by Steve Laug

On the weekend I received a series of emails from a fellow here in Vancouver regarding a help with a pipe. He was unpacking his new pipe and he dropped it and the tenon snapped of the stem. The broken tenon was still in the shank and this was a brand-new pipe. He asked if I could help him and fix it. In days past this was a hard fix, but I have since done many tenon replacements. While I would not say it is simple it is certainly something that I can do. The pipe is a Nording 3 Made in Denmark Double Silver and is partially rusticated and partially smooth. It is a Freehand with some blackened plateau on the rim top. It has a gold band sandwich between two silver rings that allow the gold to be turned and spun. The acrylic stem is significantly smaller in diameter than the shank and also bears a nicely carved band with a Nording N logo on the top. He sent me the following photos with is plea for help. He shipped the pipe to me and it arrived at my place on Monday afternoon. I used my normal methods to pull the broken tenon from the shank. I threaded a drywall screw in the shank and tried to pull it from the shank with no luck. It would not come out. I put it in the freezer to see if the old freezer trick would cause it to loosen. I took it out of the freezer after 30 minutes and with some cajoling and wiggling on my part the tenon came free. I carefully flattened out the broken tenon piece remaining on the stem with a small sanding drum on my Dremel. I ran it at a very slow speed and flattened it carefully avoiding the silver band on the stem end. Did I say carefully? Once that was done I used various drill bits to open the airway in the stem to receive a new tenon. I used the Dremel to also reduce the diameter on the new tenon to match the diameter of the mortise. It fit very well. I roughened the end of the new tenon with a rasp so that it would have some bite for the glue when I fit it into the drilled out airway in the stem. I glued the new tenon in place in the mortise with Black rubberized CA Glue. I set it aside for the repair to cure.I set the stem and bowl aside and took photos of the way it looked and let it cure over night. It is a great looking pipe at this point. I still need to polish the new tenon and get a shine on it but it fits very well and all aligns with the shank. I look forward to putting the stem on the pipe in the morning. This morning I fit the stem to the shank and I was very happy with the fit. I polished the new Delrin tenon with micromesh pads and it looks good. Have a look at the pipe.