A Diamond in the Rough – Restoring a Comoy’s Skipper 623

It turned out to be a beauty – a Long Shank Vottis Billiard

Blog by Steve Laug

When I saw this one online there was some residual memory about the brand. I could not put my finger on it but I knew it was an American made pipe. I did not where but I remembered a name – Pat Vottis. It was a pipe on eBay that received little notice. I am not sure anyone bid on it so it became mine. I looked forward to its arrival in Canada when I could see what was under the grime and oxidation. In some of the photos below that I took upon its arrival there is some nice grain peeking through the cloudy finish.The finish was quite worn and cloudy but the sides of the bowl and shank did not have any gouges or dents. There was a dark, vertical stain on the front of the pipe that went from just below the rim edge to the curve of the bowl bottom. There was also a dark mark on the right side of the bowl toward the back. The rim was a mess. The outer edges had been knocked about to the point that the rim edge was rough to touch. There was a thick lava flow over the flat surface of the rim so it was hard to tell what was going on there. The inner edge of the bowl also looked to be damaged on the back right side. There was a thick cake in the bowl that I removed when I picked it up while visiting my brother in Idaho. That cake still needed more attention as can be seen in the photo below. There was a loose, oxidized silver band on the shank of the pipe that had blackened to the point that I could not read the stamping on the top side. The stem had some tooth marks on both the top and bottom sides that were quite deep and extended almost ½ inch up the stem from the button. The edge of the button was flattened and also had some tooth marks. Oxidation covered the whole stem. I took a few close-up photos of the rim top and the stamping on the shank of the pipe. From the first photo you can see the rim and the inside of the bowl. The remaining cake was incredibly hard. The stamping on the left side of the shank read, “Vottis” in script. On the right side it read Algerian Briar over Imported Briar. The stamping was sharp and legible. I decided before going further on the restoration of the pipe to do some research on the Vottis brand and see if I could rattle the old memory. Sure enough my original thoughts were correct. The name was Pat Vottis. There was quite a bit of information on the web about him and his pipe making and pipe shop. (NOTE: The next section is quite long so if you do not want to read the history of the brand you can skip ahead to the next photos and the explanation of the refurb.)

The first place I looked was on Pipedia.com. I found there that Vottis ran his workshop in Schenectady, New York. According to Pipedia he worked there from about the end of the 1940’s to the middle of the 1970’s. The article went on to say that he was one of the very first American carvers who made freehands in a moderate Danish style. This information did not help me identify the classic shaped pipe that I have. Mine is anything but a freehand, it is rather a long shank billiard or a long stem Lovat. The one thing that was interesting in the article was that Vottis pipe are well thought of to this day. I also learned that he preferred to use Corsican briar in making his pipes.

Well, that was a good start, but I wanted to know more. So I did some more digging and came across a conversation on pipes.org. The link below takes you to the conversation. The part that I have copied below was posted by Guy Vottis, Pat’s grandson in 2007. If you should want to read the context of the conversation you can follow the link.

http://pipes.org/forums/messages/23/46034.html?1171913269

Guy writes in response to a previous post. Here is the entirety of his post.

This post references Harold Vance Post #4 username hbvance and Jose Manuel Lopes Post #91 in the Archive of 2005 Sept 20 with a Subject Title of Vottis Pipes http://pipes.org/forums/discus~discus/discus~discus/discus/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?tpc=23&post=45187#POST451 87

Jose, I am not quite sure where you obtained your information regarding Pat Vottis but it is incorrect and I would like to share a bit of good information for the audience.

Pasquale (Pat) Vottis is my grandfather. He did not die as you have posted on the web in 2005. He actually died this morning at 99 yrs 9 months of age on Feb 18, 2007. He had a passion for the customers and the business.

My grandfather opened his first pipe shop in Albany, NY on South Pearl St. It was in the Bank Building (which took up a whole city block) at the corner of State Street and South Pearl. We also opened a second shop in Albany which was in the Empire State Plaza on the Concourse level. This was to serve all of the State Workers so they could do business at lunch time and not be strapped for time while trying to get down to the South Pearl shop. We still have the Vottis Pipe Shop Sign and the Vottis Pipe Shop Clock that was a landmark for the customers.

Harold Vance’s pipes may very well come from a pipeshop in Santa Monica. We mailed pipes all over the world. My grandfather’s sister actually lived in Santa Monica for many years. We also had a very large tobacco mail order business in which I mixed 1000s of pounds of tobacco and mailed them all around the world as well. We closed the pipe shops in the early 90s due to the numerous break-ins late at night. The locals would throw rocks through the store front windows to steal the hand carved pipes and the meerschaums.

My grandfather hand carved many, many pipes himself. He usually carved the big blocks. My grandfather, my uncle, and my father repaired pipes for everyone even if they had not bought a pipe at our shops. We had a metal lathe in the basement as well as a stove. The machined the tenon portion of the stem with a carbide cutter to match the stem of the bowl for a perfect fit every time. To match the stem or the fit of the customer, we custom bent the stems of the pipes to their satisfaction.

I recall boxes of briar blocks that were rough turned and my uncle, my father, and my grandfather would also hand finish these too. We had a lot of fun in the stores too. Mixing different formulas of tobaccos to see how the public would respond. We had numerous successful formulas. Our approach was to make all natural formulas with no sugars added, no sugar sprays, or flavorings added.

The most popular formula was created by grandfather and was called Black Watch. Some of the other blends were North Woods, Vottis’s Own, Vottis Club, Boulevard 76, No#9. These blends were comprised of burley, yellow cavendish, black cavendish, turkish, latakia, and others of which I do not recall. Ironically, for the namesake, my grandfather has died at a Nursing Home named North Woods just like one of his tobacco blends called North Woods…

That post gave me much more information including the link to Albany, New York. I went on to dig some more and found a newspaper article written by Paul Grondahl a staff writer for the local paper. The article is called “Pipe Shop’s Flame Flicker Out”. The link to the article is: http://alb.merlinone.net/mweb/wmsql.wm.request?oneimage&imageid=5580379. In that article I learned that the shop closed in 1991. I have included the article as it is very well written and gives a flavor of the shop and the proprietor.

PIPE SHOP’S FLAME FLICKERING OUT
Paul Grondahl Staff writer
Section: LIVING, Page: G1
Date: Sunday, October 27, 1991
ALBANY – The soft rattle and hum on the countertop of a battered, black wooden mixing bowl in which dozens of tons of blended pipe tobacco have been hand-kneaded for 50 years is being silenced.

The final clouds of aromatic smoke will waft past the humidor, beyond the wooden Indian perched on a box of cigars in the window and out the door of the Vottis Pipe Shop. After serving three generations of pipe smokers and shipping its custom tobacco blends across the country and to soldiers at war around the world, this South Pearl Street landmark is letting the fire burn out at the end of the month.

A handful of pipe shops still will remain in the Capital District after the Vottis Pipe Shop ceases to exist, but none who would make the bold claim, as Vottis did in 1948, of being “the world’s best-stocked pipe shop.”

No other local shop can boast of the long legacy in the trade, or having a patent on the air-cooled Vottis Rey pipe the way Pat Vottis did. And in no other shop has time essentially stood still for five decades.

It is the final chapter for a tobacconist family and its fiercely loyal customers.

“It was a fun business, and I’ve always said we didn’t have customers, we had only friends,” says Pasquale “Pat” Vottis, 84, of Guilderland. He opened the first Vottis Pipe Shop in 1941 on Erie Boulevard in Schenectady with his brother, Salvatore, before branching off with his own shop in downtown Albany in 1946. The Schenectady location was closed many years ago.

It felt a bit like a wake the other day as pipe aficionados streamed through the shop and placed a final order at the “tobacco bar.” Proprietor Vince Bonafede rang up the sales for Vottis custom blends Black Watch and Boulevard Deluxe on an antique manual National cash register. Customers paid their respects through clenched teeth, between drags on their pipes.

“An old friend is like a good smoke, Vince,” John O. McKenna was saying to Bonafede, with whom everyone is on a first-name basis. “I’m going to miss you, old buddy.”

McKenna, who works on behalf of the homeless in Albany and lobbies for war veterans, has been coming to the shop for a couple of decades, ever since he was a high school student and served as a legislative page who made cigar runs from the Senate floor for his late uncle, Sen. William F. Condon, a Westchester County Republican.

“I have delightful memories of this store, which helped me survive a place called Vietnam,” says McKenna, a non-smoker who frequently buys gifts at the shop. “The aroma of the store is something I’ll never forget. It’s extremely odiferous.”

Memories of his customers are equally pungent for Bonafede, 65, who took over the six- day-a-week business singlehandedly 15 years ago when his father-in-law, Pat Vottis, retired. Bonafede says he hasn’t had a week’s vacation since, and is eager for retirement, even though nostalgia tinges his anticipation of freedom.

“I’m happy that I’m finally going to get to rest and do what I want to do, but I’ll miss all my customers terribly,” Bonafede allows.

On this afternoon, Bonafede was leafing through letters from distraught mail-order customers who had been told the shop was closing.
There was a note from the Rev. Donald Webster, who has been ordering a pound of Vottis’ Boulevard Deluxe… religiously… each month from his home on Peaks Island, Maine, for more than 40 years.

“I wandered into the shop in the little arcade by the Schenectady railroad station in 1948,”
Webster writes. “I really felt bereft at hearing you were closing, and hate to think of going back to drugstore brands.”

There is a deep connection and intense loyalty between the serious pipe smoker and the choice of custom-blend tobacco that would be difficult to fathom for even, say, the Chivas Regal drinker or Cadillac driver who sticks with the same brand time after time.

The style of pipe and type of tobacco blend one smokes are a sort of talisman, rife with ritual and emotion.

The Vottis Pipe Shop has customers who had the pipe passion passed down from grandfathers. Others developed an allegiance to Black Watch while they were tweedy college-aged poseurs and have smoked nothing else straight through middle age and retirement.

But pipe smoking’s glory days are long past.

Pipe Lovers, “The Magazine for Men Who Love a Pipe,” published in Long Beach, Calif., had its heyday in the late-1940s. It was in that era that Pat Vottis was secretary of the Rip Van Winkle Pipe Club in Albany and club meetings, which regularly drew more than 100 pipe fanatics, were covered in the pages of Pipe Lovers.

Many cities had a pipe club. There was the Mohawk Pipe Club in Schenectady, with whom the Rip Van Winkle members held annual grudge matches. The contest was to see which club member could keep a bowl’s worth of tobacco burning the longest.

In 1949, Mohawk Pipe Club took the title with a 69-minute flame. Vottis tried to hold the honor for his Rip Van Winkle co-horts, but consumed all his tobacco and burned clean through his pipe’s briar bowl.

Gone a long time ago, too, are the Thursday evening pipe-smoking classes led by Vottis at the South Pearl shop, which were all the rage in the 1950s among women dangling dainty, jewel- encrusted pipes.

It was an innocent era, in which pipe smoking was touted as a healthy alternative to cigarettes and Vottis advertised that his Black Watch blend offered “an aroma that is accepted in every home, office or place of gathering.”

But these days, as pipe-lovers and smokers of all stripes are being made to slink with their habit past an anti-smoking phalanx and forced to steal puffs on sidewalks outside their places of work, the customers of the Vottis Pipe Shop reminisce about their golden age.

Garry Lavigne, an Albany attorney, was a Siena College student 30 years ago when he bought his first pound of Black Watch in an effort to give up cigarette smoking and he has been buying a pound of the same blend each week ever since.

“It’s disastrous that this shop is closing,” Lavigne says. “There’s no place else on Earth where I can get this tobacco.”

The Vottis Pipe Shop has always been proud of its most popular and trademark blend, the Scottish-styled Black Watch, of which they’ve sold tons at $9.75 per 12 ounces.

Vottis and Bonafede plan to go to their graves with the recipe. “Everyone tries to copy the Black Watch blend, but we’ll never let the secret out,” Bonafede vows. He says the key is its cool, mellow flavor and lack of an undesirable aftertaste.

The Vottis stamp has always been an all- natural smoke, without the vanilla, chocolate, strawberry or fruity flavorings of commercial blends. The Vottis philosophy is to let nothing get in the way of the flavor of wood and tobacco and smoke.

Vottis blends are homemade and so named, such as Connolly, a loyal customer, or Vin’s Special or Vottis’ Own. The English-styled Page No. 112 was inspired by book-lovers at Union College. North Wood is an outdoorsy, Adirondack blend and Grand Concourse was concocted by Bonafede’s wife, Marge, who ran a shop in the Empire State Plaza concourse for a decade before closing it five years ago.

The longtime Vottis customers are not happy about the prospect of change in their smoking life. They wonder will another tobacconist, besides Bonafede, will come up with novelty items such as the “crazy pipe,” a trombone- looking affair that carries the bowl behind the ear to keep smoke out of the eyes of the smoker? And will a new generation of tobacco merchants rush home after work to a basement workshop the way Bonafede did to make overnight repairs on pipe stems rendered useless by nervous teeth? And will there be other artists in Algerian briar who fashion one-of-a-kind pipes out of gnarled wood the way Bonafede does?

The Vottis Pipe Shop regulars think not, and they’re creating something of a Black Watch buying panic during the final week of business.

George Williams, chairman of Allied Capital Corp. in Washington D.C. and a 40-year customer, wrote to wish Bonafede well in his retirement and to score a five-pound order of Black Watch.

John Mason of Plattsburgh wrote to reminisce about his discovery of the Vottis Pipe Shop in 1941, while he was a student at Union College. He also ordered two pounds of Black Watch.

“I came into this shop with two friends from high school 26 years ago, and I’m the only one still smoking a pipe, and Black Watch, at that,” John Kelley, a CDTA bus driver, says during his final visit to the shop for a pound of Black Watch. “I hate the thought of going to a grocery store or CVS for a packaged blend now.”

Mike DeGulio, who works for the state division of housing, discovered the Vottis Pipe Shop six years ago after moving to Albany from New York City.

“Coming into the shop is a personal thing for me,” DeGulio says. “I shoot the breeze with Vince, I watch him blend my tobacco with his own two hands and he always takes good care of me.”

After one-half century, twilight has descended upon the Vottis Pipe Shop. The floor-to-ceiling lemon wood cabinets Vottis bought from a haberdashery have been sold. The pipe display cases have been mostly picked clean during a going-out-of-business sale, save for a few oddities, including a Calabash “Sherlock Holmes” model, marked down to $31 from $45.

Bonafede, who alternates between pipes and cigars, takes a cutter and neatly slices off the end of a thick Hoja, a hand-rolled Honduran stogey, and steps out onto South Pearl to exhale a cloud of smoky musings.

“It feels strange to be closing after all these years,” he says. “It’s been a good family business, but our children weren’t interested in carrying on and we didn’t want to sell it. The new generation just doesn’t care about the art of smoking a pipe.”

All of that information gave me what I needed to get a feel for Pat Vottis and his pipe shop including his philosophy of tobacco blending. I still did not know much about the pipe I had in my hand other than what I could deduce from the stamping. I knew that the briar was not Corsican but in this case Algerian. I also knew from the IMPORTED BRIAR stamping that the pipe was most probably made after the close of WWII when briar was once again imported into the US. I knew that the pipe was made in Albany, New York in the basement workshop of the Vottis Pipe Shop. I also knew that Pat Vottis in all likelihood carved the pipe sometime between 1946 and 1976 when his son in law Bonafede took over the shop at Pat’s retirement. So I found that while nothing was certain I could extrapolate quite a bit of information about the pipe I had found. Now it was time to get to work on it.

I had “field dressed” the pipe when I was in Idaho so when I got home at my work table I gave it another quick ream with the PipNet reamer and then followed up with the Savinelli Pipe Knife. I wanted to take the cake completely out of the bowl so I could look for burned areas or checking. The top of bowl was a mess. The inner edges were in decent shape but the outer edge was beat down against something so the edges were rounded over and the distinct shape was compromised. I topped the bowl to clean up the edges and remove that damaged surface of the bowl. Once I removed the lava there was some burn damage to the front edge.I scrubbed the silver band with cigar ash to clean off the oxidation. Once I had it cleaned I also rotated it to centre the hallmarks on the top of the shank. There were some hallmarks on the band – a lion, an anchor and the letter T in a cartouche. To me the date on the band put it as early as the late 1890s and early 1900s. Since I knew that Vottis was not around at that time it was obvious to me that the band was added at a later date. There did not appear to be any cracks in the shank so that meant that the band was cosmetic.I removed the finish and the grime on the pipe with acetone on cotton pads. I was able to get most of the dark line of stain off the front of the bowl and also some of the dark spot on the right side of the bowl. Underneath the grime was some really nice grain on the briar.I did a light scrape of the bowl with a pen knife to take out some of the remaining carbon that stubbornly clung to the walls toward the bottom of the bowl.I cleaned out the mortise and airway in the shank and also the airway in the stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners.The button edges were no longer well defined and had been worn into the surface of the stem. I recut the edges with a needle file. I also used the file to scrape the surface of the stem and remove most of the tooth marks.I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the file marks and further remove the tooth marks.There was one small, deep mark on the underside of the stem that I filled with black super glue.While the stem repair dried I stained the bowl. I applied a dark brown aniline stain and flamed it with a lighter. I gave the bowl a second coat of stain and flamed it again.I wiped down the bowl with isopropyl alcohol to even out the stain coat and make it more translucent. The grain began to stand out.I buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the wheel to bring out the shine. The rim came out really well and the grain stood out on this old pipe. With the bowl finished I worked again on the stem. I sanded the repair with 220 grit sandpaper to blend it into the surface.I scrubbed the stem with Meguiar’s Scratch X2.0 and removed much of the oxidation.I wet sanded the stem with 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads and gave the stem its first coat of Obsidian Oil. I dry sanded with 3200-4000 grit micromesh and gave it another coat of oil. I finished sanding with 6000-12000 grit pads and gave it a final coat of Obsidian Oil. I buffed the pipe on the wheel with Blue Diamond and then gave the bowl and stem multiple coats of carnauba wax. I buffed it with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine and buffed it with a microfibre cloth to deepen the shine. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. It is a beauty. The dark spot on the right side is kind of a beauty mark in my mind. It is not a burn or damage in that way but rather a spot where the bowl sat against something that permanently darkened that spot. I chose to not hide it because I love the grain on the rest of the bowl. It came out very well to my eye. Thanks for looking.

Repairing and Restoring a KBB Yello-Bole 2070B Cutty

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Blog by Steve Laug

I was contacted by Robb, a reader of the blog about working on an old Yello-Bole Cutty that he had picked up. He said it was in decent shape but had a cracked shank that someone had already done a repair on. They had glued the shank with wood glue but when the stem was inserted it cracked again. He wanted the shank reglued and banded. We talked about different options for repairing the pipe and the costs of doing it. Finally, in an email he offered to trade me the pipe in exchange for one that I had for sale on the blog – a Kaywoodie Signature Bulldog. The deal was done and the pipe was now mine.

As with many of the pipes I repair and restore I want to learn as much about them as I can. I did some work on the internet trying to find the shape number of the pipe and information on the stamping. After a pretty fruitless search I wrote to Troy Wilburn of the Baccypipes Blog to get some information on dating the pipe. Troy has become my go to guy when I want to learn information on this particular brand of American pipes. He wrote back quickly with a reply which I summarize below. In it he walked me through the meaning of the stamping and how that helped with the dating of the pipe. His quick first answer stated that the pipe was made between 1933-1936. Here is the main portion of what he wrote to me:

“I’ll break down the stamping and numbers for you. Starting with the left side of the shank the pipe is stamped with KBB in a clover leaf and next to that it says Yello-Bole. Underneath it is stamped Honey Cured Briar. Yello-Bole pipes that come from 1933-1936 bore the stamp Honey Cured Briar. On the right side of the shank it is stamped 2070B. The meaning of the numbers breaks down as follows. The number 20 tells us that the stem is black vulcanite with a push tenon made between 1932-1940s. The next two numbers, 70 gives the shape – a long Belgian and that it was made between 1928/9 and 1935. They made a regular 70 (it’s just called Belgian), a large Belgian 70B, and a long Dublin Belgian 70B.”

I took some photos of the pipe with the stem in the shank to highlight the issues that I saw with the pipe. Not only was the shank cracked but the tenon was also cracked and set at an angle to the stem making alignment in the shank impossible. The dimensions of the pipe to give some perspective to the photos are: Length – 8 inches, bowl height – 2inches, outer bowl diameter – 1 ¼ inches, inner bowl diameter – ¾ inches. You can see that it is a large pipe. The finish was crackled and dirty – almost opaque to the point that the grain was hidden. The rim had a lava buildup and the bowl had a thin, uneven cake that covered it top to bottom. The stem was oxidized and yellow. The stinger was glued in place in the tenon with the broken tenon anchored firmly to the metal insert on the stinger. It was also glued in sideways instead of upright. I took a close up photo of the tenon and stinger repair that had been done to show the cracked and glue pieces of the tenon on the stinger. You can see in the photo where pieces of the tenon had broken free when I removed the stem from the pipe.The crack in the shank arced from one side of the pipe to the other forming a closed crack. The chunk of briar had been glued in place by what appeared to be wood glue. The repair was not strong enough to protect the shank when the angled tenon was inserted in the mortise. Each time the stem was inserted the crack opened wide. Because it had a start and an end point there was no threat in the crack spreading upward along the shank. I had two options for repairing this. I could either insert a tube inside the shank thus internally banding the pieces in place or I could use a band on the exterior to the same effect. As I worked on the i decided to band the shank rather than do an internal repair. The thinness of the tenon with the stinger in place would make it impractical to reduce the size of the tenon further to fit in the inner tube repair.I removed the stinger from the stem and broke away the pieces of the rubber tenon from the metal insert. The stinger was exceptionally long and once I replaced the tenon I would make a decision what to do with it.I have an assortment of threaded replacement tenons that I use to repair broken tenons. I went through my container and found one that was a good fit in the shank.I used the Dremel and sanding drum to flatten out the broken pieces of the old tenon on the end of the stem. I used the topping board to square up the end. I set up a cordless drill and a drill bit approximately the size of the threaded portion of the new tenon. I turned the stem onto the drill bit and slowly opened the airway to fit the new tenon. Once I had the airway open and deep enough to accommodate the threaded end I used a tap to cut threads into the inside of the stem. I turned the new tenon into the threaded airway in the stem to check the fit. When it was correct I gave the threads a coat of slow drying black super glue and turned the tenon into the stem until it was tight against the face of the stem. I set the stem aside to let the glue cure and began to work on the crack in the shank. It did not matter which way I chose to repair the shank I needed to clean up the previous repair and remove the dried wood glue. I needed a clean surface to reglue with super glue. Once I had the surface clean I pried open the crack and used a dental pick to push clear super glue into the crack. Once the glue was in place I clamped the shank until the glue set.I sanded the glued shank with 180 grit sandpaper to remove the finish and the over flow of glue from the repair. I wanted to make the surface smooth so that I could either band it externally or do it internally and then refinish the shank. The next two photos show the gold/yellow colour of the paint in the stamping of the shank on both sides. Once I stripped the bowl of the varnish coat this would disappear and I would need to recreate it.I cleaned out the inside of the shank and the mortise with alcohol, pipe cleaners and cotton swabs. It was dirty but cleaned up easily. I repeated the same process on the airway in the stem. It too was easy to clean. I reamed out the bowl with the Savinelli Pipe Knife to take the cake back. Underneath the light cake I found that they original Yello-Bole coating was still in place.Once the glue on the shank had cured overnight I carefully put the stem in the shank to check the alignment of the stem and shank. I took the following photos of the pipe at this point in the process. I wiped the bowl down with acetone on cotton pads to remove the varnish coat that was crackling. It took some scrubbing but the finish came off quite easily and left the colour in the briar.I was careful to not wipe around the repaired shank as the acetone will dissolve super glue and I would be back to square one. I sanded the bowl with 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads to further remove the finish.I wiped the bowl down with a light coat of olive oil to see what the grain looked like. I cleaned the shank and used European Gold Rub N’ Buff to restore the gold in the stamping. I really like how Yello-Bole and some of the older American pipes utilized the gold leaf in the stamping to make it highly readable.I scrubbed the stem with Meguiar’s Scratch X2.0 to remove the majority of the oxidation and polish the stem. The residue of the oxidation is shown on the cotton pad under the stem.I sanded the remaining oxidation with 220 grit sandpaper to remove it from the surface of the stem. There were some small tooth marks on the top and bottom sides of the stem as well that I sanded out with the sandpaper.I wetsanded the stem with 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads and gave the stem a coat of Obsidian Oil. I dry sanded with 3200-4000 grit pads and gave it another coat of oil. I finished sanding with 6000-12000 grit pads and gave it a final rubdown with Obsidian Oil. I drilled out the tenon to the diameter of the stinger apparatus that had originally come with the old tenon. I made it large enough that the stinger was removable in order that the pipe could be smoked with or without the stinger.The band that Charles shipped me came on Friday and it was a good fit on the shank. I coated the shank with some white glue and pressed the band onto the shank. I wiped away the excess glue with a damp cotton pad. I used a dark brown stain pen to touch up the area around the shank repair that extended beyond the band. The colour worked well with the brown/red colour of the stain on the rest of the shank.I buffed the area around the band with White Diamond on the wheel to blend in the stain colour with the rest of the pipe. I buffed the entire pipe with Blue Diamond, being careful to avoid the nickel band. I have found that when I buff the band at the same time as the rest of the pipe the black from the nickel on the buffing pad is transferred to the shank and stem. I rubbed the stem down with Obsidian Oil and gave the stem and bowl multiple coats of carnauba wax. I buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad and then with a microfibre cloth to deepen and raise the shine. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. I really like the way it turned out and I am sure glad that I was able to work a trade with Robb for the pipe. I took some final photos of the pipe. The first photo shows the stinger next to the bowl and stem go give an idea of the size of the stinger and the second photo shows the stinger in place in the stem. Thanks for looking.

KAYWOODIE & YELLO-BOLE SHAPE NUMBERS

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Troy Wilburn, one of our blog writers and good friend of rebornpipes sent me a shape number list for old Kaywoodie and Yello-Bole pipes. I found it very useful and typed it into a chart format. Troy said that he got the data for this came from the Kaywoodie Forums. If you have not visited the forums here is the link: http://kaywoodie.myfreeforum.org/. I decided to post the chart here for easy access. Thank you to the KW forum for the information.

You will notice that some shape numbers are listed more than once as they got recycled over the 45 years of the Reiss-Premier/Kaywoodie two digit shape number era (1927-1972)

2-digit prefixes for 4-digit pipes – you might find an odd ball or a rare one that is not on the list.
From the time of the first Kaywoodie until 1938 for Kaywoodie and for Yello-Bole, Kaufmann Brothers & Bondy used a 4-digit number system (plus a letter sometimes) to identify the line and shape number. The 4-digits were not used after 1938. The first two, which we’ll call the prefix, referred to the finish and the second two, the suffix numbers referred to the shape number. Thanks again to the Kaywoodie Forum and those who have collected the information over the years. This information is extremely useful to those of us who collect Kaywoodie and Yello-Bole pipes. If you have not visited the forum I would encourage you to visit the great folks there. The forum contains a wealth of information.

Spotlight: Ladies Pipes, Part 2/7, a Clinton Straight Oval

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Guest Blog by Robert M. Boughton
Member, International Society of Codgers
Member, North American Society of Pipe Collectors
http://www.naspc.org
http://www.roadrunnerpipesnm.biz
http://about.me/boughtonrobert
Photos © the Author

INTRODUCTION
I came across a more subtle but still rather sexist yet humorous comment concerning the perceived relationship of women to pipe enjoyment, this time in the older ad above for Flying Dutchman tobacco. No longer in production, it was an aromatic blend of Kentucky Burley, Cavendish, Virginia, Oriental Turkish and “Other/Misc.” Sounds pretty good to me. But it makes me flash on an email I received from a friend on Smokers Forums UK. Her name is Liz. She wrote:

“I always wanted to smoke a pipe even when I was a child. I had seen photos of my dad smoking a pipe but he had quit smoking by the time I was born. I started smoking cigarettes in my early teens and the desire to smoke a pipe became stronger once I became an adult and started to do a lot of camping. I thought it would be very nice to sit by the campfire and smoke a pipe.”

Here comes the sad crux of Liz’ response. “But as a woman, I never felt comfortable or confident enough to go in a store and buy one. Finally in 2004 I got the nerve to go in the tobacco shop and buy a pipe. I used the excuse that I was buying it for my brother. [Emphasis added.] …I had no one to teach me anything about smoking the pipe so what I learned I found on the internet.”

I was struck by the eloquent and poignant plight of a woman I have come to think of as supremely confident and self-assured in all matters, albeit that our friendship is based in the ether world. This is a woman I should very much like to meet some day in person. Liz’ reluctance to purchase a tobacco pipe, at a tobacconist, for herself as a woman who had always wanted to partake of the pleasures she rightly imagined she would discover (around a campfire, no less, and as an alternative to the pernicious and addictive additives in cigarettes), plucked a mournful acoustic chord in my heart like listening to Albinoni’s Adagio for guitar alone on a torrential night.

This in turn sparked a connection to the woman in my previous blog of this series, the person who inspired me to tackle the subject in the first place with her soft-spoken, somewhat tentative inquiry to Chuck, at my local tobacconist, asking if he had any ladies pipes. After I read with delight and growing admiration for the fine woman Liz’ responses revealed her to be from the several questions I posed to her as a preliminary breaking of the ice in an ongoing interview process, I played back my mental tape of Chuck’s encounter with the good lady in search of a suitable pipe, and doing so recalled the trepidation in her voice and body language. With some amazement, I realized that she had probably worked herself up for untold years to that moment when at last she was determined to ask for that which she had always wanted!

As a man, I am compelled to declare that this clear and present state of social antipathy toward women who wish only to savor a pipe – and indeed the attitude must be widespread, or else I could not have come in contact with two ladies in hardly a month with the same reluctance to buy something so basic that they fancied obtaining – is intolerable. I mean good Lord, have we come so short a distance from the days when women on their own volition and in the strength of groups protested the double standard of cigarette smoking as chic by men while the practice was viewed as vulgar by females? Alas that science was not what it is today, and many beautiful pioneering civil rights women perished early from the intrinsic impurities and carcinogens of cigarettes. And let’s not forget the infamous bra burning demonstration so popular when I was a youngster (and to my natural titillation, no pun intended). With hope, therefore, these blogs will help to alleviate the barriers.

VARIOUS BRAND LADIES PIPES
I noticed Peterson’s had at least one ladies pipe, and reader/blogger Mark Irwin, who read my previous blog on this subject, urged me to include some of them during the course of the series. Here are several samples of fine ladies pipes, starting with a Peterson I found offered in Italy, per Mark’s suggestion.Paddy of SF let me know that his wife has a sweet collection of Savinelli 606 pipes, at least one for each day of the week, like the following example. BTW, Paddy writes, the missus also has “one Castello of a similar shape which she received as a gift.” Good company, indeed. And now, here is the Clinton Real Briar Oval as it came to me. RESTORATION
The Clinton, as well as the FRASA I restored for my first of these seven blogs, has an unusual stinger tenon, heightening my surprise that neither of them seems to have any discernible history, not even as seconds. In addition to the tenon, the Clinton also has a distinctive upside-down C on the bit.By way of synopsizing the pipe’s chief and obvious problems, the bit was badly discolored, there was a crack on the upper left side of the bowl extending from the rim downward (but not penetrating into the chamber), and the stain was far too dark for my taste, given the apparent decency of the obscured grain. And so I began by soaking the bit in an OxiClean bath and the stummel in some used Everclear I keep on hand for such occasions.The bit was ready first, about a half-hour later, and I removed it from the soak and rinsed it, then took out the stinger and ran a soft cleaner through the airway. I wiped the stinger clean with a soft cotton gun cleaner square and sanded both sides of the bit’s lip end with 200-grit paper. Then I wet micro-meshed the entire bit from 1500-12000 and had a nice bowl of D&R Two-Timer Gold in my Peterson Killarney Straight Bulldog Dress Pipe. I ordered the beautiful black “ebony” pipe online during a brief overwhelming fixation on these pipes that also landed me a sleek Nat Sherman. Both remain favorites.

That Everclear strip lasted just long enough for my consummate Burley mix to work its way down to a fine ash – or maybe I made it last the proper time, as was my prerogative! Whichever the case may have been, I had a couple more handy cotton cloth squares ready, one to stuff into the chamber with a pinkie and twist so I could clean out any residue there and hold the body in place while I scrubbed the still wet outside of the wood with the other. Look at the scum that would have ended up trapped below the stain I later applied. Some would ask what it would matter. I like to think the devil is in the details.With considerable difficulty given the tiny chamber diameter (1” in length and 1” deep but a mere 0.5” across), I coaxed a small, limp piece of 150-grit paper inside and somehow worked it up and down enough to make a difference, then switched to 200- and finally 500-grit., finishing with a cotton cloth square with a squirt of purified water to remove the extra char. On the outside, I used 200-grit paper to clear away the stubborn remaining stain and residue from the Everclear soak. I micro-meshed from 1500-12000. I was ready at last to consider the crack.It looks pretty nasty, doesn’t it? Again, the consensus was to shave down the rim. Having Executive Power of veto, I opted for a fix I never tried before with a little concerted sanding of the rim with 150-grit paper, it comes down appreciably.Then I got a wild hair to do the unthinkable. I retrieved my file, an old, wrecked briar stummel I’ve kept for several years knowing I would never dare to try restoring it and some Super Glue, and scrape off enough of the wood to make a nice pile of super fine particles. I’ll tell you right now, the first two attempts at mixing Super Glue with the briar particles and then moving the ultra-fast-drying gloop to the top hole in the Clinton didn’t turn out well. Eventually I conclude the trick is sprinkling some of the fine wood into the gap and then sealing it with a kiss of glue.I did hasten to scrape some of the excess glue into the hole and remove the rest using the edge of a business card. When it was dry, which was in almost no time at all, I retorted the pipe Before the finishing touches, I sanded it down to smoothness with 200-grit paper and re-micro-meshed.

Afterward, taking the matter under full advisement and consideration, I mulled over Lincoln Marine Cordovan (burgundy) to stain it, which might have been overkill, and a mix with that and two or three times more Feibing’s Brown. I chose the latter, of course. I mixed the two stains in my small Tupperware. Staining the surface of the Clinton stummel for the most part had a nice effect, not counting the serious accentuation it gave to the small remaining hairline crack beneath the one I sealed on the rim. Therefore, following the same process I so painstakingly learned before, only going straight to the effective method, I prepared more briar shavings and, Super Glue at the ready, set the stummel down left side up and sprinkled the dust over the area where the crack was forming. After using another business card (what else are they good for?) to get the most of the particles, I squeezed a nice precise dot of glue over the spot and spread it out to let it dry in a thin coat.Of course I was forced to sand down the resulting obnoxious big round shiny bump, and in the process some of the surrounding stained surface, but it was worth it knowing the integrity of the pipe would be sound and none of my pipe aficionado friends with their eagle eyes would spot the former crack. Here is after sanding and before touch staining.And now for the finished product, after buffing with white Tripoli, White Diamond and carnauba. Red and white Tripoli, White Diamond and carnauba gave this bit a higher than usual shine. CONCLUSION
However lighthearted the ad with which I opened this installment of the series was intended to be, women are not here to be led around by the nose in the pursuit of so-called manly pleasures. Granted, no doubt, for the most part the pleasure of partaking of tobacco pipes has always been more the purview of men, but to think that women are incapable of such finer sensibilities of life is sheer sophistry, and shamefully self-deceptive and fallacious reasoning at that.

Furthermore, women need not have masculine qualities to favor the subtle qualities of pipe appreciation. And although most humans are capable of normal synaptic reflexes, the electrical impulses generated do not produce identical stimuli tickling the pleasure centers of the brain and kicking out uniform reactions. On the contrary, the magnificence of the human brain is that everyone’s reaction to a given stimulus is unique.

Why, then, should anyone be deprived of the deeply personal reflections facilitated by the mere puffing of a favorite tobacco in a like pipe? These are propositions that we hold to be self-evident, that all people are created equal. I would no more give up my pipes than my gun. Call me a radical or a revolutionary, but don’t call me a redneck or late for dinner.

SOURCES
https://www.smokingpipes.com/smokingpipesblog/single.cfm/post/top-pipe-picks-for-ladies Ladies pipes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo7IJY4ZjCU The Ladies of the Youtube Pipe Smoking Community

Early Dr. Grabow Linkmans De Luxe Propeller Logo

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Blog by Bill Hein

I bought a lot of pipes a while back that had one of these early Dr. Grabow pipes. Before I started cleaning this one up I started digging around the net to see what I could find out about it as I had never seen the propeller logo before. I mainly collect old Kaywoodies and as such didn’t know much about the older Grabows other than the few I have being great smokers. The bottom of the shank is stamped with the patent number 1896800. I went to the U.S. patent website and searched the number. The patent date is February 7th, 1933. I was unable to save the images but the patent looked to be on stinger design. From reading the patent, it seems the stinger and threaded stem were designed to help strengthen the pipe shank with the insert. The shape of the stinger was designed to also be used as a bowl scraper.

I went to Pipephil.eu and went to the Dr. Grabow section. The first pipe listed is a Propeller Logo De Luxe. They believe this model was made between 1933 and 1937 based off the markings. My pipe is stamped Linkmans’s in block letters above Dr. Grabow in script. The other side of the shank is stamped 9967 with De Luxe in script over bryure in block letters. Aside from the bowl number being slightly different on the Pipephil site, the other markings are the same. Below is the pipe as received.

The first thing I did was disassemble the pipe and throw the stem in an oxiclean bath. I then reamed out the bowl.While it soaked I filled the pipe with salt and 91% Isopropyl alcohol. After a few hours I removed the stem from its bath and gave it a good rinse. While it dried I knocked the salt out of the bowl and rinsed the inside of the bowl and shank to make sure all the salt was removed. I then set aside to dry. Once it had dried out a bit I took some 500 grit wet sandpaper and scrubbed off the oxidation from the stem as well as the gunk from the stinger. I noticed there was some build up on the rim of the bowl so I used the same paper to remove as much as I could.

I took a dark walnut stain pen to touch up the rim.

I started scrubbing out the inside of the stem, switching between bristled and soft pipe cleaners. This thing was nasty and I went through quite a few cleaners but finally they came out clean. I then went to my buffer and buffed the stem and stinger with white diamond. I switched wheels and buffed on a few coats of carnauba wax to both the stem and bowl. Once the buffing was done I buffed the pipe by hand with a microfibre cloth until I got a beautiful shine. Below is the finished pipe.

A Surprise Find – A 1980 Dunhill Shell Group 5 Saddle Billiard

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Blog by Steve Laug

When my brother and I went to visit the “older than me” pipeman on a recent trip to Idaho to buy estate pipes from him he had this rack of pipes on his counter top. I picked through them and my attention was caught by the White Spot stem that shows up on the right side of the rack in the photo below circled in red. It was a large pipe and when I picked it up and examined the underside of the shank it was stamped 52031 followed by Dunhill Shell over Made in England with a superscript 20 next to the d of England. That told me I was dealing with a pipe from 1980. The blast on it was quite stunning and the finish was in decent shape. The bowl was caked with a thick aromatic cake and smelled exactly like the pipe the man was smoking while we were there – Lane 1Q. There was lava spilled over the back side of the rim top and inner edge but the edges of the bowl were still in round. The bowl had a bit of an odd shape to it – kind of asymmetrical. That may be because of the sandblast. It has a good thick bowl and the shank is quite large. The saddle stem was oxidized and had some calcification on the back-end near the button from a rubber softee bit. There were some tooth marks and chatter on both sides of the stem. The slot in the button was half clogged with debris. The fit of the stem against the shank was snug but the underside where it had been flattened to match the bowl was slightly off. The finish was good so I would not touch that area but it was interesting to note. I did know that under the grime and dirt there was a beautiful large Dunhill residing that with just a little effort would come to light.I took some photos of the pipe once I got home to Canada and was going to work on it. You can see the beautiful grain in the blast and the state of the stem and finish in the photos. I took some close-up photos of the bottom of the shank to show the stamping and of the rim to show what the overflow looked like. Most of the blast on the rim was filled in with lava and the cake was uneven in the bowl. I used a needle file to clean up and sharpen the edge of the button and to remove the tooth marks on the stem. I had field reamed the pipe in Idaho using a PipNet Reamer to remove the majority of the cake. When I worked on it in Vancouver I scraped out the bowl with the Savinelli Pipe Knife and took the remaining cake back to bare briar.To clean up the oxidation and calcification on the stem I used some Meguiar’s Scratch x2.0 and scrubbed the stem with cotton pads. It took the majority of the oxidation off and removed the calcification around the button. I scrubbed the briar with Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush to clean out the grooves in the blast finish. I also used a brass bristle brush to scrub the rim surface and remove the lava. I had to use a dental pick to clean out the deeper grooves after the bristle brush.I rinsed and dried off the bowl with a cotton towel. The dried and dull pipe is shown in the photos below. It is clean on the outside and the rim is “lava-less”. I used a dark brown stain pen to touch up the edges of the rim and blend it in with the rest of the bowl. I scrubbed the airway and mortise in the bowl and the airway and slot with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. I picked out the slot with a dental pick and ran pipe cleaners through the grooves to clean out the debris. I wetsanded the stem with 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads as is usual and then dry sanded with 3200-12000 grit pads. I rubbed the stem down with Obsidian Oil between each set of three pads. When I finished sanding I gave it a final coat of the oil and let it soak into the rubber. I buffed the stem with Blue Diamond and then gave it multiple coats of carnauba wax. I hand applied some Conservator’s Wax to the bowl and then hand buffed it with a shoe brush. I finished buffing with a clean buffing pad and a microfibre cloth to raise the final shine on the bowl and stem. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. If you are interested in this one it will be for sale on the blog soon. Contact me and it can be yours. Thanks for looking.

It can only happen when you are afflicted with PAD

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Blog by Jeff and Steve Laug

A few weeks ago my brother Jeff and I had a great interchange on Facebook Messenger. He has become a great source of pipes for me from antique shops and malls. On top of that he has added a new source for him – eBay. He haunts it and is perpetually finding unusual and interesting pipes for me. We often talk in the evenings on Messenger and my kids continue to laugh at us. His sons and my daughters are quite convinced their old dads have really slipped a cog. They are going by the sheer volume of estate pipes that are traveling between his home in Idaho and mine in Vancouver. When I read them our conversation about a current lot of purchases he had made, they encouraged me to get him to write up this conversation for the blog. I sent him the piece in hopes that he would write it, but he said I should go ahead. I ignored it for weeks but I am finally giving in because as I read it over again this evening I could not stop laughing. I wrote the first draft of the blog and then sent it to him to edit and add to. He sent it back later this evening. The combined efforts of us both have finally gone into this piece.

The first half of the conversation revolved around the topic of PAD (Pipe Acquisition Disorder). I am sure that many of you who read this blog can commiserate with us in our affliction with this disorder. It is both a blessing and a curse. It sits in the back of your head and whispers in a siren voice that not even Odysseus could withstand. In the story of Jason and the Argonauts, Jason takes along Orpheus to play his lyre to drown out the voices of the sirens. But even then one of his crew heard the song and leapt into the sea. He is rescued by the goddess Aphrodite or he would have perished. The sirens song unexplainably causes men to plunge to their death. While PAD does not kill us its call is irresistible – it simply sings that there is one more beautiful pipe that needs to be found… no, one more… no, more…and it never ends!My brother started the conversation that he had at least 2 or 3 more boxes of pipes to send to me. He said that a lot of them were going to be temptations for me. He said that he had some really good luck lately in his purchases. (Then as an aside he said that his wife probably wouldn’t agree!)

I responded that she probably wouldn’t agree. I went on to tell him of the sheer number of pipes that I already had to clean up. You see he had already sent me several boxes of pipes that he had found. There were some real beauties in the boxes and I was sorting and picking what would come next. My daughters think I am absolutely nuts.

He replied, “My whole family thinks that I’m nuts! Only Dad seems to be interested in them.”

When he spoke of our Dad being interested I laughed. It is true. During some of the FaceTime conversations that we have, Dad is right there showing me the pipes and talking about them. I think that he enjoys the huge variety of styles, shapes and designs that Jeff is bringing home.

I replied to Jeff that his oldest son seems to have had some fun looking at the pipes with him when he was visiting.

Jeff said, “Until this week…. now he thinks I’ve gone overboard.”

I have to say, at this point I missed where the conversation was heading. I thought he was talking about how the sirens voices of PAD suck you in and you are never the same. I said to him that it is hard to quit buying pipes – there are so many good looking pieces of briar out there… that was my trouble. Now it is yours

Jeff did not explain what he had meant by the going overboard… he skipped that for the time being. (Somehow I missed how he was like the sailor who traveled with Jason and upon hearing the song threw himself into the sea.) Rather he said that he totally agreed with me. He said, “It’s like a fine combination of art and history… a perfect match for us since these are two things that we both love. Yeah that is the trouble… but then throw in the enticement of competition and I’m hooked! That is the combo. It is hard to walk away from. I look at the Gentlemen’s Pipesmoking Group (Facebook Group) and I think that it’s an epidemic!”

That was when I introduced him to PAD, the acronym for Pipe Acquisition Disorder.

He said it was the perfect description for his ailment… He would have to tell his wife that she needs to be kind and patient with him since he had PAD! I told him that there is no known cure for the illness and lots of folks laugh about it.

Things got quiet for a few moments and then Jeff came back saying, “I read our last few lines to my wife and she can’t stop laughing!!! But I think that it is an unrecoverable ailment. I vow that I won’t look at eBay, but no matter how hard I try to resist it beckons me with its siren call for just a peek at what’s new.” At this point we were both laughing. Slowly but surely the conversation came around to the point that I had missed earlier – his going overboard. I had no idea what was coming but I could not stop laughing once he started to tell the story. At this point rather than narrate the story further, I invite you into our conversation.

Jeff: I’ll have to fill you in on my latest pipe misstep… it’s a doozy!

Steve: oh oh

Jeff: It took some “splaining” to my wife!

Steve: did she buy the splaining

Jeff: It wrecked my Saturday! I spent all morning trying to fix it!

Steve: oh boy… what did I get you into?

Jeff: Have you ever had several shipments go to the wrong address?? It’s not fun!

Steve: no.

Jeff: Somehow, back in 2008 my wife used our eBay account to send something to our son at Whitworth University in Spokane. Guess where I sent a couple hundred dollars’ worth of pipes? Good thing they’re Presbyterians!

Steve: ouch… these were the eBay wins? What happened?

Jeff: I noticed that two of the orders were marked delivered on eBay. I thought that our mail lady screwed up again and really hadn’t delivered them. So just to make sure, I checked the address that they were sent to… sure enough they went to Spokane. I checked the tracking numbers and two of the packages had been delivered to Whitworth. Two were still in transit (one from Greece!).

Steve: Oh no. What is going to happen? That is my biggest nightmare

Jeff: I talked with the Spokane post office that services Whitworth and they showed that 3 packages had been delivered to the school. As far as they were concerned, their job was done and they couldn’t help me! The school post office was open for 2 hours on Saturday and I was able to locate 1 of the 3 packages by talking with a student working there. The other two had been taken by the supervisor to be sent to the last address that they had for my son. She wouldn’t be at work today but would call me with details early the following week.

Steve: Oh no

Jeff: She called me at work a couple of days later, and mentioned that she had the other two packages and had not sent them to my son. (This was after I got him riled up the night before about how out-of-control I was!). She told me today that since my son has not been a student at Whitworth for at least 2 years, they couldn’t be forwarded to him. Also, since I wasn’t the addressee, they couldn’t by law send them to me either. Instead, they would be returned to the sender. Therefore, I contacted each of the 3 sellers to give them heads-up and to confess my stupidity. Most were cooperative and I believe will work with me on this. I’m hoping that Whitworth will work with me on the package from Greece and will send it to me directly. That seller from Greece was obnoxious. I’m really hoping that the package won’t have to go back to Greece… I might just write that pipe off as a loss!

Jeff: When and if you get these 4 pipes, you had better enjoy them and smoke the living daylights out of them!! Hopefully this has made you evening enjoyable… I can laugh now!

Steve: Lol. It is hilarious.

There is a happy ending to this mess… one of the writers here on rebornpipes, Aaron Henson, was willing to go to Whitworth and deal with making sure that three of the packages got sent on to my brother Jeff. The fourth one had been returned to the seller and after paying postage for a second time (totaling more than the original price of the pipe!), the pipe arrived in Idaho Falls. The humorous thing is that this particular pipe turned out to be a nicely carved pipe with beautiful ornamental leaves on the bowl… 7-lobed leaves popular in Colorado, but not in conservative Idaho! Oh well, the plight of PAD! I picked them up (except for this one pipe!) on a recent trip to Idaho and have them in the box of pipes to be refurbished. All in all, a nice haul! Better yet… a great story!

Spotlight: Ladies Pipes, Part 1/7, a FRASA French Bent Billiard

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A pipe in the mouth makes it clear that there has been no mistake–you are undoubtedly a man.
— Alan Alexander Milne (1892-1956) – English author, playwright, poet essayist and storyteller best known for Winnie the Pooh – from “Smoking as a Fine Art,” in Not That It Matters, 1919, a collection of wide-ranging and manly essays

INTRODUCTION
I admit, my choice of the above quote was calculated, but not to raise the ire of any female smokers I indeed admire and whose attention I hope to draw to this forum and others, with the goal of opening a dialogue between the genders who share at least one common love. Of course, as with all well-meaning attempts at good natured humor mixed with more than a grain of satire, I should not be surprised if this one, in the spirit of political incorrectness, backfires in my face like a good ole boy’s sawed-off shotgun packed with too much rock salt.

But no, I think my message is clear. A.A. Milne was a good man and without doubt one of the most celebrated and creative writers of children’s stories of his time, albeit the product of the languid ease and floating, hypnotic comfort of his youth in the English countryside and predetermined defining crucible at Cambridge’s Exeter College at a time when his contemporaries were such traitors as Guy Burgess and Kim Philby to name but two. Yet Milne chose the right path, whatever unavoidable world-view of woman and their “rightful places” in the homes and gardens and still grander scheme of the universe. Milne escaped the abyss of prison, execution or exile to a dacha on the steppes of Mother Russia – outside of his day-to-day harrowing home life. All in all, notwithstanding the opening and somewhat tasteless quote, Milne turned out a bit alright.

So now, a few words about the earth-shattering day at the Stag Tobacconist in Albuquerque, New Mexico, US of A, deep in the Land of Enchantment. How â propos is that, I ask? Holy Shades of a Midsummer Night’s Dream, Batman! You see, I was sitting in my customary spot with a view of the entire room against the unlikely and therefore ever-present threat of imminent attack by unknown sinister forces, which seem to lurk in every corner of this wannabe city. The place continues to groan and grumble with unnatural growing pains.

I was sitting there in my comfortable cushioned chair in the smoker’s lounge, working on my laptop, when I overheard a woman who had come in looking for a “lady’s pipe.” I wasn’t eavesdropping, I just couldn’t help overhearing, along with the rest of the conversation, although my interest was piqued and my ears pricked. From her demeanor, I guessed it was her first visit to the shop. She was a rather large lady, dressed in a heavy long black coat. I knew right off that I had exactly what she was looking for at my apartment in an assortment of nice smaller pipes that nevertheless were not minis. I knew not to interfere with Chuck Richards, my friend and mentor, who had engaged the good woman

Scanning my mental knowledge of the shop’s inventory, I settled on a few of the no-name Italians and some mini carved meerschaums in the glass case below where Chuck and the lady stood at the end of the service counter, only a few yards from my curious ears and eyes. To my immense surprise, I watched Chuck (whose lips were pulled back in a look of distaste I recognized, whether or not the woman detected it) as he produced with appropriate care the open box of one of the meerschaums. The woman made a definite sound of pleasure that was stifled by Chuck’s masterful discourse on the pros and cons of meerschaum minis. He went on about the quality of the material and their ability to burn any type of tobacco without a lingering taste; their fragility and special precautions needed to use them, and in particular their construction with small push-in tenons that can be difficult to maneuver the vital cleaners through. He demonstrated and then explained how the cleaner would also be inserted into the shank after smoking but that he couldn’t handle the surface of the pipe because of its porous nature that absorbs skin oils and dirt, leading to serious damage.

Choking back a laugh, I thought I could not have discouraged a sale better if I had tried! I happen to know Chuck despises fancy, carved meerschaums for his own collection but would never hesitate to sell one to the right person. And so he moved on to several nice, shiny, natural finish no-names of medium length and bowl size. My excitement was growing. I decided if and only if Chuck proved unsuccessful in matching the female customer with a pipe – a wholly unlikely event – would I scurry out the door after her and offer the prospective customer my card and services.

But of course, Chuck sold her a very nice pipe, albeit twice the size of those I will show in this series. Thus was conceived the idea for this series, which, in my original plans, I envisioned, as usual, in a single blog. After a mere glimpse at the boggling research needed to undertake the endeavor, however, not to mention the difficulty of blogging seven restores in one space, I had the brainstorm of splitting the project into a series.

My friend on the Smokers Forums UK (http://www.smokersforums.co.uk/), who goes by the username “im2for1” there, is a Team Member at the Forums and owner of Ladies of the Briar for women only on Yahoo Groups and Friends of the Ladies of Briar of Facebook. She is also vice president of New Jersey Fellowship of Pipe Smokers on Yahoo and Facebook. With some careful, specific prodding, I hope to elicit some invaluable intelligence from Liz as this series progresses.

Here are some pictures of the seven pipes, which I relegated to a special pile on the big work desk in my office. I automatically segregated them for their unusual small sizes but had no idea that distinction would someday come in handy. Now, for a description of my first foray into a so-called Ladies Pipes, although it could be smoked without shame by a man (if I didn’t already sell it to one of my best customers, known to some readers here as Ashley and going back to my first real restore). This is a FRASA (from the brand mark on the shank), a French piece of work about which I can find no background. I wonder if the larger capital letters indicate an acronym. It’s a lovely, little, delicately curved, natural, dark red briar billiard. RESTORATION
This was one of the cleanest pipes I’ve ever come across in a lot, but I’ve never seen one yet on which I couldn’t improve. I showed all of the pipes I’m restoring for these blogs to Ashley at one of our weekly pipe meetings a few weeks back, and I had a good idea which one she would like best. I’ve come to know her tastes, having sold her several pipes, not to mention one to her husband, Stephen. Her hand went straight for the FRASA and her eyes sparkled with P.A.D. I knew I had her. I pointed out the clean but slightly rough to the touch chamber, which took a flashlight to determine that it had indeed been lightly smoked. Then there were some minor blemishes on the bowl. I also said I’d like to lighten it up a bit, unless she liked it the way it was.

“Go for it!” she said.

And so I tossed the bit in an OxiClean bath.Moving to the stummel, I wiped it down with purified water and soft cotton cloth gun cleaners before using 320-grit paper gently and evenly before micro-meshing from 1500-12000. Removing the bit from the OxiClean and rinsing it, I wet micro-meshed it to a nice dark shine.I sanded the small chamber with 200- and 320-grit papers and retorted it just to be thorough, but I didn’t expect to find anything, and I didn’t. Now, that’s a clean pipe!

I finished by buffing the stummel with white Tripoli, White Diamond and carnauba, and the bit the red and white Tripoli, White Diamond and carnauba. CONCLUSION
In the next installment, I plan on getting more to the meat and potatoes issues of relative numbers of women who partake of the magic instrument of divine contemplation – recognizing, of course, the futility of trying to get anywhere near exact numbers. I also hope to have feedback from Liz and others like her who are as active as any men in their smoking communities, with some insights into the kinds of pipes they actually enjoy, whether “ladylike” or more “manly.” Yes, sir (or ma’am), the times, they are a-changin‘.

I’ll leave you with these parting shots of two lady smokers, one real and one – ahem – well, never mind.

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