Tag Archives: Arlington Imported Briar Pipes

Restoring the second of 11 pipes sent for restoration – an Arlington Imported Briar Dublin

by Steve Laug

A while back I was asked by a customer and friend, Jack to take on some projects for him. I have worked on a few pipes for him over the years so we seem to have a standing agreement that I will clean up his pipes. This time he sent a batch containing 11 pipes – six Bertrams, an Arlington, a GBD, an old WDC Triangle Bakelite and one marked Texaco. All of them were in various conditions and would need different types of work. I took a photo of the pipes before I started working on them.I chose to work on the Arlington Imported Briar Dublin next. This richly stained Saddle Stem Dublin is a beautiful pipe. It is clearly stamped on the left side of the shank and reads Arlington in script [over] Imported Briar. The grain around the bowl is highlighted by the stain and really stands out. It has a rich darker, reddish brown finish that is on the bowl and shank. It was filthy with dust and debris ground into the sides of the bowl. The rim top has a heavy lava overflow on the top and edges coming from a thick cake in the bowl. The saddle vulcanite push stem had some tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. I took photos of the pipe before I started working on it. It really is another beauty. I took photos of the rim top and the stem to show the condition. You can see the thick cake in the bowl and overflow of lava on the rim top. The photos of the stem show the tooth marks and damage in the vulcanite on the top and underside ahead of the button.I took a photo of the stamping on the side of the shank to capture it. It was clear and readable as noted above. I removed the stem from the shank and took a photo of the parts.Before I started my work on the pipe itself I turned to Pipephil to get a quick overview of the background information on the Arlington brand (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-a7.html). The side bar stated that it was a brand of the Arlington Briar Pipe Corp. I have included a screen capture of the pertinent information below.I turned to Pipedia for more information (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Arlington). I quote the article below.

Arlington Briar Pipes Corporation was founded in 1919 in Brooklyn, New York, and produced the Arlington, Briarlee, Firethorn, Kimberly, Krona and Olde London brands among dozens of others, primarily acting as a subcontractor making pipes to be sold under other brand names. Among others, in the 1950’s, Arlington turned pipes for the famed Wilke Pipe Shop in New York City. The corporation was dissolved by the State of New York as inactive on December 6, 1978. Arlington Briar Pipe Corporation, located at 200 Kosciusko Street, Brooklyn, New York, registered only a single brand trademark, the Arlington brand, the trademark for which was applied for on November 13, 1962 and granted on February 25, 1964. Jack Kaye, of Arlington Briar, was also granted a patent for a combined mirror and stand in 1967.

According to José Manuel Lopes, “North American brand that belonged to Arlington Briar Pipes Corp., Brooklyn, New York, founded in 1919. In the 1940s, Ludwig Rosenberger gave the company new life, and it continued until the 70s. His son, Mel Rosenberger, has recently launched the DiMonte brand. Jack Uhle was also linked to Arlington.” Arlington, as far as known, mainly operated as a sub-contractor for other brands. The Jobey pipes are said to be made by Arlington at an unknown point of time. Arlington’s own pipes are seldom seen.

The article also included the following photo from an RTDA catalog. It is a great addition to the information above.I started my work on the pipe by reaming the bowl with a PipNet reamer. I used the first cutting head and took the cake back to bare briar. I cleaned up the reaming with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife and removed all the remnants of the cake. I scraped the rim top with the flat edge of the blade at the same time and removed most of the thick lava build up. I sanded the walls of the bowl with a piece of dowel wrapped in 220 grit sandpaper. The walls look very good at his point in the process. I cleaned out the shank, the airway and the mortise with alcohol, cotton swabs, hard bristle and soft bristle pipe cleaners. It was a very dirty pipe which just meant that it had really been enjoyed by the previous pipe man. I cleaned the bone tenon and the inside of the airway in the stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners in the same way as I did the shank. It also was very dirty.I scrubbed the exterior of the bowl and shank with a tooth brush and undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap. I scrubbed the lava on the rim top and overflow on the outside of the bowl with the soap. I rinsed the briar with warm water to remove the grime and debris of the scrubbing. It looked significantly better after the scrubbing. The darkening on the rim top is very clear. The darkening on the rim top and inner edge of the bowl would need to be dealt with. I cleaned up the inner edge with a piece of sandpaper. I sanded the top of the rim with the piece of 220 grit sandpaper and was able to remove the darkening.I finished that and moved on to it with 320-3500 grit sanding pads to finish the rim top and the bowl and shank. The briar began to take on a rich shine and the darkening on the top was gone. The photos tell the story. I polished the smooth rim top with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding it with 1200-15000 grit pads. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each sanding pad. The grain started to rise to the surface as I polished it. I rubbed the bowl and shank down with Before & After Restoration Balm to deep clean the finish on the bowl and shank. The product works to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I worked it in with my fingers to get it into the briar. I let it sit for 10 minutes then I wiped it off and buffed it with a soft cloth. The briar really began to have a rich shine. I took some photos of the bowl at this point to mark the progress in the restoration. It is a beautiful bowl. I turned my attention to the stem. I scrubbed the oxidized surface of the stem with Soft Scrub Cleanser and cotton pads. It took some elbow grease but it definitely looks better.I “painted” the surface of the vulcanite where the tooth marks were with the flame of a lighter. I filled in the deep tooth marks that remained with a rubberized Black CA glue. After it cured I flattened the repairs with a small flat file. I sanded the repairs further to flatten out the tooth chatter with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper. Progress was happening! I sanded the surface of the vulcanite with the 2 x 2 inch sanding pads – 320-3500 grit pads to remove the remaining oxidation. I dry sanded the surface until I have removed all of the oxidation and the stem started to really shine.I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped the stem down after each sanding pad with Obsidian Oil. I polished the stem with Before & After Pipe Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine. I gave it a coat of Obsidian Pipe Stem Oil. It works to protect the stem from oxidizing. I set it aside to dry. I am excited to finish this Arlington Imported Briar Saddle Stem Dublin. I put the pipe back together and buffed it with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel. I gave the bowl multiple coats of Conservator’s Wax and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax. I buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine and then by hand with a microfibre cloth to deepen it. It is fun to see what the polished bowl looks like with beautiful grain on the smooth portions and the rustication depths all around it. The polished grain on the pipe looks great with the black vulcanite stem. This Arlington Dublin is great looking and the pipe feels great in my hand. It is light and well balanced. Have a look at it with the photos below. The dimensions are Length: 6 inches, Height: 2 inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 3/8 inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 31 grams/1.06 ounces. It is another beautiful pipe that I will send to Jack after I finish working on the other 9 pipes. I look forward to hear what he thinks of this next beauty. It should be a great smoking pipe.

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.

New Life for a Chunky Arlington Imported Briar Bent Rhodesian

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Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the work table is another pipe that has been here for over 5 years. Sad that there are some that have sat this long or longer before I got to them. But on the other hand I get to look through my boxes and pick out what turns my crank at the moment. This one was a nice looking bent Rhodesian with interesting rustication patterns. We picked it up back in May, 2017 off EBay from a seller in Lewisburg, Ohio, USA. It is stamped on the left side of the shank and reads Arlington in script [over] Imported Briar. The rustication is rugged but has a smooth spot on each side of the bowl, a panel on the front and each side of the shank and a smooth band around the shank end. It is dirty but is quite nice with the reds and browns of the briar and the black vulcanite stem. The pipe was another one that had obviously been someone’s favourite and must have been a grand smoker. The finish is very dirty with dust in the rustication. The bowl is heavily caked with a thick lava overflow on the rim top. The inner edge was also thickly caked with lava. The stem is lightly oxidized, calcified and had some tooth chatter on the top and underside ahead of the button. The pipe showed a lot of promise but it was a mess. Jeff took pictures of the pipe before he did his clean up work. He took photos of the rim top and bowl as well as the stem surfaces to show the condition of the well smoked pipe. You can see the thick cake in the bowl and the heavy lava on the inner edge and rim top. The stem was oxidized, calcified and had tooth chatter on both sides ahead of the button. He removed the stem from the shank and revealed a very tarry and dirty stinger apparatus that in the tenon.Jeff took some photos of the heel of the bowl and the side to give a sense of the rustication style around this pipe. He captured the stamping on the underside of the shank. It is readable as noted above. I turned to Pipephil to get a quick overview of the background information on the Arlington brand (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-a7.html). The side bar stated that it was a brand of the Arlington Briar Pipe Corp. I have included a screen capture of the pertinent information below.I turned to Pipedia for more information (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Arlington). I quote the article below.

Arlington Briar Pipes Corporation was founded in 1919 in Brooklyn, New York, and produced the Arlington, Briarlee, Firethorn, Kimberly, Krona and Olde London brands among dozens of others, primarily acting as a subcontractor making pipes to be sold under other brand names. Among others, in the 1950’s, Arlington turned pipes for the famed Wilke Pipe Shop in New York City. The corporation was dissolved by the State of New York as inactive on December 6, 1978. Arlington Briar Pipe Corporation, located at 200 Kosciusko Street, Brooklyn, New York, registered only a single brand trademark, the Arlington brand, the trademark for which was applied for on November 13, 1962 and granted on February 25, 1964. Jack Kaye, of Arlington Briar, was also granted a patent for a combined mirror and stand in 1967.

According to José Manuel Lopes, “North American brand that belonged to Arlington Briar Pipes Corp., Brooklyn, New York, founded in 1919. In the 1940s, Ludwig Rosenberger gave the company new life, and it continued until the 70s. His son, Mel Rosenberger, has recently launched the DiMonte brand. Jack Uhle was also linked to Arlington.” Arlington, as far as known, mainly operated as a sub-contractor for other brands. The Jobey pipes are said to be made by Arlington at an unknown point of time. Arlington’s own pipes are seldom seen.

The article also included the following photo from an RTDA catalog. It is a great addition to the information above.Now it was time to look at it up close and personal. Jeff had done an amazing job in removing all of the cake and the lava on the rim top. He had reamed the bowl with a PipNet Pipe Reamer and cleaned up the remnants with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He took the cake back to bare briar so we could check the walls for damage. He scrubbed the exterior of the bowl with Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush to remove the grime on the bowl and rim and was able to remove the lava and dirt. He cleaned out the interior of the bowl and shank with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and alcohol until they came out clean. He cleaned the stem with Soft Scrub to remove the grime on the exterior. He cleaned out the airway with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. I took some photos of the pipe before I started my work on it today. I took a close up photo of the cleaned up rim top. The rim top and the inner edge look good. The bowl is clean and the walls are undamaged. The stem looks good with light tooth chatter along the top and underside ahead of the button.I took a photo of the stamping on the shank side. It is clear and readable as noted above.I took the stem off the pipe and took a photo. The Rhodesian is a chunky looking pipe with nice lines.I started my work on the pipe with a simple first step. I touched up the stain on the inner edge of the rim with an Oak Stain pen. It matched well and would work very well once I polished the rest of the rim top. I chose to do this at this stage as the polishing would served to blend it in and make it unnoticeable.I polished the smooth rim top and areas on the bowl and shank with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. After each pad I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth to remove the sanding debris. It really took on a shine by the last three sanding pads. I rubbed the bowl down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the surface of the briar with my fingertips where it works to clean, restore and preserve the briar. I let it do its magic for 15 minutes then buffed it off with a cotton cloth. The pipe looks incredibly good at this point in the process. I set aside the bowl and turned my attention to the stem. I heated the tenon with the flame of a lighter and was able to pull it out quite easily. I double checked the cleaning on it now that it was out of the tenon and found that it was very clean.I scrubbed the surface of the stem with Soft Scrub cleanser to remove the oxidation on the surface. Once I was finished it looked significantly better.I sanded the tooth chatter and remnants of oxidation on both sides with 220 grit sandpaper and started the polishing with 400 grit wet dry sandpaper. Each step took it closer to the finished look.I continued to polish 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 polished it further with Before & After Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine. I gave it a final coat of Obsidian Oil and set it aside to cure. I am excited to finish this Arlington Imported Briar Rhodesian. I put the pipe back together and buffed it with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel. I gave the bowl multiple coats of Conservator’s Wax and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax. I buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine and then by hand with a microfibre cloth to deepen it. It is fun to see what the polished bowl looks like with beautiful grain on the smooth portions and the rustication depths all around it. The polished grain on the pipe looks great with the black vulcanite stem. This Arlington Rhodesian is great looking and the pipe feels great in my hand. It is light and well balanced. Have a look at it with the photos below. The dimensions are Length: 5 inches, Height: 1 ½ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¾ inches, Chamber diameter: 7/8 of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 54 grams/1.90 ounces. It turned out to be a beautiful pipe. I will soon be putting it on the rebornpipes store in the American Pipemakers Section. If you are interested in adding it to your collection let me know. Remember we are the next in a long line of pipe men and women who will carry on the trust of our pipes until we pass them on to the next trustee. Thanks for your time reading this blog.

Restemming and Refurbishing an Arlington Imported Briar Pot

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Blog by Steve Laug

I have a box with a few pipe bowls in it that need restemming. When I get low on pipes for refurbishing I take one of these bowls and restem it. Generally they are not even midrange pipes. Rather they are an odd assortment of no name bowls or low end bowls that I have picked up along the way somewhere. Each of these provides me with something to practice on in terms of staining, bowl topping, repairing fills, rustication or restemming. The one I worked on last evening is stamped Arlington over Imported Briar on the left side of the shank and no other numbers. The bowl was dirty and tarred with a thick and crumbly cake. The rim was tarred and dented but no roughening from hitting against something. The shank was full of tars and even a few cobwebs. The rustication was deep on the bowl toward the bottom at the bowl shank junction. The finish was gone and the briar was dirty.

There is not much information available on the brand. A search on Google did not turn up much other than some information from Pipedia. The Brooklyn, New York Company known as Arlington Briar Pipe Corporation mainly operated as a sub-contractor for other brands. Jobey pipes are said to be made by Arlington at an unknown point of time. Arlington’s own pipes are seldom seen. The article also included the following advertisement from the RTDA Catalogue.

I used the PIMO tenon turning tool to fit a tenon on a stem blank that I had in my can of stems. I fine-tuned the fit with sand paper until it fit well.I took the next series of four photos to show the state of the pipe before I worked on it.

I cleaned the inside of the shank and bowl with cotton swabs and pipe cleaners dipped in Everclear. The alcohol removed the grime from the shank. I reamed the bowl with a PipNet reamer. The bowl is quite large – so I used the largest cutting head on the reamer. I wiped down the tars on the rim with alcohol wetted cotton pads to clean off the buildup as much as possible.

To clean up the rim damage I lightly topped the bowl with a medium grit sanding block. I also sanded the burn spot on the side of the shank to try to minimize it and see how deeply the damage went. It was still hard and not too badly damaged but to remove it I would change the profile of the shank so I left it as a character mark.

After topping the bowl I wiped the entirety down with acetone on a cotton pad. I wanted to remove as much of the remaining finish as possible to make a match between the rim and the rest of bowl easier to achieve.

I then sanded the stem to bring the diameter to match the shank. I also wanted to remove the entire casting overflow on the sides and the end of the stem. I used a Dremel with a sanding drum to remove the initial excess and to bring the diameter close to that of the shank. Then I used 220 grit sandpaper to finish the fitting. I cleaned up the scratches left behind by the sandpaper with a medium grit sanding sponge and then finally used a sanding block to sand the shank and stem to good smooth fit and flow. The next seven photos show the progress to a proper fit of the new stem.

I stained the bowl with a medium walnut stain in a linseed oil base. I rubbed it on the bowl with a cotton pad and then wiped it off with a soft cloth. I reapplied the stain until I had good coverage to the bowl. The bowl has some great grain in places and the deep grooves looked good with the new stain coat. Once the stain was dry to touch I buffed it on the wheel with White Diamond and set it aside to work on the stem.

I sanded the stem with my usual stack of micromesh sanding pads from 1500-12,000 grit. I wet sanded with the first three grits of micromesh and dry sanded with the remaining grits. Once I had finished the sanding I gave the stem a coat of Obsidian Oil and rubbed it into the vulcanite.

When I had finished with the stem I reinserted it in the shank and took the pipe to the buffer again. I buffed the pipe and stem with White Diamond and then gave the entirety multiple coats of carnauba wax. I buffed it with a clean flannel buff to give it a shine. The next four photos show the finished pipe.