Tag Archives: correcting an overturned bone tenon

A Nice, Older Henley Billiard Restored


This old Henley Billiard was made by Masta Pipe Company of England and came to me in pretty clean condition. It is older and the Bakelite stem has an orifice button/airway. You can see from the picture below that the bowl was a little out of round and a small burn on the rim near the shank. It also had an overturned bone tenon. The stem had several gouges and deep scratches. Other than the finish was in great shape and in need of a polish and buff.

I heated the bone tenon as I have described in other blog articles by heating it in a bowl of boiling water. I heated it and screwed it back into the shank and tried to twist it. I repeated the process until it freely turned. I lined it up straight and then ran cold tap water over it to cool it and set the glue again. I cleaned up the dents and gouges with heat to raise them as far as I could and then sanded and filled them with a small amount of clear super glue. Then I sanded them with 400 and 600 grit wet dry sandpaper until they were smooth and polished the stem using micromesh pads up to 4000grit.

I cleaned and reamed the bowl and cleaned the shank with cotton swabs, pipe cleaners and alcohol. I used a folded piece of sand paper to even out the inner edge of the bowl and bring it back into round. I did this carefully so as not to scratch the finish. When I had it back to round it was time to polish it. I put the stem back on the pipe and the entirety was taken to the buffer for a final buff with White Diamond. This one was in relatively good shape other than the stem.

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Here is the finished pipe, ready to load and smoke.

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