Tag Archives: Alessandro Lorenzetti

Restoring and Restemming a Clogged and Filthy Italian Lorenzetti Billiard

by Steve Laug

A fellow in Victoria, Brian has had me work on a few of his pipes this past few months. The pipes are generally very dirty with plugged airways and a thick damp, tarry mess in the heel of each bowl. The airway in the shank was also clogged so there was no exchange of air going through the pipe. The pipe was stamped on the left side of the shank and reads Lorenzetti in script [over] Italy and on the right side it is stamped Augustus [over] Caesar. On the underside it is stamped 03. There is a thick cake in the bowl that is wet in the bottom 1/3 of the bowl. The rim top was quite clear of heavy lava. The finish on the bowl and shank has a thick peeling coat of varnish on the bowl that looks terrible. There is an acrylic shank end with an insert of briar between the acrylic pieces. The stem acrylic stem is a filter stem and the button end has a large chunk missing that is severely damaged. I will need to restem the pipe. But I have included photos of the pipe before I started working on it. I took photos of the rim top and stem to show the general condition of the pipe. The bowl is heavily caked and the rim top and edges have a thick lava overflow. The photos of the stem show the damage and broken part of the stem. It really is a mess and the acrylic is not repairable.I took photos of the stamping on the sides of the shank. It is clear and readable and reads as noted above. I took a photo of the pipe without the stem to show the proportions of the bowl and stem. I also went through my stems and had a saddle stem that was made for a filter. I called Brian and asked if this would work for him and he was happy with the options. I wanted to gather some background information on the brand. I turned first to Pipephil’s site to see what I could learn (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-l6.html). I was able to get a screen capture of information on the brand. I have included that below along with the sidebar info.Brand created 1934 by Otello Lorenzetti.Currently (2009) the company is managed by Alessandro Lorenzetti. Address: via A.Giunta, 51, 62019 Recanati (MC) – Italy.

I turned to Pipedia to gather more information on the brand. It gives some great history of how the brand developed (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzetti). I quote some portions of the article below. There was also a photo of the same pipe that I am working on the site. I have included that below.

Smooth Pot, courtesy SmokersHaven.com

Otello Lorenzetti, the founder of our manufacture, was born in Castelnuovo, Recanati in 1911. He is the fifth of five children from a modest, but enterprising family, in fact they own a tavern where the young Otello, already at the age of seven, actively collaborates. He goes on his own, with a small handcart, to S. Agostino di Recanati where he purchases fizzy drinks and other soft drinks and then resells them with his mother in their small family run tavern….

After the precocious interruption of his studies he begins to work as an employee at “Catena Remigio” an old pipe manufacture in Recanati. The grand personality of Otello, who is inclined to make any art a passion, does not delay in emerging. In 1934, after having concluded 18 months of military service in Cividale, in Friuli Venezia Giulia, he decides to work on his own pondering the first bases of the actual pipe manufacture, that, in this period, operates under the company name “Otello Lorenzetti.” At that time the capital of our actual company, that was and still is his house, was constituted by: “A few rented tools and my own hands” – as Otello himself tells us. The production consists of 20-30 pipes per day. Every morning, in company of his bicycle, he tries to sell them to the tobacco shops in the area or as he says the “neighbouring shops”. With only the strength of his legs he goes to Macerata, San Severino and Civitanova Marche. His pipes are appreciated, so much so that he decides to work more than 12 hours a day to be able to increase the production. This does not constitute a sacrifice for him as his neighbours remember hearing him tirelessly working and singing everyday.

Two brisk interruptions mark the history of our pipe manufacture: the first was in 1935 -in the summer of this year Otello was enrolled in the army and then left for “the African Campaign” from which he returned in January of 1937; the second was in October of 1940, other long months spent in the service of the Italian Army after which he returned home in 1943 the year of Armistice. In 1940 Otello got married to Marinella who became, other than his wife, a great and indispensable business collaborator.

In 1947 Otello succeeded in building, alone, machines the same as the ones he used to rent up until that moment. Many of the pieces most difficult to mould by hand were designed by him and were made in a craftsman workshop in Civitanova Marche. Production increased and permitted Otello and Marinella to buy a “Vespa” helping them to, a part from the province of Macerata, also reach Abruzzo in order to successfully sell their pipes.

The Sixties-Seventies bring on the beginning of exportation abroad (Europe, Africa, America). The company begins to expand, now a part from Marinella, with the help of their children Luciano, Gabriella, Alessandro and some employees. The production begins to perfect itself to the point of being appreciated in almost all the world and by one of the biggest and most famous pipe collectors of all times: our ex-president of the Republic Sandro Pertini.

I knew that I was dealing with a Lorezetti that was probably a recent manufacture. It had some great shape and form and should clean up well once I have the varnish coat removed. Now it was time to work on the pipe.

I reamed the bowl with a PipNet pipe reamer and the 2^nd and 3^rd cutting heads to remove the heavy cake. I took it back to bare briar and then cleaned up the reaming with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. I sanded the bowl with a piece of dowel wrapped in 220 grit sandpaper. I scrubbed the exterior of the bowl and shank with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush. It took some scrubbing to clear off the debris on the rim top and the surface of the bowl and shank. I rinsed the bowl off with warm water to remove the grime and debris along with the soap on the pipe. It looked much better. To begin the process of breaking through the peeling varnish coat I wiped the bowl and shank down with acetone on cotton pads. It broke through a lot of the varnish and I began to see what was underneath the varnish. I sanded the bowl with 320-3500 grit 2×2 inch sanding pads. I wiped the briar down with a damp cloth to remove the sanding debris. By the final pad it was looking much better. I cleaned out the mortise and airway in the shank as well as the airway in the newly chosen stem with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and alcohol. It was a dirty bowl and shank.I polished the bowl and the shank with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding it with 1500-12000 git sanding pads. I wanted to make the new stain coat a bit more transparent. I wiped it down with a cloth and some Obsidian Oil. I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the surface of the briar with my fingertips to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I let the balm sit for 15 minutes and then buffed with a cotton cloth to raise the shine. The photos show the bowl at this point in the restoration process. I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. I sanded the stem to reduce the diameter of the saddle portion and give it a slight slope or taper. I used my Dremel and sanding drum to start the process. I cleaned up the sanding marks from the Dremel with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper. I smoothed out the marks and the stem started to look better.I sanded the stem with 320-3500 grit 2×2 inch pads to further smooth out the surface and remove the light residual oxidation. I wiped the stem down after each pad with an Obsidian Oil cloth to remove the debris and further protect the stem.I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped it down after each sanding pad with Obsidian Oil.I polished the finished Lorenzetti Italy Augustus Caesar Billiard with Blue Diamond to polish out the remaining small scratches. I gave the bowl and the newly fit saddle stem multiple coats of carnauba wax and buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. I hand buffed it with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The pipe polished up pretty nicely. The smooth briar with the medium the brown stain wash works very well with the black stem. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. I have worked on several Lorenzetti’s over the years and I have always been impressed by his ability to a craft a comfortable and functional smoking pipe. It looks far better with the varnish coat removed. The beautiful Lorenzetti Augustus Caesar had the following dimensions. The Length: 6 inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 3/8 inches, Chamber diameter: 7/8 inches. The weight of the pipe is 51 grams/ 1.69 ounces. I have two more of Brian’s pipes to work on and then they will go back to him. This is an interesting group of three pipes to bring back to life.

As always, I encourage your questions and comments as you read the blog. Thanks to each of you who are reading this blog. Remember we are not pipe owners; we are pipe men and women who hold our pipes in trust until they pass on into the trust of those who follow us.

Restoring a Filthy Lorenzetti 3200 – 20 Bent Egg Filter Pipe

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Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe I chose to work on came is another one from the lot of 11 pipes I purchased from a lady in Regina, Saskatchewan. She had found them in a house she bought and wanted to know if I wanted them. We struck a deal, I paid for the pipes and shipping and the box arrived while I was traveling in Europe. In the box were 4 Stanwells, 1 Danmore Bowl, 1 Soren Freehand, 1 Calabash with a Briar Bowl, 1 Nording Freehand, 1 Italian Made Bertenetti, 1 Rhodesian with a banded cracked shank, and 1 Brigham. I have restored the Nording, the snapped Stanwell, the Brigham, the Gourd Calabash with the briar bowl, restemmed and restored the Danmore bowl, a Stanwell Ivarsson design 11 Pot and Soren Hand Carved Freehand. There are blogs on each restoration available. The next pipe on the table is an extremely dirty pipes in a box full of very dirty pipes. It is stamped on the left side of the shank and reads Lorenzetti [over] Italy. On the right side it reads 3200 [over] 20 which could be the shape number of the pipe. There was a thick cake in the bowl, debris in the bottom and on the bowl walls and some remnants of tobacco. The airway was plugged and there was no draught on the pipe. There was a heavy lava overflow on the rim top flowing down the sides of the bowl and covering much of the shank. There appears to be some varnish or topcoat that is damaged and the grime is both on top of and underneath. It was hard to know the condition of the inner or the outer edge of the bowl for sure because of the cake. There was an acrylic shank extension sandwiching a briar ring. The shank end is also covered in a thick tar and oil residue flowing out of the mortise on to the stem and shank end. The acrylic stem had a briar ring next to the tenon and looked to be in decent condition underneath the thick oils and tars. There were minimal tooth marks and chatter on the shank. I took photos of the pipe before I started my cleanup work on it. I took a close-up photo of the bowl and the inwardly bevelled rim top to show the cake in the bowl. The rim top shows the thick lava on the inner edge of the bowl. The outer edges of the bowl also showed the lava flowing down the bowl sides. The shank end had an acrylic extension sandwiching a briar ring. I took photos of the stem surface and button to show its general condition. There was a briar ring around the stem surface near the tenon. The stem was a 9mm filter stem. The inside was filthy. It looked very good under the tars and oils that coated the surface.The stamping on the sides of the shank are covered with tars and oils but are readable as noted above. I took the stem off the shank and took a photo to give a sense of the proportion of the pipe. I have worked on a few Lorenzetti pipes over the years but have little memory of the background of the brand. I turned to Pipephil to get a quick overview (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-l6.html). I have included a screen capture of the information on that site for quick reference. I learned that the brand was created in 1934 by Otello Lorenzetti. As of (2009) the company was managed by Alessandro Lorenzetti.I then turned to Pipedia and found a great historical survey of the founder Otello Lorenzetti. It is a great read regarding the history of the brand and its development from small beginnings with Otello selling pipes from his bicycle around his community to a brand that is available around the world today (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzetti).

The site also had a photo of a pipe that has the same finish as the one that I am working on. You can see from the photo what the one I am working on must have looked like when it sold. Here is the photo courtesy SmokersHaven.com.From that I knew that the pipe in my hands looked like when it came out. It was a real beauty that gave me the impetus to work on it. Armed with that information I turned my attention to restoring the pipe.

I decided to start my work on the pipe by reaming the bowl with a PipNet pipe reamer using the first and second cutting head to take the cake back to bare briar. I cleaned up the reaming with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. I sanded the walls with a piece of 180 grit sandpaper wrapped around a dowel to smooth them out. I wiped the bowl down with acetone to remove the tarry build up and the varnish on the briar. There was a lot of grime that came off with the varnish. It still needed a lot of work but it was looking better. I scrubbed the exterior of the briar with a tooth brush and undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap. I rinsed it off with warm water to remove the grime and soap. It looked much better and the dust and debris was gone. I dried it with a cotton towel. Next, I worked on the rim top of the bowl to clean up the bevel and the inner edge. I also worked on the marks around the bowl that needed work. It took some work but it cleaned up well. I used a folded piece of sandpaper to clean up the inner edge of the rim and to sand the darkening off around the bowl sides. I scrubbed out the internals of the pipe with 99% isopropyl alcohol, pipe cleaners and cotton swabs. I cleaned out the airway in the stem as well. The airway into the bowl was a little different. It was in the bottom of the bowl toward the back. It has some wear on the top edge of the airway entrance. I worked on these areas repeatedly until the shank and the airway in all the parts was clean.I stained the bowl and shank with a light brown stain wash. I applied it to the surface of the briar with a wool dauber. I flamed it with a lighter flame to set it in the grain. I repeated the process until I was satisfied with the coverage. I polished the shank extension and the briar with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding it with 1500-12000 git sanding pads. I wanted to make the new stain coat a bit more transparent. I wiped it down with a cloth and some Obsidian Oil. The bowl had a very fowl tobacco ghost that hung over the pipe and the desk top where I was working on it. I stuffed the bowl with three cotton bolls and twisted one into the shank end. I used an ear syringe to fill the bowl with alcohol. I let the bowl sit for several hours to work on the stem. Once I came back to it the cotton boll was filthy. Once it was removed I ran pipe cleaners through and the pipe smelled much better. I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the surface of the briar with my fingertips to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I let the balm sit for 15 minutes and then buffed with a cotton cloth to raise the shine. The photos show the bowl at this point in the restoration process. With that done, the bowl was finished other than the final buffing. I set it aside and turned my attention to the stem. I polished the oxidation and tooth chatter on the stem with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped it down after each sanding pad with Obsidian Oil. I finished polishing the stem with Before & After Pipe Stem polish (both Fine and Extra Fine) then wiped the stem down with another coat of Obsidian Oil.I polished finished Lorenzetti Italy 3200-20 Bent Egg Sitter with Blue Diamond to polish out the remaining small scratches. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax and buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. I hand buffed it with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The pipe polished up pretty nicely. The smooth briar shows the effect of the brown stain wash and works very well with the black acrylic stem. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. I have worked on several Lorenzetti’s over the years and I have always been impressed by his ability to a craft a comfortable and functional smoking pipe. The Length: 5 ½ inches, Height: 2 inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: 7/8 inches. The weight of the pipe is 64 grams/ 2.26 ounces. I will be putting it on the rebornpipes store in the Italian Pipemakers Section if you would like to add it to your rack and carry on the previous pipeman’s legacy. This is an interesting estate to bring back to life.

Renewing one of Alex’s first pipes – a Lorenzetti Lovat

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Blog by Steve Laug

Alex has been an ongoing source of restoration projects for me for a few years now. I actually have a box of Alex’s pipes that he drops by periodically and adds new ones to. It has been fun to see him pick up the restoration hobby himself lately. He leaves the harder ones to me to work on – whether harder in terms of issues or harder in terms of cleaning. I have quite a few of his to work on so I spread them among the others that I am working on. This next pipe is an interesting Lorenzetti Lovat that was one of his first pipes. It has some issues with the finish that will need to be addressed. The pipe is stamped Lorenzetti over Italy on the left side of the shank and Avitus 03 on the right side. It has been in the box for quite a while now so I took it to the work table. The finish is a combination of reddish browns and dark brown in streaks on the bowl sides. It almost appears that it was to make it look like grain. There were some spots around the heel and sides of the bowl where it looked like the shellac coat was peeling off the bowl. The rim top had an inward bevel that had some darkening to the inner edge on the back of the bowl. There were some nicks around the outer edge toward the front. The stem was lightly oxidized with calcification around the button. It has the cursive Lorenzetti “L” on the left of the saddle stem. There were tooth marks and chatter on both sides of the stem ahead of the button. I took some photos of the pipe as I received it. I took a close up photo of the rim top. It shows some darkening on the back of the inward beveled top. The outer edges were nicked and damaged on the right side. The photos of the stem show tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. The stem is also quite oxidized.I took photos of the stamping on both sides of the shank. You can see that it reads as noted above. I also took a photo of the stamping on the side of the saddle stem.I took photos of the bubbled finish around the sides of the bowl. It looked to me that the bubbled portions were over putty fills in the briar. Time would tell! I don’t believe I have worked on this brand before so I turned to Pipephil to get a quick overview of the brand (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-l6.html). I have included a screen capture of the information on that site for quick reference. I learned that the brand was created in 1934 by Otello Lorenzetti. As of (2009) the company was managed by Alessandro Lorenzetti.I then turned to Pipedia and found a great historical survey of the founder Otello Lorenzetti. It is a great read regarding the history of the brand and its development from small beginnings with Otello selling pipes from his bicycle around his community to a brand that is available around the world today. (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzetti).

This is a thick shank classic looking Lovat with a briar insert in the vulcanite stem. The staining would have originally hidden the fills very well. The stain gives the appearance of cross grain around the bowl when in reality the pipe is a mix of grains. I wiped the bowl down with a cotton pad and alcohol to remove the shiny, spotty top coat of the finish. The combination of brown stains on the finish makes it interesting. Now it was time to work on Alex’s pipe. I started the work by reaming the bowl and cleaning out the shank. The pipe was amazingly clean so it did not take too much to clean it.I polished the bowl and rim top with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads and wiped the bowl down after each pad with a damp cloth. The polishing gave the bowl a rich shine. After polishing the rim it was slightly lighter than the other smooth portions of the bowl. I used a Maple Stain Pen to match the colour of the rest of the bowl and blend the new finished rim into the surrounding pipe. I rubbed it down with Before and After Restoration Balm. It is a product developed by Mark Hoover to clean, enliven and protect briar. I worked it into the briar with my fingertips. I let it sit for about 10 minutes and buffed it off with a cotton cloth. You can see the results in the photos below. I set the bowl aside and turned to address the light tooth marks, chatter and gouges on the stem surface. I sanded both the top and underside of the stem with 220 grit sandpaper to remove the damages to the vulcanite. Fortunately they were not too deep so they came out fairly quickly. I also did a quick sanding to remove the oxidation on the stem.I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding it with 1500-12000 grit pads and wiping it down after each pad with a damp cotton pad to remove the dust. I polished it with Before and After Pipe Polish – both fine and extra fine. I finished by wiping the stem down with some No Oxy Oil that received from Briarville Pipe Repair to try out and get a sense of its value to me and others. Once I finished I put the stem back on the shank and buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond polish briar and vulcanite. I gave the stem a vigorous polish being careful around the white spot. I gave the bowl and the stem several coats of carnauba. I buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad and hand buffed it with a microfiber cloth. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. This Lorenzetti Lovat is a great piece of Alex’s personal pipe history and looks better than when I began the process. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 4 ½ inches, Height: 1 ½ inches, Outer Bowl Diameter: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber Diameter: ¾ of an inch. The pipe will soon be heading back to Alex so he can continue to enjoy it. I have told him that if he ever wants to part with it I get the right of first refusal. Thanks for walking with me through the restoration.