Tag Archives: Caminetto pipes bearing the Ascorti and Radice Stamp

New Life for a Rusticated Caminetto Business KS 118 Canadian

Blog by Steve Laug

A few weeks ago I was contacted from a fellow in Montana who was selling his pipes as they had not been used for quite a few years. I asked him for a picture and he sent me the one to the left. It included the following brands (from the top to the bottom of the photo): Savinelli Autograph 5 Freehand, Mastro de Paja Ciocco 0C Bulldog, Mastro de Paja Media 1C Bent Billiard, Ser Jacopo Delecta Octagonal Bent Billiard, Caminetto Business KS 118 Canadian, Radici Rind Rhodesian, Dunhill Bruyere ODA 836 Panel Billiard, Barontini Straight Grain B3 Freehand and a Ben Wade Martinique Hand Made in Denmark Freehand.

Almost all of them were higher end pipes and all were hand made pipes. They were a mix of finishes – smooth, sandblast and also rusticated. They were a mix of shapes as well and the majority of them were Italian Made other than the Dunhill and the Ben Wade Martinique. They were beautiful pipes and after exchanging quite a few photos of the pipes from various angles to get a sense of what was there we struck a deal. We sent him the payment and the pipes arrived in Idaho a few days after I left for Vancouver.

Jeff cleaned the all and yesterday I received them in Vancouver. I am impressed with the way they cleaned up and the beauty of the brands. They truly are some beautiful pipes. I just need to put the final touches on each of them and address minor issues on the bowl rims and the stems and they should be good to go. I am really looking forward to working on each of them in the days ahead.

This evening after work I decided to continue working on the lot. I chose to work on the Caminetto Rusticated Business KS 118 Canadian. It has a rusticated classic shape Caminetto Business style finish in a Canadian with an Italian twist. The rustication is one that I am familiar with from the other Caminetto pipes that I have worked on. The pipe has rustication on the rim top that matches the rest of the pipe. The shank end has a smooth band around it to allow the stem to seat correctly. The pipe is stamped on a smooth panel on the underside of the shank. It reads Caminetto [over] BUSINESS followed by a shield with a KS in the middle. Following that it has the shape number 118. Toward the end of the shank it is stamped Made in Italy [over] Cucciago (Cantu). The classic Moustache Caminetto logo is on top of the stem. The stamping is clear and readable. The finish was very dirty with grime ground into the rustication. The bowl had a thick cake and the rim top was dirty with lava filling in the rustication and some darkening around the inner edge of the bowl. The stem is silver and black variegated acrylic and was dirty with light tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button and on the button itself. Jeff took photos of the pipe before he started his clean up work on it. Jeff took photos of the bowl and rim top to show what they looked like before the clean up. You can see the darkening and thick lava on the inner edge and in the rustication on the rim top. He also took some photos of the stem to show the condition of both sides. You can see the tooth marks and chatter on the top and underside next to the button. The photos of the sides and heel of the bowl show the Business rustication style around the bowl and shank. The stain adds depth finish on the pipe. Even under the grime it is a real beauty. The stamping on the underside of the shank is shown in the photo below. It is clear and readable as noted above. The third photo shows the Caminetto Moustache Logo. I have worked on several Caminetto in the past so I turned to one of the restorations on the rebornpipes blog and reread the background information on the brand. I am including that info here with this restoration (https://rebornpipes.com/2020/04/19/pretty-tired-and-dirty-messy-restoration-of-a-caminetto-business-tomahawk-182/).

When the pipe arrived I turned to Pipephil (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-c1.html) to see if he included not only information on this Caminetto Business 182. He gave some interesting information about the brand. It was created in 1986 by Guiseppe Ascorti, Luigi Radice and Gianni Davoli as the distributor. It states that in 1979 the first Caminetto period ended with Luigi Radice leaving the company. Guiseppe Ascorti continued making the pipe with his son Roberto. In 1986 the New Caminetto period began by Roberto Ascorti.I turned to Pipedia for more information on the Caminetto and how to date the pipe I had in hand (https://pipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Caminetto_(shapes,_stamping,_articles,_etc.). I quote a pertinent paragraph:

Stampings and dating: First off, dating earlier Caminetto’s is nearly impossible. Nevertheless, there were three phases, some in which were much earlier, of development that occurred in the stamping process of Caminetto. Before that though, every pipe had the stamp of Caminetto in one of two ways: Caminetto in script or Caminetto within quotation marks in block letters (I do not know how it was decided which pipe got which stamp, as I have had EARLY Caminetto’s with both)…

The stampings are shown in the photo to the left. The stamping on this pipe is like #3.

…Now, the question is which stamps are earlier and more likely to have been made by Ascorti and/or Radice. The answer is #1. The differences in #2 and #3 seem to be minute, as Cucciago is simply a suburb of Cantu. Pipes stamped like #1 are the most valuable Caminetto’s as they are the earliest production of the brand, as well as what some would claim the most perfect of Ascorti and Radice’s work. The last tidbit is, of course, debatable…

… There is also another factor in stamping, that is, which series the pipe falls in. The majority of Caminetto’s one sees are those of the “Business” series, which are stamped such with their collective shape (see photo of shapes below). Another stamp that sometimes follows the “Business” one is “KS,” which from what I know means “King-size” (this could be wrong, as there are pipes stamped with KS1, KS2, and KS3).

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 and cleaned out the airway with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. I took photos of the pipe before I started my part of the restoration. I took close up photos of both the rim top and the stem. Jeff had been able to get the grime and lava off of the rim top and it looked pretty incredible. Even the darkening and marks on the rim top on the right side look much better. The stem looked very clean. The tooth marks and chatter were minimal and predominantly on the underside near the button. They should be easy to remove. The stamping on the shank underside was readable as noted above. I also took a photo with the stem removed to give an idea of the perspective and design of the pipe.I started my work on the pipe by addressing the slight darkening on the top and the edge of the bowl with a brass bristle wire brush. I worked over the darkening in the rustication with the brush to remove the remaining debris and clean up the top. Over all the rim top and edges looked much better.The bowl and shank were very clean. I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the finish of the bowl and shank with my fingers and a horsehair shoe brush. I want the product to go deep into the finish because it works to clean, enliven and protect the briar. Once I was confident that it was deeply worked into the finish I wiped it off and buffed it with a soft cloth to polish it. The pipe really began to have a rich shine. I took some photos of the bowl at this point to mark the progress in the restoration. The finish on the pipe is beautiful in the photos below. I set the bowl aside and turned to work on the stem. I sanded out the tooth marks and chatter on the surface of the stem with 220 grit sandpaper. I started polishing it with 600 grit wet dry sandpaper.I touched up the moustache stem logo on the top of the stem with white acrylic fingernail polish. It looks much better but it is shallow on the outside edges of the stamp.I polished the acrylic stem with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding it with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad because I find that the oil provides a great surface for polishing with the micromesh pads.I finished polishing it with Before & After Pipe Polish – both the Fine and Extra Fine polishes. I gave it a final coat of oil and set it aside to dry. This Caminetto Business KS 118 Canadian is a real beauty and has a lot of life left. I put the bowl and stem back together again and buffed the bowl and the stem with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel. I used a soft touch on the rusticated bowl so as not to fill it in with the polishing product. I gave the bowl several coats of Conservator’s Wax and the stem several coats of carnauba wax. I carefully buffed the entire pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. I finished buffing with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished pipe looks very good. The rustication is very tactile and feels great in the hand. It is comfortable and light weight. The finished Caminetto Business Canadian is shown in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 6 ¾ inches, Height: 2 ¼ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ½ inches, Chamber diameter: 7/8 of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 71 grams/2.50 ounces. This great looking rusticated Caminetto turned out very well. It should be a great pipe. It will be going on the rebornpipes store in the Italian Pipemakers Section shortly if you are interested in adding it to your collection.

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.

Breathing Life into a Caminetto Business 143KS Bent Egg

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Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe on my worktable is a Caminetto Business pipe. Lately I have worked on a few of these and have been impressed by the craftsmanship. The pipe has a rugged rusticated finish and a stepped variegated brown acrylic saddle stem. It had come to us through an auction from Pekin, Illinois, USA. It was a filthy pipe with grime and oils ground into the rusticated finish on the bowl. The pipe had some rustic beauty shining through the dust and debris in the valleys of the rough finish. The rustication covered the rim top, bowl and shank with a smooth panel on each side of the shank. The finish was dull and lifeless and dirty from sitting around. There was a very thick cake in the bowl with lava flowing out of the bowl and over the rim top. The lava had filled in the deeper grooves of the finish on the rim top. The inner edge of the rim appeared to be in good condition under the lava coat other than a nick on the front right edge. The stamping on the left side of the shank read Caminetto in script over BUSINESS. To the left of that toward the bowl was the shape number 143 in a cartouche and to the right of the stamp it read KS. On the right side of the shank it was stamped MADE IN ITALY [over] CUCCIAGO (CANTU). The stepped saddle stem was variegated brown and had the classic Caminetto Mustache on the top of the saddle. The surface was dirty and there was light tooth chatter and marks on both sides near the button. Jeff took the following photos before he started his cleanup work on the pipe.He took close-up photos of the bowl and rim top from various angles to capture the condition of the bowl and rim top edges. You can see the lava overflow and debris in the rustication of the rim top. You can see the cake in the bowl. This was a dirty pipe but it was the finish was in great condition. The stem is also very dirty with tooth marks and chatter on both sides near the button. He took photos of the sides and heel of the bowl to show the beautiful incredibly deep rustication around the bowl. It is the same kind of rough finish that I really like on Castello Sea Rock pipes. You can see the oil, dust and debris in the finish on both sides of the bowl. Jeff took a photo of the stamping on the shank. It reads as noted above. The stamping is clear and readable. I have worked on several Caminetto in the past so I turned to one of the restorations on the rebornpipes blog and reread the background information on the brand. I am including that info here with this restoration (https://rebornpipes.com/2020/04/19/pretty-tired-and-dirty-messy-restoration-of-a-caminetto-business-tomahawk-182/).

When the pipe arrived I turned to Pipephil (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-c1.html) to see if he included not only information on this Caminetto Business 182. He gave some interesting information about the brand. It was created in 1986 by Guiseppe Ascorti, Luigi Radice and Gianni Davoli as the distributor. It states that in 1979 the first Caminetto period ended with Luigi Radice leaving the company. Guiseppe Ascorti continued making the pipe with his son Roberto. In 1986 the New Caminetto period began by Roberto Ascorti.I turned to Pipedia for more information on the Caminetto and how to date the pipe I had in hand (https://pipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Caminetto_(shapes,_stamping,_articles,_etc.). I quote a pertinent paragraph:

The stampings are shown in the photo to the left. The stamping on this pipe is like #3.

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 and cleaned out the airway with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. I took photos of the pipe before I started my part of the restoration. To show how clean the rim top and stem really was I took a close-up photo of the rim and stem. The bowl was clean and cake free. The rim top is very clean with no residual lava in the sandblast finish. The inner edges of the bowl look good and the nicked area on the right front is clean. The variegated brown acrylic saddle stem looks cleaned up nicely. The surface had some light tooth marks but the button edge looked really good.I took the stem off the bowl and took a picture of the pipe to give an idea of the look of the rustication and the stem. It is going to be a pretty pipe.I used a drop of super glue to fill in the chipped edge on the right front inner edge of the bowl. Once the glue repair cured I smoothed out the inner edge of the bowl with 220 grit sandpaper.I roughed up the repaired area on the rim top with a wire brush to knock of the debris from the repair. Once it was clean it matched the edges of the rest of the bowl. I knew that the original Caminetto Business 143KS pipe had a flumed rim top and runoff down the top ½ inch of the bowl sides. I found a photo of the same pipe online and flumed the bowl on the one I had accordingly. I used a Walnut stain pen to touch up the rim top and give the bowl a slight flume around the top edge. Once I treated the pipe with Before & After Restoration Balm the flumed part would flow better with the surrounding briar.The bowl looked very good so I did not need to do any further work on 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 and with a horse hair shoe brush to get it into the nooks and crannies of the deep rustication of the finish on the bowl and shank. I let it sit for about 20 minutes to let it do its magic. I 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. The bowl was finished so I set it aside and turned my attention to the stem. I sanded out the light tooth marks and chatter with 200 grit sandpaper and started to polish it with 400 grit wet dry sandpaper. I touched up the mustache stamp on the topside of the saddle stem with Rub’n Buff Antique Gold. I rubbed it into the stamp and pressed into it with a toothpick. I buffed it off with a soft cloth and left the gold in the mustache to bring it back into place. I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped the stem down after each sanding pad with a damp cloth I finished polishing it with Before & After Pipe Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine and buffed it off with a cotton cloth. This Caminetto Business 143KS Bent Egg is a real beauty and has a lot of life left. I put the bowl and stem back together again and buffed the bowl and the stem with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel. I used a soft touch on the rusticated bowl so as not to fill it in with the polishing product. I gave the bowl several coats of Conservator’s Wax and the stem several coats of carnauba wax. I carefully buffed the entire pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. I finished buffing with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished pipe looks very good. The rustication is very tactile and feels great in the hand. It is comfortable and light weight. The finished Caminetto Business Bent Egg is shown in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 6 inches, Height: 2 ¼ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. This great looking rusticated Caminetto turned out very well. It should be a great pipe. It will be going on the rebornpipes store shortly if you are interested in adding it to your collection. Thanks for reading this blog and my reflections on the pipe while I worked on it.

Rejuvenating a Caminetto Business Long Shank Stack

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Blog by Steve Laug

I just finished working on a long shank Caminetto Stack. It is stamped on the left side of the shank Caminetto Business. On the right side of the shank it is stamped Ascorti over Radice over Cucciago over Cantu Italy. Next to it is a shield. The finish is a rustication that looks very much like the older Castello Sea Rock finish. The bowl needed a thorough reaming to clean out the remnants of the old cake. The internals of the shank will also need a thorough cleaning. The pipe has a strong English smelling ghost that would need to be exorcised by a retort treatment. If that did not kill it then it would need to be given a cotton ball and alcohol treatment to further remove the ghost. The inner and out rim edges look really good. There is a build up tars and oils in the rustication on the top of the rim that will need to be scrubbed out. The deep rustication is also harbouring a lot of dust in the crevices that will also need to be scrubbed as well.

The stem needs some work. It is loose in the shank and I will need to see what the fit is like once the shank is cleaned. There is a deep tooth mark on the underside of the stem next to the button. It is not quite broken through the surface of the stem but it is deep. There are also marks on the topside of the stem in the same place though nowhere near as deep. The stem was almost clogged and will need to be cleared. The slot is tight and hard to get a pipe cleaner through easily. It will need to be opened to make cleaning the pipe a simpler procedure. Between the semi-clogged stem and the tight slot the draw is constricted. Once the repairs are made to the stem it will need to be polished.

I took a close-up photo of the rim for you to see clearly the build up on the rim. There were tars and oils deep in the grooves of the rustication on the surface of the rim. There was also a thin cake on the walls of the bowl that would need to be removed to address the heavy Latakia smell that was in the pipe. I reamed the bowl with a PipNet reamer using the smallest cutting head and working up to the third head that was the same diameter as the bowl. I then scraped the inside lightly with a sharp pen knife.

I scrubbed the inside of the shank with pipe cleaners and cotton swabs and isopropyl 99% alcohol before setting up a retort to boil alcohol through the inside of the pipe. I stuffed a cotton ball in the top of the bowl and then fit the rubber end of the test tube stopper over the stem. I place the bowl in a pipe rest and held the test tube over a candle. As the alcohol heated and boiled in the test tube it circulated into the bowl and when removed from the flame the alcohol would carry the tars and oils back to the test tube. I continued to boil the alcohol and remove it from the flame until the alcohol turned amber from the inside of the pipe.

I changed the alcohol and boiled it through the pipe again. This second time the alcohol came out clean. I kept it boiling through for about 15 minutes and then removed it from the flame. The photo below shows the relatively clean alcohol after this retort. Once I had removed the retort I cleaned out the bowl and the shank with isopropyl alcohol on cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. This time they came out relatively clean. The problem was that the pipe still smelled strongly of Latakia. The ghost was stubborn and persistent. I decided to use a cotton ball and alcohol soak to see if I could draw out some more of the oils and smell. I stuff two cotton balls into the bowl and plugged the shank. I used an ear syringe to fill the bowl with alcohol and tipped it back and forth to run the alcohol through the shank. I unplugged the shank and set the bowl in an old ice cube tray over night to draw out the oils. The next three photos were taken over a 12 hour period and show what happened with the soak.

When I removed the cotton balls and let the pipe dry out the ghost still persisted. I cleaned out the bowl and shank again, then put some white vinegar and cotton in the bowl and shank and let it sit for 3 hours. I cleaned out the shank and the ghost still remained. I was beating it but it was still present. I then filled the bowl with Kosher rock salt and then used an ear syringe to fill it with alcohol. I set it aside in the ice cube tray to let the salt do its magic.

Once I removed the salt and alcohol and cleaned out the shank and bowl a final time the ghost is pretty well exorcised. There is a faint tobacco smell but the overpowering smell is gone.

I scrubbed the top of the rim with a brass bristle tire brush and then rescrubbed it with a tooth brush and Murphy’s Oil Soap. I scrubbed it hard enough to remove the dust and grime from the crevices of the rusticated finish.

I rinsed the bowl under running water to remove the soap from the finish, being careful to not get any water in the bowl. I dried it off with a cotton cloth. The photos below show the cleaned bowl. The finish was dull and had lightened slightly.

I used a wash of brown aniline stain mixed 4 parts alcohol and one part stain to restain the bowl and shank. The next four photos show the pipe after it had been restained and buffed with Blue Diamond. I buffed it with a light touch and then rebuffed it with a shoe brush.

With the bowl finished it was time to work on the stem. I decided to start with the narrow slot and airway on the end of the stem. I used three different needle files to open it up. I started with a flat file to widen the gap on the top and the bottom edge of the slot. I needed it open enough that I could use a flat oval file to smooth out the slot and open both the top, bottom and sides of the slot. I finished with a round file to taper the edges of the slot at an angle to the airway in the stem. While this was done to a slight degree I increased the angle and also opened up the end of the airway. I used the round file to also enter from the tenon end of the stem and smooth out what appeared to be rough transitions from the airway to the slot. I finished by sanding the inside of the slot with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper and then finishing with a bristle pipe cleaner and a little scrubbing powder.

I still needed to clean up the end of the stem when I worked on the stem surface itself but the basic shape was finished and the slot was wide enough to easily handle a pipe cleaner. I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper and also with a medium and fine grit sanding sponge to remove the tooth chatter on the top side of the stem and to clean up around the deep tooth mark on the surface of the stem. I picked out the debris from the tooth mark and then filled it with black super glue. I set the stem aside overnight to let the glue repair cure.

The next morning I sanded the repaired area with 220 grit sandpaper and then the sanding sponges to remove the excess patch and to blend it into the surface of the stem. Once the repair was smoothed out it was time to sand the stem with micromesh sanding pads. I wet sanded with 1500-2400 grit pads and rubbed it down with Obsidian Oil. Once it had dried I gave it a quick buff with White Diamond. The tooth chatter was gone on the top of the stem and the repair on the underside blended in quite well. At this stage in the sanding it still showed but would begin to disappear into the stem with further sanding with micromesh. I dry sanded the stem with 3200-4000 grit pads and then rubbed it down again with Obsidian Oil. The first photo below shows the topside of the stem. The tooth chatter is gone. The second shows the underside of the stem. The tooth mark is repaired and the repair no longer shows. The next three grits of micromesh will make the patch disappear in the shine of the stem.

I dry sanded with 6000-12,000 grit pads and then gave it a final buff with Blue Diamond. I rubbed in a final coat of Obsidian Oil and let it dry.

The next two photos show the finished stem. The repair is blended into the vulcanite and it is polished and clean.

I gave the pipe a light buff with Blue Diamond Plastic polish and then gave the stem several coats of carnauba wax. I lightly buffed the bowl with carnauba and then buffed the entire pipe with a clean flannel buff to raise the shine. Here is the finished pipe. Thanks for looking.