp 15. I have included Page 2 of the Dunhill Dating Key (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/cledat-en1a.html). Following that it takes me to the box with 1960+suffix. That tells me that the pipe is a 1975 pipe. I wanted to know more about the Root Briar finish and when it was introduced by Dunhill. I turned to a listing on Pipedia that gave me the information I was looking for (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill).

Root Briar

Dunhill introduced its third major pipe finish, the Root Briar, in 1931. The new line was developed specifically to showcase briar with a particularly beautiful and pronounced grain. To this end, it was made exclusively from Corsican mountain briar, a wood characteristically prized for its fine grain, a practice that continued into the 1960s.

The pipe was finished with a light, natural stain to allow the beauty of the wood to show through. A particularly distinctive feature of the early Root Briar was its unique mouthpiece — a marble-grained, brown vulcanite bit — that became known to collectors as the ‘bowling ball’ bit. This style, however, was discontinued with the onset of the Second World War.

Because the Root Briar finish requires a perfectly clean bowl with exceptional graining, it has always been one of Dunhill’s rarer and more expensive lines, typically available only at the company’s own stores or through its principal dealers. Its nomenclature was identical to that of the Bruyère, except for the use of an ‘R’ stamp instead of an ‘A’. Straight-grained versions were graded on various scales over the years, evolving into the modern ‘DR’ one-to-six-star system.^[122]^[123]

Now I knew that I was working on a Dunhill Root Briar 131 Diamond Shank Billiard with a Taper Stem that was made in 1975.

I turned to work on the pipe itself. I reamed the bowl with a PipNet pipe reamer using the cutting heads 2 and 3. I finished the reaming with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. I sanded the walls of the bowl with 220 grit sandpaper wrapped around a piece of dowel. I used a worn 400 grit sanding pad to remove the lava on the rim top. It cleaned up quite well. A good scrub will further bring the grain to the surface.I cleaned out the inside of the shank and the airway in the stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and both bristle and regular pipe cleaners. I scrubbed the bowl and shank with a tooth brush and some undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap. I rinsed it off with warm water to remove the dust and soap from the finish. I dried it off with a soft cloth and it looked much better. I sanded the exterior of the bowl with 320-3500 grit 2×2 inch sanding pads to remove the scratching in the finish. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each sanding pad. It really began to look much better. I polished the briar with 1500-12000 grit micromesh sanding pads to develop the shine. It began to look very good. It had a rich shine in the finish. I rubbed the briar down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the briar with my fingertips to work it into the 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 worked on the stem. I sanded the stem with 320-3500 grit 2×2 inch pads. I wiped the stem down with an Obsidian Oil cloth after each sanding pad.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 the polished vulcanite taper stem and the 1975 Dunhill Root Briar 131 Diamond Shank Billiard bowl with Blue Diamond to polish out the remaining small scratches and raise the shine. I gave the bowl and the stem several coats of carnauba wax then 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. This turned out to be a beautiful Dunhill Root Briar 131 Diamond Shank Billiard with a Taper Stem. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. The dimensions are Length: 5 inches, Height: 2 inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 1.27 ounces/35 grams. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked this beautiful little Dunhill Root Briar. I will be adding it to the rebornpipes store in the British Pipe Makers Section if you would like to add it to your collection. Thanks for looking.

New Life for a Hard Life Peterson System 301

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by Kenneth Lieblich

Perhaps this pipe has seen better days in its past, but I think its best days are still ahead. It’s a handsome, rugged Peterson 301 System Standard rusticated bent pot with a P-lip. This pipe came from an old gentleman, now deceased, who lived on Vancouver Island. I have no idea what he did with this pipe, but boy-oh-boy, it is pretty rough. No problem – it’s my job to sort things out. The only markings to be found on this pipe are the 301 found on the underside of the stummel and the K&P [over] Peterson on the nickel ferrule.Mark Irwin of Peterson Pipe Notes has written a few good articles about the 301s on his blog and I recommend reading one here and another one here. Of course, Steve has also written restoration blogs about the 301, including this one and it contained an important tidbit of information that I quote here:

I learned previously that the shape 301 was not introduced until 1975. Considering the Republic stamp, this one would likely date between 1975 and 2000.

This was significant because, due to the markings being almost entirely worn on this pipe, there was nothing on the wood other than the number 301 – and I couldn’t tell an age from that. Charles Lemon from Dad’s Pipes also has a post about a 301, which he describes as coming from the “1970’s era”. Now, what’s interesting about Steve and Charles’ pipes is that the patch of briar which shows the marks is quite different from mine. Below are Steve’s, Charles’, and my pipes, respectively. The first two are sort of freeform oval-ish shapes. Third (mine) is a rectangle and I wonder if that indicates a different era. I don’t know, but if any of you reading this do, please let me know! This pipe is filthy beyond description – but must have been smoked frequently and with great affection. The stem has dirt everywhere, severe toothmarks aplenty, and calcification as I have seldom seen. Meanwhile, the stummel looks as though dirt has been ground into the grooves of the rustication. The rim is coated in lava and the bowl is clogged with cake. The old fellow must have really loved his pipe. I began by cleaning some of the calcification on the outside of the stem. I took a blade (an old butter knife, actually) and began gently scraping at all that build-up. Obviously, I took it easy, as I did not want to damage the stem’s vulcanite any further. The butter knife worked quite well and I got a good amount loose. I followed that up with some oil soap on some cotton rounds to try and scrub the rest away.I broke out the isopropyl alcohol and pipe cleaners, and got to work on the inside of the stem. Predictably, it was unbelievably dirty and I went through a good number of pipe cleaners in order to clean it up.As I mentioned, there were quite a few dents in the stem. Some were obviously tooth marks, but other dents looked like blunt force trauma! Time to break out the BIC lighter to see if it could raise some of them. Quite frankly, it did not do much – this repair was going to require some considerable sanding etc. Before that, however, the stem went for an overnight soak in the deoxidizer. The following day, the oxidation had migrated to the surface and would be fairly straightforward to remove. I scrubbed vigorously with some cream cleanser to remove the leftover oxidation.Once clean, I set about repairing the dents. Before I moved on to the Micromesh pads, I built up the dent damage on the stem with black cyanoacrylate adhesive and let it fully cure. I sanded the lumps down with my needle files and my grey pads, to make the stem look sort of normal. I then used all nine Micromesh pads (1,500 through 12,000 grit) to bring out the lovely black lustre on the stem. I also used Obsidian Pipe Stem Oil in between each of the last five pads. On to the stummel – this is where the lion’s share of the work was. The insides (both bowl and shank) were overwhelmed with cake and tar and anything else you’d care to mention. The bowl really needed to be reamed, so I used a reamer to scrape off as much built-up cake as possible. Generally, I prefer to sand the chamber down to bare briar. When restoring, it is important to ensure that there is no damage to the briar under the cake. There are a few situations when I might leave some cake in the bowl, but not today. There were definitely some craze lines in the interior walls of the briar. I’ll come back to that later.Just like the bowl, the shank was absolutely disgusting. It had never been cleaned – or, not for many decades. I started cleaning the inside with isopropyl alcohol, cotton swabs, and pipe cleaners. This took a while. The inside was very dirty and required an extraordinary number of cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. Eventually some cleanliness came to it.I decided to de-ghost the pipe. 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 even more oils, tars and smells to leach out into the cotton. The bowl was nice and clean after this.I scrubbed the stummel with some pH-neutral soap and a toothbrush. This made things much better, but it’s a case of two steps forward and one step back: sure, it’s clean, but a bit of colour has faded. No problem – I can bring that back with wood balm.On to the ferrule – which was bashed and discoloured from years of mistreatment. Somewhat to my surprise, the ferrule came off very easily and required no special effort. I began by cleaning the metal with some cleanser on cotton rounds. This was quite good at removing the unsightly bits. I used my finer MicroMesh pads to eliminate some of the minor scratches on the metal. It also gave a nice shine which clearly hadn’t been seen for decades. I used a jewelry cloth to give the final polish to the nickel. This ferrule will always retain some small dents etc. from its hard life, but it looks much improved.I now wanted to address the heat crazes inside the bowl. I prepared some heat-resistant epoxy and filled the cracks and gouges, ensuring that the epoxy was thinly and evenly spread throughout the bowl. Of course, I did plug the draught hole with a folded pipe cleaner (coated in petroleum jelly) to make sure none of the epoxy made its way up there. Once done, a good 24 hours was needed to ensure that the epoxy was properly cured. The next day, I roughened up the epoxy’s surface with 220-grit sandpaper for the next step. I thinly coated the inside of the bowl with a mixture of my wife’s homemade yogurt and activated charcoal. Once hardened, this provided a good, faintly rough surface for a new cake to build. I rubbed some LBE Before & After Restoration Balm into the briar and let it sit for 30 minutes or so. The balm moisturizes the wood and gives a beautiful depth to the briar. I then buffed the stummel with a microfibre cloth. It was at this point that something funny happened. The P-lip stem, which fit when this project began, no longer fit! All of the filth and goo was holding it in place. Now that the yuckiness was gone, I realized that the stem was actually not right – it had been replaced at some point in the past. Annoyingly, it was clearly not the right size. Fortunately, Steve had another Peterson factory stem (a fishtail, this time) and donated it to make this pipe look wonderful again. Unfortunately, I don’t have photos of the old stem looking loose, but the new stem is a Peterson original and looks so good in place.

At long last, I was off to my bench buffer to put the final touches on this pipe. Several coats of conservator’s wax created a beautiful, glossy seal on the pipe and moved closer to closure for this long and involved repair. At this point, I glued the ferrule back in place.All done! This handsome Peterson System Standard 301 rusticated bent pot looks fantastic again and is ready to be enjoyed by its next owner. I am pleased to announce that this pipe is for sale! If you are interested in acquiring it for your collection, please have a look in the ‘Irish’ section of the store here on Steve’s website. You can also email me directly at kenneth@knightsofthepipe.com. The approximate dimensions of the pipe are as follows: length 5⅓ in. (136 mm); height 1⅞ in. (46 mm); bowl diameter 1½ in. (37 mm); chamber diameter ⅞ in. (22 mm). The weight of the pipe is 1½ oz. (46 g). I hope you enjoyed reading the story of this pipe’s restoration as much as I enjoyed restoring it. If you are interested in more of my work, please follow me here on Steve’s website or send me an email. Thank you very much for reading and, as always, I welcome and encourage your comments.

Breathing New Life into Dunhill Shell 6R F/T Pot

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by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table came to us from a seller in Cleveland, Ohio, USA on 04/26/2022. It is a Dunhill Shell Pot with a saddle stem that looks quite good. Overall it looks very good. It is stamped on a smooth panel on the underside of the shank. On the heel of the bowl it is stamped with the shape number 6R F/T followed by Dunhill Shell [over] Made in England¹¹ [followed by] Circle 4S. The stamping is faint in spots but still readable. The pipe has a mix of black, cordovan and brown stains on a Shell sandblast finish and some amazing grain that the shape follows well. The finish was dusty and dirty with grime ground into the nooks and crannies of the rugged sandblast. The bowl had a moderate cake and there was lava in the sandblasted rim top and edges. The original stem is on the pipe is oxidized and has some tooth chatter and marks on both sides ahead of the button. I took photos of the pipe to show what it looked like before I started working on it. I took photos of the bowl and rim top to show the thickness of the cake and the lava coat on the rim top. There was some tobacco debris in the bottom of the bowl. The stem photos show the condition of the taper stem ahead of the button. I took a photo of the stamping on the underside of the shank. It is clear and readable as noted above. I removed the stem and took a photo of the pipe to give a sense of the proportions of the pipe.One of the first things I like to do is to unpack the stamping and understand each element in it. I turned to Pipephil’s helpful site (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/shell-briar1.html). The stamping is interpreted as follows: The R6 is the shape number for a Pot. The F/T gives the shape of the stem as a Fishtail but on this pipe it is a saddle stem. The Dunhill Shell is the finish. Following the Made In England¹¹ gives the year that the pipe was made. The circle 4 S is the stamp for a Group 4 in a Shell finish.

From there I wanted to pin down the date stamp ¹¹. I have included Page 2 of the Dunhill Dating Key (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/cledat-en1a.html). Following that it takes me to the box with 1960+suffix. That tells me that the pipe is a 1971 pipe. I wanted to know more about the Shell finish and when it was introduced by Dunhill and how that fit the Patent stamp on the bowl. I turned to a listing on Pipedia that gave me the information I was looking for (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill).

Shell

The Shell is a deep, craggy sandblast finish with a black stain, traditionally applied to soft, beautifully grained Algerian briar. While perhaps not the first-ever use of sandblasting on pipes, the technique perfected by Dunhill is considered one of the brand’s most significant contributions to the art of pipe making. The development is documented in English patent No. 119708/17; preliminary work began on October 13, 1917, and the patent was granted a year later, just weeks before the end of the First World War.

The origin of the finish is famously recounted as an “Accidental Discovery” in early Dunhill catalogues. The story tells of Algerian briar blocks being inadvertently left near a furnace, causing the softer wood to shrink and the harder grain to stand out in a textured relief. The reality, as detailed in the patent application, was a deliberate process of steeping the briar in oil for weeks, followed by a heat treatment. Only then was the sandblast applied to cut away the softer wood, resulting in a durable, lightweight, and cool-smoking pipe.

In 1986, Dunhill introduced a premium version of the Shell finish called the ‘Ring Grain’. These pipes feature a particularly deep blast reminiscent of the classic style of the 1930s to mid-1960s, applied to briar with a superior grain pattern. The ‘Ring Grain’ name was later changed to ‘Shilling’ in 1995. Regarded by many enthusiasts as among the finest modern Dunhills, these pipes are produced in limited quantities and are exceptionally rare.^[122]^[123]

Now I knew that I was working on a Dunhill Shell 6R F/T Pot with a Saddle stem that was made in 1971.

I turned to work on the pipe itself. I reamed the bowl with a PipNet pipe reamer using the cutting heads 2 and 3. I finished the reaming with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. I sanded the walls of the bowl with 220 grit sandpaper wrapped around a piece of dowel. I used a brass bristle brush to clean up the sandblast on the rim top. I was able to remove the debris built up in the grooves of the sandblast. I cleaned out the inside of the shank and the airway in the stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and both bristle and regular pipe cleaners. I scrubbed the bowl and shank with a tooth brush and some undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap. I also worked it over with a brass bristle brush and the soap. I rinsed it off with warm water to remove the dust and soap from the finish. I dried it off with a soft cloth and it looked much better. 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 stem with 220 grit sandpaper to remove the oxidation and the tooth chatter and marks on the surface. I scrubbed the surface with Soft Scrub Cleanser and took off the oxidation that had been loosened by the sanding. It looked much better.I sanded the stem and tenon surface with 320-3500 grit 2×2 inch pads. I wiped the stem down with an Obsidian Oil cloth after each sanding pad.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 the polished vulcanite saddle stem and the 1971 Dunhill Shell 6R F/T bowl with Blue Diamond to polish out the remaining small scratches and raise the shine. I gave the stem several coats of carnauba wax and the bowl several coats of Conservator’s Wax then 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. This turned out to be a beautiful Dunhill Shell 6R F/T Saddle Stem Pot. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. The dimensions are Length: 5 ½ inches, Height: 1 ½ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ½ inches, Chamber diameter: 7/8 of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 1.38 ounces/39 grams. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked this beautiful little Dunhill sandblast. This one is reserved for a friend as it is his birth year pipe. Thanks for looking.