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Help for what looked like a hopeless 1956 Dunhill Shell Briar LBS Long Billiard

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Blog by Steve Laug

A friend of mine, Scott picked up this deeply sandblasted Dunhill LBS in a shape I would call a Liverpool but Dunhill called a long billiard. He bought it off eBay and when it arrived it had a lot of surprises for him under the thick build up of cake and grime. He has purchased enough estate pipes know what he was getting into but this one had even more issues than he reckoned it would have. He sent me the eBay sellers photos and I have included them below. This is what he saw and honestly if I had seen the pipe I would have sprung for it immediately. The sandblast though dirty, is quite rugged and stunning. The seller dated the pipe as a 1956 based on the following stamping. On the heel of the bowl it was stamped with the shape designation – LBS followed by DUNHILL [over] SHELL BRIAR (Sandblast finish) on the shank. That was followed by MADE IN ENGLAND6 . Next to the shank/stem junction it was stamped with a Circle 4S – the group 4 size designation and the S for Shell Briar.  I turned to PipePhil’s Site and looked up the shape letters that Dunhill used on the helpful chart that is included there (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/shapes-l.html). I did a screen capture of the pertinent part of the chart to show the shape letters noted above.   I have included that below.The bowl had a very thick cake and the rim top had a heavy lava  buildup. The bowl had a crack running down the back side of the bowl. It was hard to know how bad it was because of the filth of the dirty pipe. It was a good bet that it would be messy inside the bowl under the cake! The stem was oxidized, calcified and had deep tooth dents on both sides at the button as well as wear on the button surface itself. It would be a challenge.When the pipe arrived at Scott’s place it was in rougher condition than he had expected. Nonetheless he went to work on it. He knew that he needed to ream the cake back to bare briar and clean up the exterior of the bowl to know for sure how bad the damage was on the inside and outside of the bowl. He did a great job cleaning up the exterior and reaming and cleaning out the bowl so the damage on the inside and out were incredibly visible. This pipe was in serious trouble. Scott and I share and affinity for these older craggy Dunhills so he sent me an email. I have included that below.

Hi Steve, Great job on that 1936 Dunhill.  Are you going to be putting it up for sale?  If so, I’m interested.  Also, I have a large 1956 shell briar Dunhill billiard that has a great blast and good stem, but has a crack in the front and a bad interior.  It’s out of my comfort zone – will you do such work for pay?

Thanks,  Scott

We sent several emails back and forth regarding the pipe discussing what needed to be done. I asked him to send me some pics of the pipe after his clean up. He did so along with the email below.

Hi  Steve, Here are pics of the Dunhill.  The crack is on the shank side, straight above the shank – it’s splits to form two cracks (hard to see).  I cleaned the bowl (inside and out) then put a clamp around the bowl to see if it would push together, and it moved a lot, but not all the way, so the next step would have been to use compressed air to get any slivers/dust out  of the crack.  That’s where I stopped, figuring it had waited for 30 or so years, so it would be okay.

There also seems to be some rot on the rim of the bowl and there is a small chunk out at the top of the crack.  My plan had been to sand down the top after the repair was done.

Thanks, Scott When I saw the pipe in his pictures I fell in love with the shape and the rich, rugged looking blast. I could see at once why Scott had been drawn to it. We chatted back and forth and the long and short of it is that it is now on my work desk to see what I can do with it. I will give it a shot and then send it back to Scott once it is finished. I took photos of when I received it. The rim top looked rough. It was beat up and missing a chunk over the crack on the back of the bowl. The finish was pretty much removed. The bowl was clean and the damage on the inside was extensive. The stem had cleaned up well. The tooth marks are visible in the photos of the stem that I have included below.I took a photo of the stamping on the underside of the shank. It is faint in spots but is still very readable.I removed the stem from the shank to prepare to work on the bowl. I put the stem aside and took pictures of the bowl to just savor the rugged sandblast. Even the rim top, as damaged as it was still has a bit of the sandblast finish that I thought would be redeemable. I cleaned out the cracks on the exterior with alcohol to remove the remaining debris. I checked the entire bowl with a bright light and lens to make sure I could see all the cracks and not be surprised with ones I had missed. Sure enough they were all around the back side of the bowl. They ran from the rim down and then turned to the left and then down once again. I layered briar dust and clear CA glue in the cracks. I repaired the chip out of the back side of the rim top at the same time in the same manner. Before it completely dried I used a brass bristle brush to clean up the repairs and blend them into the nooks and crannies of the sandblast finish. I find that if you do not do this you end up with flat spots where the repair occurredOnce the repair cured I wiped the areas down with alcohol on a cotton pad and stained the areas with a walnut stain pen. I would use a combination of stains later to further blend them in. I just wanted to see what the repair looked like and be able to send photos to Scott.With the exterior finished it was time to work on the inside of the bowl and deal with all of the spidering cracks and large cracks around the interior walls. They were not just confined to the back of the bowl but covered the majority of the bowl and heel surface. I mixed a batch of JB Weld with a dental spatula and applied it to the walls of the bowl with a folded pipe cleaner to act like a paint brush. I pushed the JB Weld into the cracks in the bowl walls and gave the entire interior a coat of the product. I have checked out the research on the product and find that it dries inert and does not gas off when heated. I have used it on my own pipes and smoked them for over 10 or more years with no issues. With that finished I called it a night and set the bowl aside for the repairs on the interior to cure overnight. In the morning I sanded inner edge of the bowl with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out that area. I wrapped a dowel with 220 grit sandpaper extending it just below the dowel so that it would form a cone on the end and allow me to sand the bottom of the bowl. I worked on it to smooth the repairs and remove as much of the JB Weld as possible while leaving it in the cracks and fissures of the walls. With the bowl repair finished I stained the bowl and rim with Mahogany, Walnut and Black stain pens to match the combination of stains used on the bowl that was not repaired. I was happy with the overall look of the pipe. I rubbed the bowl and shank down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the surface of the bowl sides and shank with my fingertips and a horsehair shoe brush to get into the nooks and crannies of the blast. The product works to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I let the balm sit for 15 minutes and then buffed with a cotton cloth  and shoe brush to raise the shine.      I cleaned the interior of the bowl and shank with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and isopropyl alcohol to remove my sanding debris and residual tars and oils in the mortise and airway. I cleaned the internals of the stem the same way. Once finished the pipe was clean and repaired inside and out.Now it was time to mix a bowl coating. Different folks used different things for this. I use a mix of sour cream and charcoal powder. I learned this from a pipe maker friend. I use it on a bowl that I have repaired with JB Weld because when I sand the bowl it is very smooth and I want to facilitate the building of a carbon cake. The bowl coating does that. Surprisingly it cures neutral in taste and imparts no flavour to the tobacco when smoked. Within a few bowls it is basically covered with the developing cake. It works for me!I applied the mixture to the bottom and walls of the bowl with a folded pipe cleaner. I paint it on and smooth it out with the pipe cleaner. I am not looking for a thick coating of the product but merely a top coat. Too thick a coat will just peel off when the pipe is smoked. I want it to stay put for a few bowls anyway! I set the bowl aside for the bowl coating to cure and turned my attention to the stem. I “painted” the stem with the flame of a Bic lighter to lift the tooth marks. The method worked extremely well and I was able to lift the majority of them. There were two marks – one on each side that lifted but needed to be filled. I filled them in with clear CA glue. Once it cured I sanded them smooth with 220 grit sandpaper and reshaped the button edges. I started the polishing with 400 grit wet dry sandpaper. I polished the vulcanite stem with micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. I used Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine to further polish the stem.     This really is a beautiful Dunhill Shell Briar LBS Long Billiard.  The relatively short vulcanite taper stem just adds to an already great looking pipe. If you did not know where the cracks were you would never be able to find them now. The rich combination of Mahogany, Black and Walnut stains on the bowl give depth and dimension to the sandblast. It came alive with the polishing and waxing. I gave the bowl multiple coats of Conservator’s Wax as I did not want to fill in the valleys. I gave the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing the entire pipe with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished Dunhill Shell Briar LBS Group 4 pipe is a beauty and fits nicely in the hand and looks very good. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 3/4 inches, Height: 2 inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: 7/8 of an inch. . The weight of the pipe is 40grams/1.41oz. Once the bowl coating completely cures I will be packing it up and sending it back to Scott. I can’t wait to hear what he thinks of it when he has it in hand. Thanks for reading this blog and my reflections on the pipe while I worked on it.

Next on the table is an Edward’s Algerian Briar 706M5 Prince

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Blog by Steve Laug

Courtesy Doug Valitchka

The next pipe on the work table is an Edward’s pipe that we bought from a fellow in Los Angeles, California, USA. It is a classic Prince in terms of the flow of the stem and shank. The bowl had a thick cake and lava overflow on the rim. It was hard to estimate the condition of the rim top with the cake and lava coat but I was hoping it had been protected from damage. The bowl was smooth and a natural finish. The finish was dusty and tired but had some nice grain under the grime and the finish appeared to be in good condition. There were small fills all around the right side of the bowl. A lot would be revealed once Jeff had worked his magic on it. The stem was dirty but came with tooth chatter and deep tooth marks near the button on both sides. Jeff took photos of the pipe before he started his cleanup work. Jeff captured the condition of the bowl and rim top with the next series of photos. You can see the work that is ahead of us in the photos. The cake is very thick and heavy. The rim looked like it might have some damage on the back inner edge of the bowl. The next two photos of the stem show the top and underside of the stem. It is oxidized and calcified an you can see the tooth marks and chatter on the surface of both sides. Jeff took some great photos of the sides of the bowl and heel showing what is underneath the grime and debris of time and use. You can see the fills in briar on the right side. It will be interesting to see what happens as the pipe is cleaned and restored. He captured the stamping on the sides of the shank. They are clear and readable. The left side reads Edwards. On the right side it reads Algerian Briar 706M5.I turned to Pipedia to have a look at a bit of history on the brand and refresh my memory of the pipe line (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Edward%27s). I quote the article in full below.

Edward’s pipes were originally produced in Saint-Claude, France when Francais actually was a world-class pipe maker with longstanding business & political connections to Colonial Algeria that allowed them to obtain the finest briar.

During the tumultuous 1960’s, Edward’s created a business model to offer the finest briar available in both Classic and Freehand shapes – all at a fair price. They bought the company & equipment and cornered the market on the finest, choice Algerian Briar just before the supply vanished in political turmoil of Algeria’s independence. Edward’s packed up both machinery and briar-treasure to America, safely caching the essentials to create a new pipe-making dynasty. This was a coup, for the 70’s and 80’s were grim years for pipe smokers as quality briar all but disappeared.

Edward’s Design Philosophy is hard to pin down, think of their style as the “American Charatan” with unique & clever twists all their own. Today, they fashion pipes in several locations across the USA. All of Edward’s pipes are Algerian Briar – a fact very few pipe companies can claim, and all are oil-cured utilizing natural finishes – no strange concoctions are used to interfere in your tastebud’s dance with the briar. Algerian, Calabrian, Sardinian, Corsican – take your pick, but Algerian Briar is generally considered the finest smoking briar ever used. When combined with oil-curing, Algerian takes on a magical quality that even Alfred Dunhill recognized as far back as 1918 as the choice for both his Bruyere and Shell.

Now it was time to work on the pipe. I took it out of the box from Jeff and looked it over. It was amazingly clean and looked like a different pipe. He reamed it with a PipNet pipe reamer and cleaned up the reaming with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He scrubbed out the internals with alcohol, pipe cleaners and cotton swabs until the pipe was clean. He scrubbed the exterior of the bowl with Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush to remove the grime and grit on the briar and the lava on the rim top. The bowl looked very good. Jeff scrubbed the stem with Soft Scrub to remove the grime and soaked it in Before & After Deoxidizer. When he took it out of the soak it came out looking far better. I took photos before I started my part of the work. I took some photos of the rim top and stem. The rim top is clean but there is a lot of damage to the inner edge on the front half of the bowl. The bowl itself looks very clean. The close up photos of the stem shows that is it very clean and the deep tooth marks are very visible. It almost looks as if the  previous owner had lightly carved grooves to emulate a dental bit on the top of the stem.I took photos of the stamping because they had cleaned up very well.I removed the stem from the shank and took a photo of the bowl and to give a sense of the proportion of the pipe. It is a classic Prince for sure.I decided to take care of the damage on the rim top and inner edge first. I worked over the inner edge with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper and repaired the existing bevel to obscure the damage to the edge. Once I had finished the bowl was round and the edge looked very good.I polished the briar and the shank with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. I was able to blend in the repairs into the side of the bowl. I wiped the bowl down after each pad with a damp cloth. The grain really began to stand out and the finish took on a shine by the last sanding pad. The photos tell the story! I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the surface of the smooth briar with my fingertips. The product works to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I let the balm sit for about twenty 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 to deal with the stem. I “painted” the surface of the stem with the flame of a Bic lighter to lift the tooth marks on the underside and grooves on the top side. I was able to lift most of them significantly. The few that remained I filled in with Loctite 380 CA glue. Once it had hardened I sanded it with 220 grit sandpaper and 400 grit wet dry sandpaper to blend it into the surface of the vulcanite. I polished the vulcanite stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped it down after each sanding pad with a cloth containing some Obsidian Oil. I finished polishing it with Before & After Pipe Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine and buffed it off with a cotton cloth. One irritation for me is that the repairs of the grooves on the topside with the Loctite 380 CA glue are not quite the same black as the stem surface. Because of that the grooves in the stem show even though they are smooth too the touch!! Arghhh. This oil cured Edward’s Algerian Briar 706M5 Prince was another fun pipe to work on and I really was looking forward to seeing it come back together again. With the grime and debris gone from the finish it was a beauty and the grain just pops at this point. I put the stem back on the bowl and buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel. I carefully avoided the stamping on the shank during the process. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing it with a clean buffing pad on the buffer. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The rich natural finish on the bowl looks really good with the polished black vulcanite stem. It is very well done. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. I can only tell you that it is much prettier in person than the photos capture. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 6 inches, Height: 1  ¼ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 35grams/1.23oz. This is truly a great looking Edward’s. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked over another beautiful pipe. I will be adding it to the American Pipe Makers section of the rebornpipes store soon. If you want to add it to your collection send me an email or a message! Thanks for your time.

Restemming and Restoring a Stone Age K11 609 Italian Freehand Bowl

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Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe I chose to work on was a bowl sans stem that is interestingly rusticated and reads Stone Age K11 [over] shape number 609 followed by Italy on a smooth panel on the underside of the shank. The shape number reminded me of a Savinelli number but I was not certain. It was purchased in November, 2018 from a fellow in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA. It has been sitting in my box of bowls since that time. Jeff cleaned it up and mailed it to me. It is another pipe that I have been postponing restemming for a while. This morning while going through my collection of stem I found one that fit the pipe. At least it works for me! When I found the stem I pulled the bowl out of the box and set aside to be the next pipe to work on. It has a very unique rustication that is quite different – both rugged and spun that reminds me of a honey swizzle stick. The flared shank and rim top both look like rusticated plateau – faux or real, I am unsure. Overall it is a pretty pipe. The bowl had thick cake in the bowl and the rim top had a coat of lava on the inner edge of the bowl and in the grooves of the rim top. The finish had a lot of dust and debris in the valleys of the rustication. I have no idea who made it but it is definitely interesting. Jeff took some photos of the bowl before he cleaned it up. The next two close up photos show the condition of the bowl and rim top. You can see the thick lava coat on the inner edge of the bowl and in the rustication of the rim top. Jeff took a photo of the stamping on the underside of the shank. It read as noted above and is  clear and readable.I decided to see if could confirm my thinking that the pipe was connected with Savinelli. I turned to Pipephil’s site and found nothing connecting the Stone Age K11 609 to the brand. However I was not convinced as I am sure the shape number 609 is a Savinelli number.

I turned to Pipedia (https://pipedia.org/images/4/41/Sav_Shape_Chart_2017.jpg) and found a shape chart and indeed for the 609 listed as a shape for a bent billiard. I am pretty sure that with a bit of imagination this freehand that I am working on could possibly be construed as a Freehand in a Bent Billiard shape. But I am uncertain. I have included the chart below.I found pipes with a similar rustication on several sites on the internet. Worthpoint, an online auction site (https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/stone-age-italy-k11-603-tobacco-428555927) listed a 603 with the same rustication style and stamping on the underside of the shank. Smokingpipes.com also listed a Stone Age K11 613 Volcano sitter with the same rustication and stamping on the shank that they had sold in the past (possibly as early as 2010 from the photo (https://www.smokingpipes.com/pipes/estate/italy/moreinfo.cfm?product_id=73396).

With those photos and the shape numbers that at least appear to be made by Savinelli it leaves me wondering. The shapes really do not match the shape chart above but the numbers are present. Ah well another mystery!

I turned to work on the pipe itself. Jeff had carried out his usual thorough cleanup of the pipe. He had reamed it with a PipNet reamer to remove the cake and cleaned the reaming up with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He scrubbed the internals of the bowl and stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the externals with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap and rinsed the bowl off with running water. The pipe looked very clean when I received it. I went through my can of stems and found turned freehand style vulcanite stem that I thought would work well with the bowl and shank. I took a photo of the combination below. The stem fit the mortise perfectly though the bend to much to work well with the pipe. There were tooth marks in surface of the top and underside of the stem at the button that would need to be dealt with in the restoration. I put the stem in the shank and took some photos of the pipe. The rim top and shank end cleaned up really well as can be seen in the close up photos below. There appeared to be some debris in the grooves of the plateau top of the rim that would need to be dealt with but without the lava coat it was impressively cleaned. The stem looked like it belonged. I already noted the tooth marks and chatter on both sides near the button.I took a photo of the stamping on the underside of the shank. It really is clear and readable. I decided to start my work on restoring the pipe by addressing the debris and darkening on the rim top. I used a brass bristle brush and scrubbed the surface of the rim top and shank end working on removing debris and darkening from the grooves of the plateau and rustication. It looked much better than when I started.I rubbed the briar down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the briar and the the grooves around the bowl and shank with my fingertips and a horsehair shoe brush. The product works to clean, enliven and preserve the briar. I let it sit for 15 minutes while I worked on the stem. After the time passed I buffed it with a cotton cloth to deepen the shine. The briar really comes alive with the balm.   Now it was time to straighten the bend I the stem to match the flow of the pipe. Instead of using my heat gun I painted the stem surface with the flame of a Bic lighter until the vulcanite became flexible. I straightened it out to the angles I wanted for the pipe. I took photos of the pipe at this point in the process. I removed the stem from the bowl and set the bowl aside. I turned my attention to the stem. I “painted” the tooth marks on both sides of the stem with the flame of a lighter to lift them as much as possible. They all lifted but one on the topside. I filled in the remaining tooth mark with clear super glue and set it aside to cure. Once cured, I blended the repairs into the surface of the vulcanite with 220 grit sandpaper. I started polishing the stem with 400 grit wet dry sandpaper. The stem was looking much better. I polished the vulcanite with micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. I used Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine to further polish the stem. This restemmed, rusticated Stone Age K11 609 Italian Freehand is a beautiful looking pipe that combines a rusticated finish with a unique shaped. I may never know for sure if Savinelli made it but I think so! The brown stains on the bowl work well to highlight the finish. The polished turned fancy black vulcanite stem adds to the mix. I put the finished stem on the bowl and buffed it with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel being careful to not buff the stamping. I gave the bowl multiple coats of Conservator’s Wax and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing it with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished pipe is quite nice and feels great in the hand. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. I can only tell you that like the other pipes I am working that it is much prettier in person than the photos capture. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 6 inches, Height: 2 inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ½ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 54grams/1.90oz. It will soon be added to the Italian Pipe Makers section on the rebornpipes store. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked over another beautiful pipe. Remember we are not pipe owners; we are pipemen and women who hold our pipes in trust until they pass on into the trust of the next generation.

Cleaning up a Great Looking L.H. Stern Sterncrest 266 Bent Apple

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Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table is one that Jeff picked up from an antique store on the Oregon Coast, USA early in 2019. It has been sitting here for a long time. It is a nice looking bent Apple with great grain. The stem is a taper that looks very good. The stamping on the left side of the shank read LHS in a diamond with Sterncrest [over] the top of the diamond and with Imported Briar under the diamond. On the underside of the shank it is stamped with the shape number 266. The shank had a line around the entirety that appeared to be left behind by a missing band. The finish has great grain that flairs up from the heel of the bowl. It is unique and attractive. There was a lot of grime and grit ground into the finish of the bowl. There was a heavy cake in the bowl  and a heavy overflow of lava on the sandblast rim top. The fit of the stem in the shank was smooth and flawless. On the left side of the stem was a silver diamond LHS logo inlaid on the stem. The stem was vulcanite and it was lightly oxidized, calcified and had some wear on both sides near the button.  Jeff took photos of the bowl and rim top to show the cake in the bowl. The rim top showed thick coat of lava was heavier on the backside and was thick enough that I hoped it would protect the rim edge. You can also see a fill on the back of the bowl toward the top. He took photos of the top and underside of the stem showing the tooth chatter, scratching, oxidation and calcification on the stem surface and wear on the edges of the button.   Jeff took a photo of the heel of the bowl to show the condition of the finish. You can see the well done shape and he amazing grain around the bowl and shank. Even under the dirt and debris of the years it looked very good. The stamping is clear and readable as noted above. You can see the line in the briar from where the band had previously been set. I turned first to Pipephil to get a quick review of the brand (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-lhs.html). I quote the information listed below.

The L&H Stern Inc. was established by Ludwig Stern (1877-1942) in 1911. His brother Hugo (1872-?) acted as vice-president & secretary. The firm moved to 56 Pearl St. Brooklyn in 1920. It closed down in the 1960s. LHS was one of the main pipe supplier for US soldiers during WWII.

I also did a screen capture of the section on the Sterncrest line. I have included it below. Sure enough the pipe originally had a sterling silver band. I would need to look through my bands and see if I could find a band that would fit the shank.I then turned to Pipedia to have a look at the history of the LH Stern brand and see if there were any pipes like the one in hand (https://pipedia.org/wiki/LHS). There were photos of many different LHS Sterncrest pipes but none quite like this one. The history was worth a read and I have included a summary of that below:

Ludwig Stern, a successful pipe manufacturer since 1893 and closing around 1960, reorganized his company along with his brother Hugo Stern, opening a factory in 1911. They named the company L&H Stern Smoking Pipes & Holders. The newly formed company was moved into a six story building on the corner of Pearl and Waters street Brooklyn, NY.

Thoroughly organized in all departments, and housed in a well-lighted and ventilated modern office and manufacturing building, the firm of L&H Stern Inc. is located near the first arch of the Manhattan bridge, near the river and convenient to the Brooklyn bridge, which makes it accessible from all the hotels in the metropolis for visiting buyers. The structure is six stories with a seventeen-foot basement, with light on three sides through prismatic glass windows, the first floor being seven feet above the sidewalk. Light enters the upper floors from all four sides.

L&H Stern is known to every important wholesaler and jobber in the country. LHS manufactures a complete line of briar pipes. Ginmetto wood pipes are also made, as well as Redmanol goods, the man-made amber. The first substitute for amber. Everything, even down to the sterling silver and other metal trimmings are made under one roof.

With the information I learned in the above articles I had the background on the pipe. Now it was time to work on it.

I am really happy to have Jeff’s help on cleaning up the pipes that we pick up along the way. He reamed the bowl with a PipNet pipe reamer and cleaned up the reaming with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He scrubbed out the internals with alcohol, pipe cleaners and cotton swabs until the pipe was clean. He scrubbed the exterior of the bowl with Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush to remove the grime and grit on the briar and the lava on the rim top. The finish looks much better and the rim top was actually very visible and it looked good. Jeff soaked the stem in Before & After Deoxidizer bath for several house. He rinsed it off with warm water and clean out the internals. He scrubbed the stem with Soft Scrub All Purpose Cleaner to remove the remaining oxidation on the stem. When the pipe arrived here in Vancouver it looked very good. I took some close up photos of the rim top and the stem surface. The rim top looked very good with a little darkening along the inner edge of the bowl at the back. I took close up photos of the stem to show the condition of the surface and button. The stem was very clean with tooth chatter on both sides near the button. There were some deep scratches on the topside.I took a photos of the stamping on the sides of the shank You can see that it is stamped as noted above. It is clear and readable.I took the pipe apart and took a photo of the pipe. It is a good looking pipe and has some great grain on the bowl and shank.I decided to start my restoration work on this one by polishing the briar with micromesh sanding pads. I worked it over with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth to remove the dust. 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 smoothed out the marks from the missing band as best I could and readied the pipe shank for a new silver band. I found a sterling silver band in my collection of bands. I smeared the shank end with glue and pressed the band in place on the shank.I wiped the band down with a jeweler’s cloth to remove the tarnish. It did not take a lot to remove the tarnish and when it was finished it looked very good. With that done the bowl was finished other than the final buffing. I set it aside and turned my attention to the stem. I looked at the worn areas on the stem and decided to sand them out with 220 grit sandpaper and start polishing it with 400 grit wet dry sandpaper.     I polished the stem with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped it down after each sanding pad with Obsidian Oil. I polished it with Before & After Pipe Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine.   It is fun to come to end of the restoration of the LHS Sterncrest 266 Bent Apple. It turned out to be a nice looking pipe. The finish came alive with the work I had done on it. I put the pipe back together and buffed it with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax. I hand buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. It is fun to see what the polished bowl looks like with the polished shank ring and black vulcanite saddle stem. It really was beautiful. This LHS Sterncrest 266 Bent Apple is nice 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 ½ inches, Height: 1 ½ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inch, Chamber diameter: 7/8 of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 47grams/1.66ounces. It is a beautiful pipe that I will soon put on the rebornpipes store in the American Pipe Makers section. If you are interested in adding it to your collection let me know. Thanks to each of you who are reading this blog. Remember we are not pipe owners; we are pipemen and women who hold our pipes in trust until they pass on into the trust of the next pipeman or woman.

 

 

New Life for a Patent Era 1915-18 Dunhill A Bruyere 42 Dublin

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Blog by Steve Laug

This Dunhill Standing Billiard is the last of five Dunhills that came to us in the same lot as the 1922 Dunhill Bruyere Reading Pipe, and included a cracked shank 1962 Dunhill Shell Briar Pot, a 1928 Dunhill Bruyere EK7 Panel Billiard, a 1915-18 Dunhill Bruyere 66 Standing Billiard, a 1936 Dunhill Bruyere 35 Billiard and the 1905 BBB Calabash Reading Pipe and 1911 BBB Glokar Poker. I have drawn a red box around the pipe in the picture to the left. It is an interesting canted Dublin. The pipe is stamped on the left side of the shank DUNHILL [over] Duke St. S.W. On the right side of the shank it was stamped MADE IN ENGLAND [over] “INNER TUBE” [over] PATENTED MARCH 9-15 that is followed by the shape number 42. Other than the shape number the pipe is stamped the same way as the Standing Billiard shape 66 that I finished recently.

It was another filthy pipe with a thick cake in the bowl and a heavy lava overflow on the rim top. The finish was tired and dirty with grime and debris stuck to the surface of the briar. The stem has a small white dot on top and the button on the topside had a deep tooth mark and damage. There was tooth chatter and marks on both sides ahead of the button. Jeff took photos of the pipe before he did his clean up work.He took photos of the bowl and rim to give a picture of the thickness of the cake and lava on the rim top. This must have been a favourite pipe to have that thick of a cake and lava buildup. The stem has tooth chatter and marks on both sides. The top is worse than the underside with deep marks in the top of the button. The pipe is old enough that it had an ivory white spot on the topside. Jeff took photos of the bowl from various angles to give a sense of the dirtiness of the finish but also the unique shape of the billiard sitter. It is going to be a real beauty!Jeff took photos of the stamping on the sides of the shank . The stamping is quite faint and could not be captured with a camera. There are some faint spots but over all it is readable as noted above. I turned to Pipedia’s section on Dunhill Root Briar Pipes to get a bit of background on the Dunhill finishes (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill#Root_Briar). I quote:

Bruyere

The original finish produced (usually made using Calabrian briar), and a big part of developing and marketing the brand. It was the only finish from 1910 until 1917. A dark reddish-brown stain. Before the 1950s, there were three possible finishes for Dunhill pipes. The Bruyere was a smooth finish with a deep red stain, obtained through two coats, a brown understain followed by a deep red.

There was a link on the above site to a section specifically written regarding the Bruyere finish (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill_Bruyere). I turned there and have included the information from that short article below.

Initially, made from over century-old briar burls, classified by a “B” (denoted highest quality pipe); “DR” (denoted straight-grained) and an “A” (denoted first quality), until early 1915. After that, they became a high-end subset to the Dunhill ‘Bruyere’. The DR and B pipes, a limited production, they should be distinguished as hand-cut in London from burls as opposed to the Bruyere line which was generally finished from French turned bowls until 1917, when the Calabrian briar started to be used, but not completely. Only in 1920 Dunhill took the final step in its pipe making operation and began sourcing and cutting all of its own bowls, proudly announcing thereafter that “no French briar was employed”.

Bruyere pipes were usually made using Calabrian briar, a very dense and hardy briar that has a modest grain but does very well with the deep red stain.

“Before the 1950s, there were three possible finishes for Dunhill pipes. The Bruyere was a smooth finish with a deep red stain, obtained through two coats, a brown understain followed by a deep red. The Shell finish was the original sandblast with a near-black stain (though the degree to which it is truly black has varied over the years). Lastly, the Root finish was smooth also but with a light brown finish. Early Dunhill used different briars with different stains, resulting in more distinct and identifiable creations… Over the years, to these traditional styles were added four new finishes: Cumberland, Dress, Chestnut and Amber Root, plus some now-defunct finishes, such as County, Russet and Red Bark.”

There was also a link to a catalogue page that gave examples and dates that the various finishes were introduced (https://pipedia.org/wiki/File:Dunnypipescatalog-1.png).I turned to Pipephil’s dating guide to show how I arrived at the date of manufacture for this pipe (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/cledat-en1.html). I am including a chart that is provided there for the dating of a pipe. I have drawn a red box around the pertinent section in the chart. Since the pipe I am working on has no clear patent number but says Patented March 9-15 I take that to clearly show that the pipe was made prior to 1921 and would have been included in the exceptions.I also turned to John Loring’s, The Dunhill Briar Pipe – The Patent Year and After, to work on understanding the DUNHILL [over]DUKE ST. S.W. I found information on page 5 of the book. It read as follows:

The Bruyere pipes were stamped DUNHILL over DUKE ST. S.W. on the shank with an “A” near the bowl to indicate first quality (the reverse side stamping in 1910 is presently unknown) and given shape numbers beginning with 31.

I read earlier sections of the book to do some checking on the Patent Stamping on this pipe. I found what I was looking for on page 58 where he spells out the Smooth Finish Patent Nomenclature Usage. In a very helpful chart he identifies PATENTED MARCH 9-15 that links the pipe to a US Patent for the years between 1915-23.On page 9 it reads:

…Dunhill applied for Canadian and American patents (granted in 1914 and 1915 respectively).

On page 12 it reads:

…From 1910 through October 1918 Dunhill branded its pipes with DUNHILL over DUKE ST. S.W….Inner tube patent numbers or references also serve to denote the earliest the pipe could have been manufactured., e.g. an English patent reference (PAT. No 5861/12) would not have been stamped prior to the 1913 grant, nor a Canadian patent reference (PATENTED 1914) prior to the 1914 grant nor a US patent reference (PATENTED MARCH.9-15 or PAT.AMERICA1915) prior to the 1915 grant.

I now knew that I was working on a Bruyere that came out in between 1915 and 1918 when the Duke St. SW stamp ceased to be used. The shape of the pipe was one of many Billiards that Dunhill put out and that the 66 was a normal Billiard Sitter shape with a taper stem.

I turned to work on the pipe itself. Jeff had carried out his usual thorough cleanup of the pipe. He had reamed it with a PipNet reamer to remove the cake and cleaned the reaming up with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He scrubbed the internals of the bowl and stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the externals with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap and rinsed the bowl off with running water. He soaked the stem in Before & After Deoxidizer and once it had soaked rinsed it off with warm water to remove the residual solution. He dried it off and scrubbed it down with Soft Scrub All-Purpose cleaner to remove any oxidation that was still on the stem. The pipe looked very clean when I received it.  I took a photo of the rim top to show the condition. You can see the darkening on the rim top. It is roughened and slightly out of round with nicks on the inner edge. The stem had deep tooth marks and chatter on both sides near the button and on the button itself. The oxidation was gone.  The damage on the topside at the button can be seen in the second photo of the stem surface below.I took photos of the sides of the shank to show the stamping. It is faint but readable as noted above. I removed the stem from the shank and took a photo of the pipe parts to show what I was working with. It is another nice looking 100+ year old pipe.I decided to start the restoration on this one by working on the damage on the inner edge of the bowl. It had darkening and some damage to the edge. The pipe is over a 100 years old so it is not surprising that there was burn and reaming damage marks on the edge from a previous pipeman. I worked it over with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to remove and minimize the damage. When I finished with it, the bowl and the rim top looked much better.I polished the rim top and bowl with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each sanding pad. The grain on the pipe is quite beautiful. I rubbed the briar down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the briar with my fingertips. The product works to clean, enliven and preserve the briar. I let it sit for 15 minutes while I worked on the stem. After the time passed I buffed it with a cotton cloth to deepen the shine. The briar really comes alive with the balm. I set the bowl aside and work on the stem. I filled in the tooth marks in the stem surface and the edge of the button on the top side. Once the repairs cured I recut the edges of the button with a file and smoothed out the repairs. I sanded them with 220 grit sandpaper to blend them into the surface. I started polishing the stem with 400 grit wet dry sandpaper.

I polished the vulcanite with micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. I used Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine to further polish the stem. This Dunhill A Bruyere 42 Patent Dublin from 1915-18 is a beautiful looking piece of briar that has a shape that follows grain. The Bruyere is an early finish that Dunhill specialized in making. The finish on the pipe is in excellent condition. The red and brown stain on the bowl works well to highlight the grain. The polished black vulcanite panel taper stem adds to the mix. I put the stem back on the bowl and buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel being careful to not buff the stamping. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing it with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished 1915-18 Dunhill A Bruyere 42 Patent Dublin is quite nice and feels great in the hand. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. I can only tell you that like the other pipes I am working that it is much prettier in person than the photos capture. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 ½ inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 29grams/1.02oz. I am still working through what I am going to do with this old timer. I will keep it with me for a while until I decide. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked over another beautiful pipe. This pipe is classic reminder that we are not pipe owners; we are pipemen and women who hold our pipes in trust until they pass on into the trust of the next generation.

 

 

New Life for a Patent Era 1915-18 Dunhill A Bruyere 66 Standing Billiard

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Blog by Steve Laug

This Dunhill Standing Billiard was one of five Dunhills that came to us in the same lot as the 1922 Dunhill Bruyere Reading Pipe, a cracked shank 1962 Dunhill Shell Briar Pot, a 1928 Dunhill Bruyere EK7 Panel Billiard and the 1905 BBB Calabash Reading Pipe and 1911 BBB Glokar Poker. I have drawn a red box around the pipe in the picture to the left. It is an interesting flat bottom silver banded Standing Billiard. The pipe is stamped on the left side of the shank DUNHILL [over] Duke St. S.W. On the right side of the shank it was stamped MADE IN ENGLAND [over] “INNER TUBE” [over] PATENTED MARCH 9-15 that is followed by the shape number 66.

It was another filthy pipe with a thick cake in the bowl and a heavy lava overflow on the rim top. The finish was tired and dirty with grime and debris stuck to the surface of the briar. The stem has a small white dot on top and the button on the topside had a deep tooth mark and damage. There was tooth chatter and marks on both sides ahead of the button. Jeff took photos of the pipe before he did his clean up work. He took photos of the bowl and rim to give a picture of the thickness of the cake and lava on the rim top. This must have been a favourite pipe to have that thick of a cake and lava buildup. The stem has tooth chatter and marks on both sides. The top is worse than the underside with deep marks in the top of the button. The pipe is old enough that it had an ivory white spot on the topside. Jeff took photos of the bowl from various angles to give a sense of the dirtiness of the finish but also the unique shape of the billiard sitter. It is going to be a real beauty! Jeff took photos of the stamping on the left side of the shank . The stamping on the right side is quite faint and could not be captured with a camera. There are some faint spots but over all it is readable as noted above. The second photo shows the band on the shank stamped Sterling Silver.I turned to Pipedia’s section on Dunhill Root Briar Pipes to get a bit of background on the Dunhill finishes (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill#Root_Briar). I quote:

Bruyere

The original finish produced (usually made using Calabrian briar), and a big part of developing and marketing the brand. It was the only finish from 1910 until 1917. A dark reddish-brown stain. Before the 1950s, there were three possible finishes for Dunhill pipes. The Bruyere was a smooth finish with a deep red stain, obtained through two coats, a brown understain followed by a deep red.

There was a link on the above site to a section specifically written regarding the Bruyere finish (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill_Bruyere). I turned there and have included the information from that short article below.

Initially, made from over century-old briar burls, classified by a “B” (denoted highest quality pipe); “DR” (denoted straight-grained) and an “A” (denoted first quality), until early 1915. After that, they became a high-end subset to the Dunhill ‘Bruyere’. The DR and B pipes, a limited production, they should be distinguished as hand-cut in London from burls as opposed to the Bruyere line which was generally finished from French turned bowls until 1917, when the Calabrian briar started to be used, but not completely. Only in 1920 Dunhill took the final step in its pipe making operation and began sourcing and cutting all of its own bowls, proudly announcing thereafter that “no French briar was employed”.

Bruyere pipes were usually made using Calabrian briar, a very dense and hardy briar that has a modest grain but does very well with the deep red stain.

“Before the 1950s, there were three possible finishes for Dunhill pipes. The Bruyere was a smooth finish with a deep red stain, obtained through two coats, a brown understain followed by a deep red. The Shell finish was the original sandblast with a near-black stain (though the degree to which it is truly black has varied over the years). Lastly, the Root finish was smooth also but with a light brown finish. Early Dunhill used different briars with different stains, resulting in more distinct and identifiable creations… Over the years, to these traditional styles were added four new finishes: Cumberland, Dress, Chestnut and Amber Root, plus some now-defunct finishes, such as County, Russet and Red Bark.”

There was also a link to a catalogue page that gave examples and dates that the various finishes were introduced (https://pipedia.org/wiki/File:Dunnypipescatalog-1.png)I turned to Pipephil’s dating guide to show how I arrived at the date of manufacture for this pipe (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/cledat-en1.html). I am including a chart that is provided there for the dating of a pipe. I have drawn a red box around the pertinent section in the chart. Since the pipe I am working on has no clear patent number but says Patented March 9-15 I take that to clearly show that the pipe was made prior to 1921 and would have been included in the exceptions.I also turned to John Loring’s, The Dunhill Briar Pipe – The Patent Year and After, to work on understanding the DUNHILL [over]DUKE ST. S.W. I found information on page 5 of the book. It read as follows:

The Bruyere pipes were stamped DUNHILL over DUKE ST. S.W. on the shank with an “A” near the bowl to indicate first quality (the reverse side stamping in 1910 is presently unknown) and given shape numbers beginning with 31.

I read earlier sections of the book to do some checking on the Patent Stamping on this pipe. I found what I was looking for on page 58 where he spells out the Smooth Finish Patent Nomenclature Usage. In a very helpful chart he identifies PATENTED MARCH 9-15 that links the pipe to a US Patent for the years between 1915-23.On page 9 it reads:

…Dunhill applied for Canadian and American patents (granted in 1914 and 1915 respectively).

On page 12 it reads:

…From 1910 through October 1918 Dunhill branded its pipes with DUNHILL over DUKE ST. S.W….Inner tube patent numbers or references also serve to denote the earliest the pipe could have been manufactured., e.g. an English patent reference (PAT. No 5861/12) would not have been stamped prior to the 1913 grant, nor a Canadian patent reference (PATENTED 1914) prior to the 1914 grant nor a US patent reference (PATENTED MARCH.9-15 or PAT.AMERICA1915) prior to the 1915 grant.

I now knew that I was working on a Bruyere that came out in between 1915 and 1918 when the Duke St. SW stamp ceased to be used. The shape of the pipe was one of many Billiards that Dunhill put out and that the 66 was a normal Billiard Sitter shape with a taper stem.

I turned to work on the pipe itself. Jeff had carried out his usual thorough cleanup of the pipe. He had reamed it with a PipNet reamer to remove the cake and cleaned the reaming up with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He scrubbed the internals of the bowl and stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the externals with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap and rinsed the bowl off with running water. He soaked the stem in Before & After Deoxidizer and once it had soaked rinsed it off with warm water to remove the residual solution. He dried it off and scrubbed it down with Soft Scrub All-Purpose cleaner to remove any oxidation that was still on the stem. The pipe looked very clean when I received it. I took a photo of the rim top to show the condition. You can see the darkening on the rim top. It is roughened and slightly out of round with nicks on the inner edge. The stem had deep tooth marks and chatter on both sides near the button and on the button itself. The oxidation was gone.  The damage on the topside at the button can be seen in the second photo of the stem surface below.I took photos of the sides of the shank to show the stamping. It is faint but readable as noted above. I removed the stem from the shank and took a photo of the pipe parts to show what I was working with. It is a nice looking pipe.I decided to start the restoration on this one by working on the damage on the inner edge of the bowl. It had darkening and some damage to the edge. The pipe is almost 100 years old so it is not surprising that there was burn and reaming damage marks on the edge from a previous pipeman. I worked it over with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to remove and minimize the damage. When I finished with it, the bowl and the rim top looked much better. I polished the rim top and bowl with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each sanding pad. Even though there were small marks on the briar from the pipe’s journey it began to take on a shine.   I rubbed the briar down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the briar with my fingertips. The product works to clean, enliven and preserve the briar. I let it sit for 15 minutes while I worked on the stem. After the time passed I buffed it with a cotton cloth to deepen the shine. The briar really comes alive with the balm. I set the bowl aside and work on the stem. I filled in the tooth marks in the stem surface and rebuilt the edge of the button on the top side. Once the repairs cured I recut the edges of the button with a file and smoothed out the repairs. I sanded them with 220 grit sandpaper to blend them into the surface. I started polishing the stem with 400 grit wet dry sandpaper. I polished the vulcanite with micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. I used Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine to further polish the stem.  This Dunhill A Bruyere 66 Patent Standing Billiard from 1915-18 is a beautiful looking piece of briar that has a shape that follows grain. The Bruyere is an early finish that Dunhill specialized in making. The finish on the pipe is in excellent condition. The red and brown stain on the bowl works well to highlight the grain. The Sterling Silver Band is a great break between the briar and the stem. The polished black vulcanite panel taper stem adds to the mix. I put the stem back on the bowl and buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel being careful to not buff the stamping. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing it with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished 1915-18 Dunhill A Bruyere 66 Patent Standing Billiard is quite nice and feels great in the hand. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. I can only tell you that like the other pipes I am working that it is much prettier in person than the photos capture. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1  ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 31grams/1.09oz. I am still working through what I am going to do with this old timer. I will keep it with me for a while until I decide. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked over another beautiful pipe. This pipe is classic reminder that we are not pipe owners; we are pipemen and women who hold our pipes in trust until they pass on into the trust of the next generation.

New Life for another Dunhill – A Patent Era 1928 Dunhill Bruyere EK7 Panel Billiard

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Blog by Steve Laug

This Dunhill Panel Billiard was one of five other Billiards that came to us in the same lot as the 1922 Dunhill Bruyere Reading Pipe, a cracked shank 1962 Dunhill Shell Briar Pot and the 1905 BBB Calabash Reading Pipe and 1911 BBB Glokar Poker. I have drawn a red box around the pipe in the picture to the left. It is an interesting square shank Panel billiard. The pipe is stamped on the left side of the shank DUNHILL [over] LONDON. On the right side of the shank it was stamped “INNER TUBE [over] PAT. NO 116989/178 that is followed by the shape number EK7.

It was another filthy pipe with a thick cake in the bowl and a heavy lava overflow on the rim top. The finish was tired and dirty with grime and debris stuck to the surface of the briar. The stem has a small white dot on top and the button on the topside had a deep tooth mark and damage. There was tooth chatter and marks on both sides ahead of the button. Jeff took photos of the pipe before he did his clean up work.   He took photos of the bowl and rim to give a picture of the thickness of the cake and lava on the rim top. This must have been a favourite pipe to have that thick of a cake and lava buildup. The stem had a chip out of the button on the topside and tooth chatter and marks on both sides. It was a square stem that looked very good with the pipe. Jeff took photos of the bowl from various angles to give a sense of the dirtiness of the finish but also the unique shape of the panel billiard. It is going to be a real beauty! Jeff took photos of the stamping on the sides of the shank . There are some faint spots but over all it is readable as noted above.There was also a Reg. No. stamped on the stem that read REG.NO. [over] 654638. I looked up what the Reg. No. stamp meant in John Loring’s The Dunhill Briar Pipe – The Patent Year and After, pg. 42. I quote the pertinent section below.

Prior to the war the bottom of the Dunhill black vulcanite bit had a “REG. No 654638” stamped (without color) on thee underside of the bit near the meeting point with the shank. I have yet been able to determine what the number refers to but I am fairly certain it is not to the White Spot trade mark since the stamping has been consistently found on pipe bits dating back to the 1918 while the White Spot trademark stamp was not awarded until 1922.

I turned to Pipedia’s section on Dunhill Root Briar Pipes to get a bit of background on the Dunhill finishes (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill#Root_Briar). I quote:

Bruyere

The original finish produced (usually made using Calabrian briar), and a big part of developing and marketing the brand. It was the only finish from 1910 until 1917. A dark reddish-brown stain. Before the 1950s, there were three possible finishes for Dunhill pipes. The Bruyere was a smooth finish with a deep red stain, obtained through two coats, a brown understain followed by a deep red.

There was a link on the above site to a section specifically written regarding the Bruyere finish (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill_Bruyere). I turned there and have included the information from that short article below.

Initially, made from over century-old briar burls, classified by a “B” (denoted highest quality pipe); “DR” (denoted straight-grained) and an “A” (denoted first quality), until early 1915. After that, they became a high-end subset to the Dunhill ‘Bruyere’. The DR and B pipes, a limited production, they should be distinguished as hand-cut in London from burls as opposed to the Bruyere line which was generally finished from French turned bowls until 1917, when the Calabrian briar started to be used, but not completely. Only in 1920 Dunhill took the final step in its pipe making operation and began sourcing and cutting all of its own bowls, proudly announcing thereafter that “no French briar was employed”.

Bruyere pipes were usually made using Calabrian briar, a very dense and hardy briar that has a modest grain but does very well with the deep red stain.

“Before the 1950s, there were three possible finishes for Dunhill pipes. The Bruyere was a smooth finish with a deep red stain, obtained through two coats, a brown understain followed by a deep red. The Shell finish was the original sandblast with a near-black stain (though the degree to which it is truly black has varied over the years). Lastly, the Root finish was smooth also but with a light brown finish. Early Dunhill used different briars with different stains, resulting in more distinct and identifiable creations… Over the years, to these traditional styles were added four new finishes: Cumberland, Dress, Chestnut and Amber Root, plus some now-defunct finishes, such as County, Russet and Red Bark.”

There was also a link to a catalogue page that gave examples and dates that the various finishes were introduced (https://pipedia.org/wiki/File:Dunnypipescatalog-1.png).I turned to Pipephil’s dating guide to show how I arrived at the date of manufacture for this pipe (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/cledat-en1.html). I am including two charts that are provided there for the dating a pipe. I have drawn a red box around the pertinent section in each chart. Since the pipe I am working on has a suffix 8 that is raised superscript it points to 1920+ 8 for a date of 1928 on the charts below. I also turned to John Loring’s, The Dunhill Briar Pipe – The Patent Year and After, to do some checking on the Patent number on this pipe. I found what I was looking for on page 58 where he spells out the Smooth Finish Patent Nomenclature Usage. In a very helpful chart he identifies the Pat No. 116989/17 as occurring between 1918? and 1934. The date stamp of 8 coincided with that identifying the year as 1928.

I now knew that I was working on a Bruyere that came out in 1928 because of the date stamp 8. The shape of the pipe was one of many Billiards that Dunhill put out and that the EK7 was a normal Panel Billiard shape with a taper stem. The Reg. No. on the underside of the stem also fits well within that date time.

I turned to work on the pipe itself. Jeff had carried out his usual thorough cleanup of the pipe. He had reamed it with a PipNet reamer to remove the cake and cleaned the reaming up with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He scrubbed the internals of the bowl and stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the externals with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap and rinsed the bowl off with running water. He soaked the stem in Before & After Deoxidizer and once it had soaked rinsed it off with warm water to remove the residual solution. He dried it off and scrubbed it down with Soft Scrub All-Purpose cleaner to remove any oxidation that was still on the stem. The pipe looked very clean when I received it.  I took a photo of the rim top to show the condition. You can see the darkening on the rim top. It is roughened and slightly out of round with nicks on the inner edge. The stem came out looking quite good. There are light tooth marks and chatter on both sides near the button but the oxidation was gone.  The damage on the topside at the button can be seen in the second photo of the stem surface below.I took photos of the sides of the shank to show the stamping. It is clear and readable as noted above. I removed the stem from the shank and took a photo of the pipe parts to show what I was working with. It is a nice looking pipe.I decided to start the restoration on this one by working on the damage on the inner edge of the bowl. It had darkening and some damage to the edge. The pipe is almost 100 years old so it is not surprising that there was burn and reaming damage marks on the edge from a previous pipeman. I worked it over with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to remove and minimize the damage. When I finished with it, the bowl and the rim top looked much better.I polished the rim top and bowl with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each sanding pad. Even though there were small marks on the briar from the pipe’s journey it began to take on a shine.     I rubbed the briar down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the briar with my fingertips. The product works to clean, enliven and preserve the briar. I let it sit for 15 minutes while I worked on the stem. After the time passed I buffed it with a cotton cloth to deepen the shine. The briar really comes alive with the balm. I set the bowl aside and work on the stem. I greased a pipe cleaner with Vaseline and inserted it in the button and filled in the damaged areas with black rubberized Loctite 380 CA glue. I sprayed the repair with an accelerator and removed the pipe cleaner. I checked and the airway was wide open… Whew! Once it cured I used files to sharpen the edge of the button and smooth out the top and undersides. I sanded it with 220 grit sandpaper to blend it into the surrounding vulcanite. I started polishing it with 400 grit wet dry sandpaper. I polished the vulcanite with micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. I used Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine to further polish the stem. This Dunhill Bruyere EK7 Patent Panel Billiard from 1928 is a beautiful looking piece of briar that has a shape that follows grain. The Bruyere is an early finish that Dunhill specialized in making. The finish on the pipe is in excellent condition. The red and brown stain on the bowl works well to highlight the grain. The polished black vulcanite panel taper stem adds to the mix. I put the stem back on the bowl and buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel being careful to not buff the stamping. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing it with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished Bruyere EK7 Panel Billiard is quite nice and feels great in the hand. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. I can only tell you that like the other pipes I am working that it is much prettier in person than the photos capture. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 ½ inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 inch, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 29grams/1.02oz. I am still working through what I am going to do with this old timer. I will keep it with me for a while until I decide. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked over another beautiful pipe. This pipe is classic reminder that we are not pipe owners; we are pipemen and women who hold our pipes in trust until they pass on into the trust of the next generation.

Restemming and Restoring a Sasieni Windsor London Made Oom Paul 80

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Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe I chose to work on was a Sasieni Windsor Sandblast |Bowl sans stem that was purchased from a shop in Oregon when Irene and I visited my brother on the coast there. It has been sitting in my box of bowls since that time. Jeff cleaned it up and mailed it to me. I have been postponing restemming any of the pipes for a while now but after restemming that little gourd calabash a couple of days ago I was ready to do a few more. I pulled this one out of the box and set aside to be the next pipe to work on. It has a very deep sandblast that is quite stunning on the full bent pipe. Overall it is a pretty pipe. The bowl had thick cake in the bowl and there was a coat of lava in the grooves of the rim top. The finish had a lot of dust and debris in the valleys of the blast. The stamping on the smooth panel on the underside of the shank was clear and readable. It was stamped Sasieni [over] Windsor [over] London Made. To the right of that it was stamped with the shape number 80. To the left of the Sasieni stamp on the heel of the bowl it is stamped Made in England in a rugby ball shaped stamp. Jeff took some photos of the bowl before he cleaned it up. The next three close up photos show the condition of the bowl and rim top. You can see the lava coat on the inner edge of the bowl and the debris in the rustication of the rim top. Jeff took a photo of the stamping on the underside of the shank. It read as noted above and is  faint and readable.I turned to Pipephil’s site to get a read on the Sasieni Windsor line to see if I could find out more about the stamping (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-sasieni2.html). The pipe was in the section on the site as a Sasieni seconds and sub-brands. The pipe in the second photo had very similar stamping to the bowl I was working on. I did a screen capture of the section on Pipephil. I have included it below.  There were also photos that were included on Pipephil of what the sandblast looked like on the Sasieni Windsor originally.The third photo of the underside of the shank shows a similar stamping to the pipe I am working on. The pipe originally had a saddle vulcanite stem. The stem was long gone when Jeff and I picked it up so I had some decisions to make about the stem I would use to restem it.I turned to work on the pipe itself. Jeff had carried out his usual thorough cleanup of the pipe. He had reamed it with a PipNet reamer to remove the cake and cleaned the reaming up with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He scrubbed the internals of the bowl and stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the externals with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap and rinsed the bowl off with running water. The pipe looked very clean when I received it. The rim top cleaned up really well as can be seen in the close up photos below. I took a photo of the stamping on the underside of the shank. It really is faint but readable. I went through my can of stems and found turned freehand style vulcanite stem that would work well with the bowl and shank. The bend in it was a little too high and would need to be heated and bent for the Oom Paul shape. There were tooth marks in surface of the top and underside of the stem at the button that would need to be dealt with in the restoration.   I took a photo of the stem and bowl together to give a sense of the look of the pipe and the proportion of the stem. I put the stem in place on the shank and took photos of combination of the bowl and stem. It is going to look very good once it is cleaned up. I rubbed the briar down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the briar with my fingertips and a horsehair shoe brush. The product works to clean, enliven and preserve the briar. I let it sit for 15 minutes while I worked on the stem. After the time passed I buffed it with a cotton cloth to deepen the shine. The briar really comes alive with the balm.   I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. I put a pipe cleaner in the stem and then heated the stem with my heat gun until the vulcanite was supple. I bent it to the angle that matched the bowl. I filled in the tooth marks and rebuilt the button top with black super glue and set it aside to cure. Once it had cured I used files to reshape the edge of the button and flatten the repairs on the stem surface. I blended the repairs into the surface of the vulcanite with 220 grit sandpaper. I started polishing the stem with 400 grit wet dry sandpaper. The stem was looking much better. I polished the vulcanite with micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. I used Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine to further polish the stem. This restemmed, sandblasted Sasieni Windsor 80 Oom Paul is a beautiful looking pipe. The brown stains on the bowl work well to highlight the finish. The polished black vulcanite saddle stem adds to the mix. I put the finished stem on the bowl and buffed it with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel being careful to not buff the stamping. I gave the bowl multiple coats of Conservator’s Wax and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing it with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished Sasieni Windsor 80 is quite nice and feels great in the hand. Give the finished Oom Paul a look in the photos below. I can only tell you that it is much prettier in person than the photos capture. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 ½ inches, Height: 2 inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 46grams/1.62oz. It will soon be added to the British Pipe Makers section on the rebornpipes store. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked over another beautiful pipe. Remember we are not pipe owners; we are pipemen and women who hold our pipes in trust until they pass on into the trust of the next generation.

 

Restoring a Badly Burned Kaywoodie Super Grain 86B

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Blog by Alex Heidenreich

Earlier this week I received and email with an attachment from Alex about a Kaywoodie pipe he had restored for a friend. He wanted my opinion on the restoration and on the piece he had written about it. I took time this weekend to read over the piece and study the photos and I have to say I was quite impressed with his work. I wrote him back with some questions and asked if I could post his piece on the blog. He said he was thrilled and honoured to be asked so without further ado I introduce you to Alex Heidenreich’s Kaywoodie Super Grain 86B restoration.

Introduction:

Kaywoodies are some of my favorite pipes. I love the history of the company and the amazing quality briar used in the older pipes. So, when I saw this poor Kaywoodie on eBay, I was quick to bid on it. When it arrived in the mail, I took a closer look at it. It was in even worse shape than the pictures had led me to believe. It was dented and dinged on the outside of the bowl. The rim was badly chewed up and then caked over with a thick coating of lava that had spilled all the way down onto the shank. The stem was badly oxidized, and I couldn’t get a pipe cleaner through the stem or the shank. This pipe looked like a lot of work. So, I ended up setting it aside for a while. Later, a friend of mine from our pipe group on PipeTobaccoDiscord said he was looking to add a Kaywoodie to his collection. I sent him some pictures of the ones in my restoration pile and despite the damage, he fell in love with this one, and thus the work began.

Acquisition Pictures: History:

As Steve has talked about many times, finding the exact date of a pipe can be difficult. Kaywoodie has a rich history, and a good amount of it is documented over on https://pipedia.org/wiki/Collector%27s_Guide_to_Kaywoodie_Pipes. The first thing I did was head over to their documentation on the shape numbers: https://pipedia.org/wiki/Kaywoodie_Shape_Numbers. This told me that the 86B shape number was a Large Apple with a flat top bowl and was produced from 1947-1971. For many shapes of Kaywoodies, the logo was printed on top of the stem until the late 1940s or early 1950s. Since this logo was on the side of the stem, I surmised it was probably a post-1955 model. Just after this time (somewhere in the mid-50s or 60s), Kaywoodie also moved from a 4-hole stinger to a 3-hole stinger. Since this pipe has the logo on the side, but still had a 4-hole stinger, it was likely made in that interim period from 1959-1965.

Picture from a 1955 Catalog showing the 86B (notice the logo is on the top of the stem)Picture from: https://pipedia.org/wiki/Collector%27s_Guide_to_Kaywoodie_Pipes courtesy ChrisKeene.com

Restoration:

I took the pipe apart to see how bad it was. It was extremely dirty, and the finish was badly damaged. There were burn marks and lava all over the rim and shank.

I started by reaming the pipe. The bowl is large. So, it took a lot of reaming to get clean. The outside was extremely dirty. So, I cleaned the pipe 4 or 5 times with Murphy’s Oil Soap. I really soaked the rim well to try to soften the lava. It took a ton of scrubbing and a little work with a knife, but I was able to get most of it off and remove a lot of the burn marks on the shank. Unfortunately, this revealed a great deal of damage to the rim. There were also multiple fills, and I even had to remove a protruding grain of sand from the briar. To repair the damage to the rim, I carefully sanded back the damaged areas on a topping board, careful not to change the shape of the rim. I put a dab of Vaseline on the logo to protect it, then soaked the stem in an oxyclean bath. This would help loosen up all the gunk inside and make it easier to clean the oxidation off the outside. I also filled the bowl with cotton balls, stuck pipe cleaners in the shank, and then used a syringe to fill the bowl with alcohol to help remove any ghosting in the pipe, as well as loosen up any remaining cake inside the bowl to make it easier to clean.   After I got the stem out of the oxy bath, it revealed a lot of oxidation that would need to be cleaned up. The internals of the stem were also gooped up, but I was able to now force a pipe cleaner through it. I cleaned much of the surface oxidation with a Magic Eraser, then moved on to the internals.I sanded the stem with 600, 800, 1000, then moved into micro mesh pads from 1200 – 12000. Once finished, I oiled the stem with Obsidian Stem Oil and let it soak in. I turned my attention back to the bowl and did my best to clean out the inside of the shank and bowl with Q Tips and Pipe Cleaners soaked in alcohol. Then I set it aside for day 1.

Cleaning the shank and the stem took A LOT of pipe cleaners and Q Tips… After letting the pipe dry over night, I was able to see more clearly the inside and outside of the pipe. No surprise with how burned the outside of the pipe was that there were also heat fissures inside the bowl. I inspected them carefully and gauged their depth with dental picks. They, luckily, were not too deep. I was also now able to see some of the fills, scratches, and sand pits better on the outside of the bowl. I used a wet rag and a hot iron to try to raise them a bit. Then I carefully cleaned them out with my dental picks. At this point, I got a little ahead of myself as I focused on cleaning out the pits. I moved on to filling the pits and scratches with CA glue before fully stripping the finish. After the glue cured, I sanded down the glue spots. Then I wiped the entire stummel down with high-proof alcohol followed by acetone to really remove the finish. Since I did my steps slightly out of order, the CA glue had softened in a couple of the fills. So, I picked it out and refilled it. I let the glue cure and then sanded the entire stummel. I had to be very careful over the stamping to preserve it. With the finish removed and the stummel sanded, I placed a wine cork in the bowl and coated it with dye.It’s hard to tell in the pictures, but the dye came out a little too dark, more similar to a Flame Grain. To keep it authentic with a Super Grain, I needed to lighten it back up a bit. I lightly sanded it with my sequence of micromesh pads which also brought the shine back. After the stummel was sanded, the color was nearly perfect. I then buffed it using Tripoli, followed by White Diamond, and finally Carnauba. Now that the outside was finished, I moved on to the inside. After really inspecting the fissures, some of them were deeper than I would like. If it was my pipe, I would have done a bowl coating and just kept an eye on them to address later, but since this pipe was for someone else, I wanted to address it now. This way they won’t have to deal with it down the road. I mixed up some JB Weld, which dries inert and can handle the heat. I carefully stuck it only into the fissures, using as little as possible so as not to coat the briar, since JB Weld won’t breathe like briar.After it cured, I sanded down the JB Weld to make the bowl smooth and flush, as well as to remove any that was not inside the fissures.Then I coated the bowl with activated charcoal in a great method I learned from Dad’s Pipes. (https://dadspipes.com/2015/08/12/a-simple-effective-bowl-coating/)After cleaning the charcoal off the rim, I noticed it had dulled a little bit. So, I threw the buffing wheel back on and gave it another coat of Carnauba. The pipe was now complete! I hope it will bring its new owner joy for many years!

Final Pictures:

Restemming and Restoring a Monte Verde Hand Made Freehand Bowl

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Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe I chose to work on was a Monte Verde bowl sans stem that was purchased from an online auction on 03/06/18 from Nampa, Idaho, USA. It has been sitting in my box of bowls since that time. Jeff cleaned it up and mailed it to me. I have been postponing restemming any of the pipes for a while now but after restemming that little gourd calabash a couple of days ago I was ready to do a few more. I pulled this one out of the box first and set aside to be the next pipe to work on. It has a very craggy rustication that is quite stunning and a square flared shank. Overall it is a pretty pipe. The bowl had thick cake in the bowl and the rim top had a coat of lava on the inner edge of the bowl and in the grooves of the rim top. The finish had a lot of dust and debris in the valleys of the rustication. The stamping on the smooth panel on the underside of the shank was clear and readable. It was stamped Monte Verdi [over] Made in Denmark [over] By Hand [over] Golden Tan in script. I knew that the Monte Verdi line was made by Preben Holm of Ben Wade and Preben Holm Freehand fame. Jeff took some photos of the bowl before he cleaned it up. The next two close up photos show the condition of the bowl and rim top. You can see the lava coat on the inner edge of the bowl and the debris in the rustication of the rim top. Jeff took a photo of the stamping on the underside of the shank. It read as noted above and is  clear and readable.I decided to confirm my thinking that the pipe was connected with Preben Holm/Ben Wade. I turned to Pipephil’s site to get a read on the brand (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-m6.html). Sure enough the Monte Verdi line was made by Preben Holm. The pipe in the photo had a very similar rustication to the Monte Verdi bowl I was working on. I did a screen capture of the section on Pipephil. I have included it below.  There were also photos that were included on Pipephil of what this particular pipe looked like when it had left Denmark. The rustication around the bowl and shank is very similar. The pipe I have does not have a shank extension but otherwise the finish is much the same.The pipe originally had a fancy turned vulcanite stem. The stem was long gone when Jeff picked it up so I had some decisions to make about the stem I would use to restem it.I turned to work on the pipe itself. Jeff had carried out his usual thorough cleanup of the pipe. He had reamed it with a PipNet reamer to remove the cake and cleaned the reaming up with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He scrubbed the internals of the bowl and stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the externals with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap and rinsed the bowl off with running water. The pipe looked very clean when I received it. The rim top and shank end cleaned up really well as can be seen in the close up photos below.I took a photo of the stamping on the underside of the shank. It really is clear and readable.I went through my can of stems and found turned freehand style vulcanite stem that would work well with the bowl and shank. The bend in it was perfect. There were tooth marks in surface of the top and underside of the stem at the button that would need to be dealt with in the restoration. I took a photo of the stem and bowl together to give a sense of the look of the pipe and the proportion of the stem. I shortened the length of the tenon with my Dremel and sanding drum and smoothed out the tenon with 220 grit sandpaper and fit the stem in the shank and took pictures of the pipe and stem. I removed the stem and rubbed the briar down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the briar with my fingertips and a horsehair shoe brush. The product works to clean, enliven and preserve the briar. I let it sit for 15 minutes while I worked on the stem. After the time passed I buffed it with a cotton cloth to deepen the shine. The briar really comes alive with the balm.   I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. I “painted” the tooth marks on both sides of the stem with the flame of a lighter to lift them as much as possible. I filled in the tooth marks that remaining with clear super glue and set it aside to cure. Once it had cured I used a flat file to reshape the edge of the button and flatten the repairs on the stem surface. I blended the repairs into the surface of the vulcanite with 220 grit sandpaper. I started polishing the stem with 400 grit wet dry sandpaper. The stem was looking much better. I polished the vulcanite with micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. I used Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine to further polish the stem. In speaking with Kenneth yesterday I remembered that I had used a product in the past called Meguiar’s Scratch X2.0 to polish the surface of the stem after all of the previous polishing I had done. I took photos of the stem after polishing with the compound and did give a rich shine.   This restemmed, rusticated Preben Holm Hand Made Monte Verdi Golden Tan Freehand is a beautiful looking pipe that combines a rusticated finish with a unique shaped. The brown stains on the bowl work well to highlight the finish. The polished turned fancy black vulcanite stem adds to the mix. I put the finished stem on the bowl and buffed it with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel being careful to not buff the stamping. I gave the bowl multiple coats of Conservator’s Wax and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing it with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished pipe is quite nice and feels great in the hand. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. I can only tell you that like the other pipes I am working that it is much prettier in person than the photos capture. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 7 inches, Height: 2 inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¾ inches, Chamber diameter: 7/8 of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 63grams/2.22oz. It will soon be added to the Danish Pipe Makers section on the rebornpipes store. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked over another beautiful pipe. Remember we are not pipe owners; we are pipemen and women who hold our pipes in trust until they pass on into the trust of the next generation.