Tag Archives: fitting a stem

Restoring a Bjarne Handmade in Denmark War Club Billiard

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by Steve Laug

This large rusticated bowl, smooth rimtop briar pipe was purchased from an eBay seller on 08/27/2-24 from Memphis, Tennesse, USA. It is stamped on the underside of the shank and clearly reads Bjarne [over] Handmade [over] In Denmark. The bowl had a thick cake on the walls and a heavy overflow of lava onto the rim top and edges. The smooth rim top and inner edges also had burn damage leaving the bowl out of round. It obviously had been lit repeatedly with a torch lighter and the damage told the story. The rusticated finish is very tactile but dirty with debris and oils. The previous pipeman had cut a piece of wine cork to make a cork spacer on the stem. It still had the makers marks on the cork. His drilling to fit the tenon was off and not centred. It was not the same thickness from the outside to the center drilling. With it in place the tenon was quite short. The vulcanite taper stem has a bj stamped on the left side of the taper. The stem was lightly oxidized, calcified and had light tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. I really like the rustication on the bowl and shank even through the grime in the finish. Jeff took photos of the pipe before he started cleaning it up. Have a look. Jeff took close up photos of the bowl and rim top to show the condition of the bowl and the rim top. You can also see the lava on the rim top, inner edge and the cake in the bowl. The burn damage on the top is very visible and has left the bowl is out of round. He also took close up photos of the stem to show its condition as mentioned above. He also took photos of the tooth marks and chatter on both sides of the stem. He took photos of the bowl sides and heel to show the details of the rustication around the bowl. The rustication is deep and has interesting characteristics that show up in the photos around the bowl and shank. He took a photo of the stamping on the underside of the shank. It is clear and readable as noted above. There is a bj logo on the left side of the stem that looks deeper enough to touch up. You can also see the wine cork and some of the writing on it in the second photo. It is also poorly cut. The next two photos show the look of the cork spacer on the stem. It is an obvious home made addition and one that I plan on removing. I have had many Bjarne pipes cross my work table over the years but all had been stamped only Bjarne or Bjarne Handmade. None of them had his full name stamped on it and none had a letter stamp which I assumed indicated the grade of the pipe. I did some research on Pipedia.com and found some helpful information on both the stamping of my pipe and the history of Bjarne Nielsen himself. I am including the link to the full article on Pipedia and also some pertinent sections of the article that I have edited for quick reference. https://pipedia.org/wiki/Bjarne

From the early 1990s Bjarne had seven pipemakers employed and the pipes were sold in no fewer than 32 countries. For more than six months each year, Bjarne traveled around the world to promote his pipes by meeting with dealers and customers. But sadly, it all ended in February 2008 when Bjarne, then 66 years old suffered a fatal heart attack. An unexpected blow first of all to his family, but also to the pipemakers who had been working for him, and to all lovers of his pipes from around the world. And as no one was willing to take over, the Bjarne pipe died together with its creator.

Among the pipemakers that worked for Bjarne were Johs (for the lower priced high volume pieces), and makers like Ph. Vigen, Ole Bandholm and Tonni Nielsen for high grade pieces. The cheaper line was stamped “Bjarne” while the highest grades were stamped “Bjarne Nielsen” (never with the pipemakers’ name) and graded, from highest to lowest, by the letters: AX, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J.

Now I knew that the pipe I had was made before 2008 and was one of his cheaper line stamped Bjarne.

Armed with the information above, I turned my attention to the pipe itself. Jeff had cleaned the pipe with his usual penchant for thoroughness that I really appreciate. 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, shank brushes 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 very good with good looking grain around the bowl and shank. Jeff soaked the stem in Before & After Deoxidizer to remove the oxidation on the rubber. When the pipe arrived here in Vancouver for the second stop of its restoration tour it looked very good. I took photos before I started my part of the work. While I appreciated and understood the idea behind the cork spacer it bothered me. I looked at the tenon and could see that the length was the same as the depth of the mortise in the shank. I also noticed that there was hard glue on the stem that formed a ridge that held the cork in place. I used a flat file and a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to get rid of the glue and smooth out the surface of the tenon. It still needed to be polished but I wanted to see if it would fit. I turned it into the mortise and took photos of the look of the pipe without the cork. It was back to what it must have looked like when it left the factory. I like it and would proceed sans cork space. Have a look at the pipe without the cork spacer. What do you think? I took close up photos of the bowl, rim top and stem to show how clean the pipe was. The bowl was clean and the rim top and the inner edge had significant burn damage and was slightly out of round. The stem was clean and showed light tooth marks and chatter.I took a photo of the stamping on the underside of the shank. It is readable and read as noted above. I also removed the stem from the shank and took photos of the pipe to show the look of the parts.The rim top and inner edge of the bowl was in rough condition. I flattened out the damaged rim top by lightly topping it on a topping board with a new piece of 220 grit sandpaper. Once it was flat again I used a wooded sphere and half sphere to work over the inner edge of the bowl and give it a slight bevel to try and bring the bowl back to round. (NOTE: the second photo is staged as I had already put a coat of stain on the polished rim top before realizing I forgot this photo.) The third photo shows the rim top and edges after the sanding process. The burn marks are gone and it looks well. I sanded the rim top with 320-3500 grit sanding pads. I wiped the top down with a damp cloth after each sanding pad and by the end the rim top had a shine and definitely looked better.I polished the rim top with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped it down after each pad with the cloth. The bowl continued to develop a deeper shine. I restained the rim top with a Cherry and Mahogany stain pen to match the shank end and panel on the underside of the shank. It would matched well once waxed and buffed.I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the briar with my finger tips and a shoe brush to get into the nooks and crannies. I let it sit on the bowl for 10 minutes and then buffed it off with a paper towel and soft cloth. The product is a great addition to the restoration work. It enlivens, enriches and protects the briar while giving it a deep glow. It is a product I use on every pipe I restore. I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. I “painted” the surface of the stem with the flame of a lighter to lift the tooth marks and had success. I sanded the light marks that remained with 220 grit sandpaper. It looked better. Polishing would finish the work. I continued the sanding process with 320-3500 grit sanding pads. After each pad I wiped the stem down with some Obsidian Oil to clearly show me the scratches and areas that still needed work. It was really looking good.I touched up the bj logo on the left side of the taper stem with white acrylic nail polish. Once it cured I scraped off the excess and used a 1500 grit micromesh pad to clean it up further.I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. Once again, I wiped it down between each pad with Obsidian Oil. I further polished it with Before and After Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine. I gave it a final coat of Obsidian Oil. It looked very good. I am really happy with the way that rim top and edge reworking turned out on this Bjarne Hand Made Large Rusticated Billiard turned out. It really is a beautiful looking pipe with a unique shape and combining a sandblast bowl with a smooth rim and shank end. The vulcanite taper stem is really nice. The briar really came alive with the buffing. The rich brown and black stains of the finish gave the pipe a sense of depth with the polishing and waxing. I carefully buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel using a light touch on the briar. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel. I buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished Bjarne Rusticated War Club Billiard really is a beauty and feels great in the hand and looks very good. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 7 inches, Height: 2 ½ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 2 inches, Chamber diameter: 1 inch. The weight of the pipe is 102 grams/3.63 ounces. The pipe will be going on the rebornpipes store in the Danish Pipe Makers Section if you would like to add it to your collection. Thanks for reading this blog and my reflections on the pipe while I worked on it. It was a fun one to work on!

Restoring a Badly Burned Out Peterson’s Kapmeer 407 Prince

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by Steve Laug

Several months ago, now I received an email from Jake about a Peterson’s Prince that he had that had a burnout in the bottom of the bowl. I asked him to send me photos of the pipe so that I could see what the issues were with the pipe. The photos showed the large hole in the bottom of the bowl. The hole is the same diameter as the inner walls of the bowl by the looks of the photo. I did not know what the brand mark on the pipe was as we never spoke about it. My guess about it was that the stem made me think of a Dunsmore or perhaps a Kapmeer pipe. We talked about it and what it would cost to restore it. Jake said he would send it up for work. Time passed and I really forgot about the pipe then on the weekend Jake wrote that he was mailing it. I told him I would keep an eye out for it and early this week the pipe arrived. Here are the photos that Jake sent me to show me the damage. When I unpacked the box I took the pipe out and had a look at it. The hole was quite large and the edges of the hole were thin and chipping. The stem was very oxidized and had some tooth marks on the top and the underside ahead of the button.
I took a photo of the bowl to show the size of what I was dealing with. The liner on the walls of the bowl were meerschaum. I believe that originally the Kapmeer had a Meerschaum tube on the walls that did not have a meerschaum bottom. I took photos of the stem to show its condition. The stem was oxidized and had tooth chatter and marks on the top and underside of the stem ahead of the button. The pipe is stamped around the sides of the shank. I took photos of the stamping and have included them below. They are clear and readable. The stamping on the left side read Peterson’s [over] KAPMEER. On the left side of the stem there was a stamped “P” that was clear and readable. The stamping on the right side read Made In [over] Great Britain. On the underside of the shank it was stamped with the shape number 407. I took the stem off the shank and took a photo of the pipe parts to give a sense of what it looked like. I started my repair on the burnout by cleaning up the pipe. I carefully reamed the thick cake out of the bowl with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. I scraped the cake off the walls of the bowl. I sanded the bowl out with sandpaper wrapped around a piece of dowel to remove any residual cake and smooth out the meerschaum.I used a pen knife to clean of the edge of the hole in the bottom of the bowl. I cut out all of the burned and thin areas on the hole. I cut a piece of briar out of the heel of a sacrificial old pipe. I cut a bit bigger than the hold as I would need to shape and fit it in the hole. I used the shape of the inner edge of the bowl and rim to set the shape of the plug that I was going to use on the repair. I used a Dremel to reduce the edges and make the plug round. I scored the back edge with the Dremel where the airway entered the bowl. I would reduce the edges of the plug to fit in the hole from the outside. I used a Dremel and sanding drum as well as several files to shape of the bottom of the plug to the same size as the hole in the bottom. Once it was shaped I fit it to the hold in the bottom. I glued it in place with clear CA glue. I filled in the gaps around the plug with briar dust and super glue. When the glue cured I sanded the repair smooth with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper. I took a photo of the inside of the bowl. It shows some of the glue from the plug around the edges. I mixed a batch of JB Weld and pressed it into the bottom of the bowl. I used a folded pipe cleaner and pipe nail to press it into the bottom. I raised the bottom of the bowl to the bottom of the entrance of the airway.I sanded the outside of the bowl and the rim top with 320-3500 grit sanding pads. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each sanding pad. The repair blended into the surrounding briar. There was some darkening around the outer edge of the patch. I stained the repaired burnout with a Walnut stain pen. It is a different piece of briar but the colour is a close match.I polished the briar with 1500-12000 grit micromesh sanding pads. I dry sanded it and then wiped it down after each sanding pad to remove the sanding dust. It began to take on a shine. The exterior of the bowl looks better after polishing. I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the briar with my finger tips. I let it sit on the bowl for 10 minutes and then buffed it off with a paper towel and soft cloth. The product is a great addition to the restoration work. It enlivens, enriches and protects the briar while giving it a deep glow. It is a product I use on every pipe I restore. I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. I scrubbed the stem with Soft Scrub to remove the oxidation on the surface of the stem. It took some work but I was able to remove a lot of the oxidation.I “painted” the surface of the stem with the flame of a lighter to lift the tooth marks. I was able to lift some of them. I filled in the few that remained with a rubberized black CA glue. Once it cured I use a small flat file to smooth out the repairs on the stem surface. I followed that up by sanding it with a folded 220 grit sandpaper. I sanded the stem surface with 220 grit sand paper to smooth out the repairs. I forgot to take photos of this part of the process. I sanded the stem with 320-3500 grit sanding pads to remove the scratching, oxidation and further polishing the stem surface.I touched up the “P” logo stamp on the left side of the stem with white acrylic fingernail polish. Once it cured I scraped of the excess and sanded the surrounding area with 1500 grit sanding pads. It looked very good. I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grits pads. I wiped the stem down with an Obsidian Oil Cloth after each pad. There still seems to be some oxidation around the stem. But it looks much better. I mixed a batch of sour cream and charcoal powder and painted the bottom of the bowl with a folded pipe cleaner. The mixture cures hard and flavourless and protects the repaired bottom of the bowl. With the burned out bowl repaired, the bowl cleaned and restored I put the polished stem back on the shank. The Peterson’s Kapmeer 407 Prince looked beautiful. Even the repaired burnout on the bottom of the bowl looked interesting with the dark ring around it on the bowl bottom. I buffed the pipe Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel and worked over the briar and the vulcanite with it. The buffer brought out a rich shine on the bowl and stem. I gave it multiple coats of Carnauba wax and then buffed it with a clean buffing pad. I had buffed the pipe with a soft cloth to deepen the shine. It is fun to see what the polished bowl looks like with beautiful mixed grain all around it. The pipe looks great with the black vulcanite stem. This smooth Peterson’s Kapmeer 407 Meerlined Prince is great looking and the pipe feels great in my hand. It is light and well balanced. Have a look at it with the photos below. The dimensions are Length: 6 inches, Height: 1 ¼ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 29 grams/0.99 ounces. It turned out to be a beautiful pipe. I will be sending it back to Jake soon. He is looking forward to enjoying it once again. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked over this pipe. Thanks to each of you who are reading this blog.

Restoring a Hefty Jarl Chieftain Oil Hardened Billiard 02 with a 9mm vulcanite Filter Stem

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by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table is a beautiful shaped thick shanked Billiard. We recently purchased it from a seller in Wilkes Barr, Pennsylvania, USA on Facebook Auction on Facebook on 09/12/2021. It is a nicely grained large Billiard with mixed grain on the sides and birdseye on the front and the back of the bowl. The inwardly bevelled rim top is in great condition and had mixed grain across the top. It is stamped on the left underside of the shank and reads Jarl Chieftain [over] Made in Denmark. On the right side it is stamped with the shape Oil Hardened. On the underside next to the stem/shank junction it bears the shape number 02. There was a heavy cake in the bowl and some darkening around the top and inner edge and light lava spots on the rim top. The mortise smelled of oils and had a dirty 9mm filter in the tenon. The stem was lightly oxidized, calcified and there were some light tooth marks or chatter on the top and underside ahead of the button. Jeff took photos of the pipe before he started his cleanup work. They tell the story and give a glimpse of the promise that we see in this pipe. He took a photo of the rim top and bowl to show the current condition. The inner edge and the rim top showed darkening and spots of lava as mentioned above. The photos of the bowl walls show the moderate cake on the walls. The stem photos show the oxidation and light marks on the rim top on both sides. Jeff took photos of the sides and heel of the bowl to give a sense of the condition of the bowl and the grain around the bowl. It is a beauty. He took photos of the shank sides to capture the stamping on the shank sides. They were clear and readable as noted above. Jeff did not capture the shape number on the underside of the shank which was also clear. Before I started working on it I did a bit of research on the brand to remind myself of what I knew of the maker. I turned to Pipephil’s site first (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-j1.html#jarl). I did a screen capture of the information on the site. I did a screen capture of the pertinent information and have included it below.I then turned to Pipedia and found that a very short article that confirmed that the pipes were made by Niels Mogens Jorgensen (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Jarl). I have included the article in its entirety below.

In December of 2010 Ellen Jarl wrote that Jarl pipes were made by her grandfather, Niels Mogens Jørgensen in a little factory in the town of Bramdrupdam, just outside Kolding, Denmark. We have no reason to doubt that Niels Mogens Jørgensen is the maker of these pipes.

Now it was time to work on the pipe. Since Jeff always follows the same pattern of work in his cleanup we do not include photos but rather just a simple summary. Jeff reamed the bowl with a PipNet pipe reamer and followed up with a Savinelli Fitsall pipe knife to remove the cake. He scrubbed out the mortise and the airway in the shank and the stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the exterior of the bowl, rim, shank and stem with a tooth brush and Murphy’s Oil Soap to remove the oils and tars on the rim and the grime on the finish of the bowl. He rinsed it under running water. He dried it off with a soft cloth. He was able to remove the spotty lava build up on the rim top and you could see the marks on the top and edges of the rim. He soaked it in Briarville’s Pipe Stem Deoxidizer and rinsed it with warm water to rinse off the residue. The stem was clean and the oxidation was gone. I took photos of what the pipe looked like when I brought to my worktable. I took close up photos of the bowl, rim top and stem to show how clean the pipe was. The bowl was clean and the rim top and the inner edge looked good. The stem was clean and there were light tooth marks on the top and underside of the stem.I took photos of the stamping on the sides of the shank. It is faint in spots but still readable and read as noted above. I also removed the stem from the shank and took photos of the pipe to show the look of the parts. I polished the briar with micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped the bowl surface down with a damp cloth after each sanding pad to remove the sanding dust. Once I finished the exterior of the briar was clean and the grain really stood out. 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 set the bowl aside and turned to the stem. I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped the stem down after each sanding pad with Obsidian Oil. I polished it with Before & After Pipe Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine. Once I had finished the polishing I gave it final coat of oil and set it aside to dry. I fit the filter tenon with a clean Dr. Perl Junior 9mm filter. It easily slips into the tenon and the pipe is ready to smoke.I am excited to finish this Jarl Chieftan Made in Denmark Thick Shank Billiard 02 with a 9mm Filter vulcanite saddle stem. 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 mix of grain on the sides of the bowl. Added to that the black vulcanite saddle stem was beautiful. This smooth Jarl Chieftan Thick Shank 02 Billiard is great looking and the pipe feels great in my hand. It is light and well balanced. Have a look at it with the photos below. The dimensions are Length: 5 ¾ 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 57 grams /2.05 ounces. It turned out to be a beautiful pipe. I will be putting it on the rebornpipes store in the Danish Pipe Makers section. If you are interested in adding it to your rack let me know by message or by email to slaug@uniserve.com. Thanks for your time reading the blog. I appreciate it.

Restoring an Early GBD Billiard Nosewarmer with an Orific Stem

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by Steve Laug

Last weekend Kenneth and I went to an antique show in New Westminster, BC. It is our third year going but still we have no idea what we are going to fine each time we go. It is always a part of the fun to wander through the various stalls and see what the vendors are offering on their tables. There are always surprising things – items that I grew up with that are now called antiques or at least collectibles. If only my foresight had been as good as my memory is now I could have sold many of the things I played with and ate from! But I digress. Back to the pipe hunting. We saw the usual offerings of things Grabow and Medico that were in very rough shape. I think we both have become much more selective over time and we passed on spending time with them. I did a few items that I picked up to restore. I took a picture of the group of fout pipes. In the left column from top to bottom there was a Peterson’s System Standard 1307 (Canadian number on a 307 shape), a Bulldog that was stamped Fraser Valley Made in Canada with a white dot stem and at the bottom was another Peterson – a K&P Dublin Made in Ireland Canadian with a Sterling Silver Band. The one on the right side is an older GBD Nosewarmer with an orific button on the short stem. Not a bad group of pipes to bring to the work table.The second of them I chose to bring to the table was the GBD at the top right of the above photo. It is a pretty pipe and bears the stamping on the left side of the shank that reads GBD in an oval. There is no other stamping on the shank and the stem has a brass GBD oval logo on the left side of the taper. The bowl has a thick cake and a heavy overflow of lava on the inner edge and the rim top. The stem is very tight in the shank and the pipe is dirty and smelly. The stem is dirty and lightly oxidized with calcification on the end that makes me wonder if it had a Softee Bit in place. There are tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. The stem is hard rubber and has an orific style button – a single hole in the button that is very rounded. I took photos of the pipe before I started my clean up work on it. I took a close-up photo of the rim top to show the condition of the bowl and inner edge of the bowl and the stem. You can clearly see the cake in the bowl and the darkening and lava on the rim top. The stem photos show the oxidation, calcification and tooth marks on the stem.I took a photo of the stamping on the sides of the shank. It is clear and readable as noted above. I removed the stem and took a photo of the parts of the pipe. It is a pretty little pipe.I reamed the pipe with a PipNet pipe reamer using the first two cutting heads. I followed up with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife to clean up the remnants of cake left in the bowl and check the bowl walls. I sanded the bowl with a piece of dowel wrapped with 220 grit sandpaper. It looked much better at this point. I moved on to clean up the internals. I cleaned out the airway and mortise with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and alcohol. I cleaned out the airway in the stem at the same time. I was surprised at how clean the internals were. I scrubbed the externals of the pipe with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush to remove the grime in the finish and on the rim top. I worked on it until it looked much better and then rinsed it off with warm water. I dried it off with a soft cloth. I polished the bowl and worked on the darkening on the rim top with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped it down between pads with a damp cloth. It really began to take on a deep shine. The grain really began to show on the briar. The exterior of the bowl looks better after sanding. I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the briar with my finger tips. I let it sit on the bowl for 10 minutes and then buffed it off with a paper towel and soft cloth. The product is a great addition to the restoration work. It enlivens, enriches and protects the briar while giving it a deep glow. It is a product I use on every pipe I restore. I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. I “painted” the hard rubber surface with the flame of a lighter to try and lift the tooth marks. I was able to lift some of them. The remaining ones I filled in with rubberized black CA glue. Once the repairs cured I flattened them with a small file and then finished blending them in with 220 grit sandpaper. I sanded the stem with 320-3500 grit sanding pads to further blend in the repairs and remove the remaining oxidation on the stem surface. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad to remove the sanding dust.I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped the stem down after each sanding pad with Obsidian Oil to further protect the vulcanite surface. I finished the polishing with Before & After Pipe Stem Polish – Fine and Extra Fine. I wiped the stem down a final time with Obsidian Oil and a cloth. It really looks very good. I am always excited to finish working on a pipe. This GBD Nosewarmer is no exception. 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 buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine and hand buffed it with a microfibre cloth to deepen the shine. It is fun to see what the polished bowl looks like with the black vulcanite taper stem. This Classic looking GBD Nosewarmer with a full sized bowl and short hard rubber stem feels great in my hand. It is light and well balanced. Have a look at it with the photos below. The dimensions are Length: 4 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 34 grams/1.20 ounces. I will be hanging on to this old timer at least for the time being. It is a GBD I have never seen before so I want to enjoy it for a bit. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked over this pipe. Thanks to each of you who are reading this blog.

Restoring a Father’s Legacy of 10 Brigham Pipes Gathered throughout his life #3

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by Steve Laug

Early this month I was contacted by Donna to see if I knew anyone interested in purchasing her father’s pipes. She wrote as follows: “I am wondering if you would be interested in my father’s collection of Brighams.” She further spelled out what he had in the collection. He had 1 – 2 dot pipe, 3 – 3 dot pipes, 2 – 4 dot pipes and 4 – 5 dot pipes. There was a total of 10 pipes. I asked for a photo of the pipes and she sent the photo below. I was very interested.We emailed back and forth and the short story is that I paid for the collection and she shipped the pipes to me. On Tuesday after Easter the box arrived and I was happy to be able to see them up close. They were obviously well-loved pipes and in varying degrees of needing work. I wrote her and told I received them and that I was pleased with the lot. I was looking forward to working on them. She asked me to send her photos along the way as I finished the pipes. I will be sending her the links to the blog so she can see the work and the process of bringing them back to a semblance of their original beauty. Thanks Donna for the opportunity to work on your Dad’s pipes.

The third of the pipes I have chosen to work on from the lot was the one sitting alone on the left side of photo above. I would call the pipe a Rhodesian shaped pipe with a vulcanite stem. It is stamped on the underside of the shank and reads Brigham in script. To the left, mid shank it has the shape number 527. The stamping will help me date the pipe. From the cake in the bowl and the other pipes I could tell her Dad love aromatic tobaccos. This pipe was heavily caked with an overflow of lava on the rim top and on the inner and outer edges of the bowl. The shank end even that had a coating of tar build up. The stem did not sit all the way in the shank so I assumed it was very dirty in the shank. I removed the stem and found a Hard Rock Maple Distillator in the aluminum tenon. The shank was black, tarry and oily. The stem was dirty and oxidized with thick oil and tar in the airway from the tenon to the button. There were light tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. The left side of the taper stem bore five brass pins in a cross format with a larger pin in the centre. That would also help with identifying the pipe. I took some photos of the pipe before I started my work on it. I took a photo of the bowl and rim top to show the cake in the bowl. The rim top looked to have a coat of lava overflowing down the crown with some possible damage around the inner edge. I took photos of the top and underside of the stem showing the light tooth chatter on the vulcanite stem surface. It is heavily oxidized and calcified and is quite dirty on the surface of the vulcanite.The stamping is very clear and it reads as noted above. I removed the stem from the shank and took a photo of the parts to show the look of the pipe. I have captured the pattern of the four brass dots on the stem. For the needed background I am including the information from Pipedia on Brigham pipes. It is a great read in terms of the history of the brand (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Pipes). Charles Lemon (Dadspipes) has written book on the history of the brand. This article is a good summary. I have included it below.

Roy Brigham, after serving an apprenticeship under an Austrian pipesmith, started his own pipe repair shop in Toronto, in 1906. By 1918 the business had grown to include five other craftsmen and had developed a reputation across Canada for the high quality of workmanship. After repairing many different brands of pipes over the years, Roy noted certain recurring complaints by pipe smokers, the most common referred to as “tongue bite”. Tongue bite is a burning sensation on the smoker’s tongue, previously thought to be due to the heat of the smoke (i.e. a “hot smoking pipe”).

He soon began manufacturing his own pipes, which were lightweight, yet featured a more rugged construction, strengthening the weak points observed in other pipes. The problem of tongue bite intrigued him, and he decided to make overcoming it a future goal.

About 1938, Roy’s son Herb joined him to assist in the business. The business barely survived the great depression because pipes were considered to be a luxury, not a necessity, and selling pipes was difficult indeed. In approximately 1937 [1], after some experimentation, Roy and Herb discovered that tongue bite was in fact a form of mild chemical burn to the tongue, caused by tars and acids in the smoke. They found that by filtering the smoke, it was possible to retain the flavour of the tobacco and yet remove these impurities and thereby stop the tongue bite.

Just as Thomas Edison had searched far and wide for the perfect material from which to make the first electric light bulb filaments, Roy & Herb began experimenting with many materials, both common and exotic, in the quest for the perfect pipe filter. Results varied wildly. Most of the materials didn’t work at all and some actually imparted their own flavour into the smoke. They eventually found just two materials that were satisfactory in pipes: bamboo and rock maple. As bamboo was obviously not as readily available, rock maple then became the logical choice.

They were able to manufacture a replaceable hollow wooden tube made from rock maple dowelling, which when inserted into a specially made pipe, caused absolutely no restriction to the draw of the pipe, yet extracted many of the impurities which had caused tongue bite. The result was indeed a truly better smoking pipe…

I then turned to a second article by Charles Lemon called, “A Closer Look at the Dots, Dates, and Markings of Brigham Pipes” to be able to pin down the time frame that the pipe was made in and to help interpret the stampings and shape number on the pipe. Here is the link to his article (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Pipes_%E2%80%93_A_Closer_Look_at_Dots,_Dates_and_Markings).

I have dubbed the decades between 1980 and 2000 the Late Canadian Era, a period that saw several changes at Brigham that are of note to the collector. First, the traditional 8-grade pinning system (the famous Brigham “Dots” which denoted the quality of the pipe) was changed to a 7-grade system to simplify pinning (more on this below), and the Norsemen and Valhalla series were merged to form the President Series, which represented the very finest pipes coming out of the Toronto factory. Early pipes from this era (left, below) are stamped with a shape number and “Brigham” over “Canada”; later pipes (late 1980s+, on right below) are stamped simply with a shape number and the Brigham logo.

I read further in the article to the section entitled Revised Dot System 1980. I quote from that below.

Brigham changed the Dot system in 1980, adding a 7 Dot at the top of the line, dropping the names of each series and eliminating the confusing vertical and horizontal 3 Dot configurations. The Norsemen and Valhalla series were combined to form the President series of freehand pipes, which adopted a 3 Dot pattern with a larger dot on the right as shown below. The 7- grade pinning system stayed in place from 1980 to 2001.

With the information from article and the chart above I knew what I was dealing with in terms of the stamping and the age of this pipe. I learned that this Late Canadian Era was made between 1980-2000. The pipe is a Brigham (5-Dot) 527, a Rhodesian to my mind. The Canada stamping pins it down to the period between 1990-2001 when the aluminum tenon was replaced.

I started my work on the pipe by reaming the bowl with a PipNet reamer. I used the first and second cutting heads and took the cake back to bare briar. I cleaned up the reaming with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife and removed all the remnants of the cake. I scraped the rim top with the flat edge of the blade at the same time and removed most of the thick lava build up. I sanded the walls of the bowl with a piece of dowel wrapped in 220 grit sandpaper. The walls look very good at this point in the process. I cleaned out the shank, the airway and the deep mortise with alcohol, cotton swabs, hard bristle and soft bristle pipe cleaners. It was a very dirty pipe which just meant that Donna’s Dad had really enjoyed and used this pipe. I cleaned the inside of the aluminum tenon and the airway in the stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners in the same way as I did the shank. It also was very dirty. I scrubbed the exterior of the bowl and shank with a tooth brush and undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap. I scrubbed the lava on the rim top and overflow on the outside of the bowl with the soap. I rinsed  the briar with warm water to remove the grime and debris of the scrubbing. It looked significantly better after the scrubbing. I used a Walnut stain pen to touch up the depths of the rusticated portions of the bowl on the sides, the rim cap and the patch on the side of the shank. I used a dental tool with a thin blade to scrape out the twin rings around the bowl cap. It had a lot of debris in it but looked better when I finished. I cleaned up the inner edge of the rim and the rim top with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper. I removed the darkening as much as possible and smoothed out the top of the cap.I sanded the smooth portions of the bowl and rim with 320-3500 grit sanding pads to remove the marks, scratches and darkening on the rim top. I polished it with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding it with 1200-15000 grit pads. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each sanding pad. The grain really started to rise to the surface as I polished it. I rubbed the bowl and shank down with Before & After Restoration Balm to deep clean the finish on the bowl and shank. The product works to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I worked it in with my fingers to get it into the briar. I used a horsehair shoe brush to work it into the sand blast. I let it sit for 10 minutes then I wiped it off and buffed it with a soft cloth. The briar really began to have a rich shine. I took some photos of the bowl at this point to mark the progress in the restoration. It is a beautiful bowl. I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. The fit of the stem to the shank was off – it was wider in diameter than the end of the shank. I measured and looked and found out it was the wrong stem. I found the other 5 dot stem and checked the fit of the stem to the shank and it was the correct diameter. I will need to clean it up and fit it to the shank.I cleaned out the new/correct stem with alcohol, pipe cleaners and cotton swabs. It took quite a few cleaners to get rid of the tars and oils. It looked much better.I scrubbed the oxidation on the stem with Soft Scrub cleanser and was able to remove a large amount of it. I sanded the area around the button edge and the remaining oxidation with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper. Progress was happening! I sanded the surface of the vulcanite with the 2 inch sanding pads – 320-3500 grit pads. I dry sanded the surface until I have removed all of the oxidation and the stem started to really shine.I refit the aluminum tenon with the new Brigham Rock Maple Distillator. It is a unique and cool smoking experience. I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped the stem down after each sanding pad with Obsidian Oil. I polished the stem with Before & After Pipe Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine. I gave it a coat of Obsidian Pipe Stem Oil. It works to protect the stem from oxidizing. I set it aside to dry. The final steps in my process involve using the buffer. I buffed the bowl and stem with Blue Diamond to polish out the light scratches in the briar and the vulcanite. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax. I have found that I can get a deeper shine if I follow up the wax buff with a buff with a clean buffing pad. It works to raise the shine and then I hand buff with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. It is always fun for me to see what the polished bowl looks like with the polished stem. It really is a nice pipe. The smooth tall bowl sides and the rusticated blaze on the left shank side looks great with the yellow acrylic stem. The Brigham 527 Bent Rhodesian with a vulcanite taper stem feels great in my hand. It is a well balanced pipe. Have a look at it with the photos below. The dimensions are Length: 6 inches, Height: 2 ½ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ½ inches, Chamber diameter: 7/8 of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 2.29 ounces/65 grams. It is a beautiful pipe that I will soon be adding to the rebornpipes store in the Canadian Pipemakers Section. If you would like to add it to your collection let me know. It should be a great smoking pipe.

As always, I encourage your questions and comments as you read the blog. Thanks to each of you who are reading this blog. Remember we are not pipe owners; we are pipe men and women who hold our pipes in trust until they pass on into the trust of those who follow us.

Restoring a Father’s Legacy of 10 Brigham Pipes Gathered throughout his life #2

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by Steve Laug

Early this month I was contacted by Donna to see if I knew anyone interested in purchasing her father’s pipes. She wrote as follows: “I am wondering if you would be interested in my father’s collection of Brighams.” She further spelled out what he had in the collection. He had 1 – 2 dot pipe, 3 – 3 dot pipes, 2 – 4 dot pipes and 4 – 5 dot pipes. There was a total of 10 pipes. I asked for a photo of the pipes and she sent the photo below. I was very interested.We emailed back and forth and the short story is that I paid for the collection and she shipped the pipes to me. On Tuesday after Easter the box arrived and I was happy to be able to see them up close. They were obviously well-loved pipes and in varying degrees of needing work. I wrote her and told I received them and that I was pleased with the lot. I was looking forward to working on them. She aske me to send her photos along the way as I finished the pipes. I will be sending her the links to the blog so she can see the work and the process of bringing them back to a semblance of their original beauty. Thanks Donna for the opportunity to work on your Dad’s pipes.

The second of the pipes I have chosen to work on from the lot was the last one at the bottom of the right column in the photo above. I would call the pipe a Poker/Cherrywood Sitter pipe with an amber acrylic stem. It is stamped on the left side of the shank and reads Brigham in script. On the under of the shank near the flat heel of the bowl it has the shape number 482L. The stamping will help me date the pipe. From the cake in the bowl and the other pipes I could tell her Dad love aromatic tobaccos. This pipe was heavily caked with an overflow of lava on the rim top and on the inner and outer edges of the bowl. The shank end even that had a coating of tar build up. The stem did not sit all the way in the shank so I assumed it was very dirty in the shank. I removed the stem and found that the Hard Rock Maple Distillator was missing from the aluminum tenon. The shank was black, tarry and oily. The stem was dirty and dull with thick oil and tar in the airway from the tenon to the button. There were light tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. The left side of the taper stem bore four brass pins in a triangle format. That would also help with identifying the pipe. I took some photos of the pipe before I started my work on it. I took a photo of the bowl and rim top to show the cake in the bowl. The rim top looked to have a coat of lava overflowing down the crown with some possible damage around the inner edge. I took photos of the top and underside of the stem showing the light tooth chatter on the acrylic stem surface. The airway in the stem is also heavily stained with tars and oils.The stamping is very clear and it reads as noted above. I removed the stem from the shank and took a photo of the parts to show the look of the pipe. I have captured the pattern of the four brass dots on the stem. For the needed background I am including the information from Pipedia on Brigham pipes. It is a great read in terms of the history of the brand (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Pipes). Charles Lemon (Dadspipes) has written book on the history of the brand. This article is a good summary. I have included it below.

Roy Brigham, after serving an apprenticeship under an Austrian pipesmith, started his own pipe repair shop in Toronto, in 1906. By 1918 the business had grown to include five other craftsmen and had developed a reputation across Canada for the high quality of workmanship. After repairing many different brands of pipes over the years, Roy noted certain recurring complaints by pipe smokers, the most common referred to as “tongue bite”. Tongue bite is a burning sensation on the smoker’s tongue, previously thought to be due to the heat of the smoke (i.e. a “hot smoking pipe”).

He soon began manufacturing his own pipes, which were lightweight, yet featured a more rugged construction, strengthening the weak points observed in other pipes. The problem of tongue bite intrigued him, and he decided to make overcoming it a future goal.

About 1938, Roy’s son Herb joined him to assist in the business. The business barely survived the great depression because pipes were considered to be a luxury, not a necessity, and selling pipes was difficult indeed. In approximately 1937 [1], after some experimentation, Roy and Herb discovered that tongue bite was in fact a form of mild chemical burn to the tongue, caused by tars and acids in the smoke. They found that by filtering the smoke, it was possible to retain the flavour of the tobacco and yet remove these impurities and thereby stop the tongue bite.

Just as Thomas Edison had searched far and wide for the perfect material from which to make the first electric light bulb filaments, Roy & Herb began experimenting with many materials, both common and exotic, in the quest for the perfect pipe filter. Results varied wildly. Most of the materials didn’t work at all and some actually imparted their own flavour into the smoke. They eventually found just two materials that were satisfactory in pipes: bamboo and rock maple. As bamboo was obviously not as readily available, rock maple then became the logical choice.

They were able to manufacture a replaceable hollow wooden tube made from rock maple dowelling, which when inserted into a specially made pipe, caused absolutely no restriction to the draw of the pipe, yet extracted many of the impurities which had caused tongue bite. The result was indeed a truly better smoking pipe…

I then turned to a second article by Charles Lemon called, “A Closer Look at the Dots, Dates, and Markings of Brigham Pipes” to be able to pin down the time frame that the pipe was made in and to help interpret the stampings and shape number on the pipe. Here is the link to his article (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Pipes_%E2%80%93_A_Closer_Look_at_Dots,_Dates_and_Markings).

I have dubbed the decades between 1980 and 2000 the Late Canadian Era, a period that saw several changes at Brigham that are of note to the collector. First, the traditional 8-grade pinning system (the famous Brigham “Dots” which denoted the quality of the pipe) was changed to a 7-grade system to simplify pinning (more on this below), and the Norsemen and Valhalla series were merged to form the President Series, which represented the very finest pipes coming out of the Toronto factory. Early pipes from this era (left, below) are stamped with a shape number and “Brigham” over “Canada”; later pipes (late 1980s+, on right below) are stamped simply with a shape number and the Brigham logo.

I read further in the article to the section entitled Revised Dot System 1980. I quote from that below.

Brigham changed the Dot system in 1980, adding a 7 Dot at the top of the line, dropping the names of each series and eliminating the confusing vertical and horizontal 3 Dot configurations. The Norsemen and Valhalla series were combined to form the President series of freehand pipes, which adopted a 3 Dot pattern with a larger dot on the right as shown below. The 7- grade pinning system stayed in place from 1980 to 2001.

With the information from article and the chart above I knew what I was dealing with in terms of the stamping and the age of this pipe. I learned that this Late Canadian Era was made between 1980-2000. The pipe is a Brigham (4-Dot) 482L, a Poker Sitter to my mind. The Canada stamping pins it down to the period between 1990-2001 when the aluminum tenon was replaced.

I wrote to Charles Lemon to see if he could help to narrow down the date a bit more. I also wanted to know about the acrylic stem and the shape. He wrote me back with this answer:

Brigham put out a limited run of System pipes with Acrylic stems in the early 1990s. Available stem colours were yellow, green and chocolate swirl. There is a short paragraph on Page 54 of the book on this limited run, but there’s not a great deal of information available. 

I paused reading the email and turned to Charles’ book, Brigham Pipes, A Century of Canadian Briar, page 54 as noted above and quote:

In the early 1990s a small number of Brigham pipes were made with acrylic stems instead of the traditional rubber stems. These were available in several colours – yellow, green and chocolate swirl. Due to the short production runs, these acrylic-stemmed pipes are quite rare on the estate market.

I went back to the email – Charles further wrote about the shape number.

In the Shape Chart, I’ve identified Shape 82 (b) as a “1/4 Bent Pot Sitter”. The “L” in the shape code refers back to bowl size options available in the mid to late 1960s, where any standard pipe shape could be ordered in S, M, ML, L, XL sizes. I suspect your early 1990s pipe was made using a New Old Stock stummel originally produced some 20 years earlier.

Hope that helps. It’s a lovely pipe! – Charles

I now knew that I was dealing with a pipe made only in the early 1990s in a short production run and was quite rare on the estate market. The shape number 82 was for a bent Pot Sitter. The 4 preceding the 82 referred to the 4 Dot mark of the pipe. What was interesting to me is Charles’ comment that it could have been New Old Stock Stummel produced 20 years earlier.

I started my work on the pipe by reaming the bowl with a PipNet reamer. I used the first and second cutting heads and took the cake back to bare briar. I cleaned up the reaming with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife and removed all the remnants of the cake. I sanded the walls of the bowl with a piece of dowel wrapped in 220 grit sandpaper. The walls look very good at this point in the process. I scrubbed off the surface of the bowl and shank with acetone and cotton pads. The surface was coated with a shiny varnish coat. I wanted it to be gone so that I could see the briar underneath. It looked very good once the varnish coat was gone. I scrubbed the exterior of the bowl and shank with a tooth brush and undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap. I scrubbed the lava on the rim top and overflow on the outside of the bowl with the soap. I rinsed  the briar with warm water to remove the grime and debris of the scrubbing. It looked significantly better after the scrubbing. I cleaned out the shank, the airway and the deep mortise with alcohol, cotton swabs, hard bristle and soft bristle pipe cleaners. It was a very dirty pipe which just meant that Donna’s Dad had really enjoyed and used this pipe. I cleaned the inside of the aluminum tenon and the airway in the stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners in the same way as I did the shank. It also was very dirty. I sanded the smooth portions of the bowl and rim with 320-3500 grit sanding pads to remove the marks, scratches and darkening on the rim top. I polished it with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding it with 1200-15000 grit pads. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each sanding pad. The grain really started to rise to the surface as I polished it. I rubbed the bowl and shank down with Before & After Restoration Balm to deep clean the finish on the bowl and shank. The product works to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I worked it in with my fingers to get it into the briar. I used a horsehair shoe brush to work it into the sand blast. I let it sit for 10 minutes then I wiped it off and buffed it with a soft cloth. The briar really began to have a rich shine. I took some photos of the bowl at this point to mark the progress in the restoration. It is a beautiful bowl. I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. I sanded the surface of the acrylic with the 2 inch sanding pads – 320-3500 grit pads. I dry sanded the surface until I have removed all of the oxidation and the stem started to really shine.I refit the aluminum tenon with the Brigham Rock Maple Distillator. It is a unique and cool smoking experience. I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped the stem down after each sanding pad with Obsidian Oil. I polished the stem with Before & After Pipe Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine. I gave it a coat of Obsidian Pipe Stem Oil. It works to protect the stem from oxidizing. I set it aside to dry. The final steps in my process involve using the buffer. I buffed the bowl and stem with Blue Diamond to polish out the light scratches in the briar and the vulcanite. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax. I have found that I can get a deeper shine if I follow up the wax buff with a buff with a clean buffing pad. It works to raise the shine and then I hand buff with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. It is always fun for me to see what the polished bowl looks like with the polished stem. It really is a nice pipe. The smooth tall bowl sides and the rusticated blaze on the left shank side looks great with the yellow acrylic stem. The Rare Brigham 482L Poker/Sitter with an acrylic stem feels great in my hand. It is a well balanced pipe. Have a look at it with the photos below. The dimensions are Length: 6 inches, Height: 2 ½ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ½ inches, Chamber diameter: 7/8 of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 2.29 ounces/65 grams. It is a beautiful pipe that I will soon be adding to the rebornpipes store in the Canadian Pipemakers Section. If you would like to add it to your collection let me know. It should be a great smoking pipe.

As always, I encourage your questions and comments as you read the blog. Thanks to each of you who are reading this blog. Remember we are not pipe owners; we are pipe men and women who hold our pipes in trust until they pass on into the trust of those who follow us.

Fresh Life for a Peterson’s Meerschaum Bulldog

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by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table is a Peterson Rusticated Meerschaum Bulldog. We picked the pipe up from a seller in Ogden, Utah, USA on 12/12/2024. Probably the fact that it is a meerschaum and that it bore the P stamp on the stem caught our eye. There is no stamping on the shank or anywhere else on the pipe. It is the shape and the P stamp on the stem that tell us that it is a Peterson pipe. It is great looking rusticated pipe that is commonly seen on these meerschaums. The bowl appears to be lightly caked and quite clean. The inner edge and the top show some light lava overflow. And let’s talk about that stem. It is oxidized and calcified which is quite normal for what I see. There are some tooth marks and chatter on the stem surface and button. The P stamp on the top left side of the saddle is deep but has lost the colour. Jeff took some photos of the pipe to show the general condition of the pipe before he started his clean up. Jeff took photos of the rim top and stem to show the general condition of the pipe. The bowl is lightly caked and the rim top and edges have lava overflowing on to them. There are also some spots where the finish is worn off. The stem is oxidized, calcified and has tooth chatter and tooth marks on the top and underside near the button. Jeff took photos of the bowl sides and heel to show the condition of the rusticated finish around this bowl. It is a nice looking pipe. He took a photo of the “P” stamping on the left side of the saddle stem. It is clear and readable but has lost the colour that was originally there. I took some time to remind myself of the provenance of these Peterson’s Dublin Meerschaum pipes. I am pretty sure the pipe was made by the Laxey Pipe Ltd. on the Isle of Man for Peterson’s in Ireland (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Laxey_Pipes_Ltd). I quote from the Pipedia article in full:

Laxey Pipe Ltd. resided in a historical 19th century four-storey Man stone building at The Quay, Old Laxey, Isle of Man, which thankfully has been preserved. The company specialized in the production of Meerschaum Pipes using the Meerschaum mined by the Tanganyika Meerschaum Corporation in the Amboseli basin in Tanganyika (since 1964 part of the United Republic of Tanzania). Please note: you may often find names like “Manx Pipes Ltd.”, “Man Pipe Co.” and others more, but there is no indication of another Isle of Man pipe producer other than Laxey Pipe Ltd. at any time!

Laxey Pipe Ltd. marketed own brands like “Manxpipe”, “Manxman”, “Manxland” e.c. Names like “John Bull”, “White Knight” (unwaxed), “Domino” (black, or lined) indicated some shapes / colours of Laxey’s own series. The stems either showed the astronomical sign for “male” or “man” (circle + arrow), or the crest of the Isle of Man, the 3-legged X in a circle. Manxpipes and Laxey’s other brands were available through pipe retailers in general, but also were sold (mainly) to tourists through their own shop in Laxey.

Furthermore Laxey Pipe Ltd. manufactured the meer bowls for Peterson, Barling, Nørding and others from the later 1960’s until 2001. Man Pipe e.g. was a brand distributed by Comoy’s. The bowls usually showed no nomenclature indicating the orderer. “Genuine Block Meerschaum” was engraved frequently. Often, just the stems were different, while bowls were the same.

Supply of meer from East Africa run out (Kenya / Tanzania exhausted, Somalia inaccessible), and thus the last Laxey meers were supplied to trade in May, 2001. Laxey Pipe Ltd. tried to survive continuing with briar pipes – mainly in the Danish style -, but to no success. It closed down business in July, 2002.

I know that the pipe was made on the Isle of Man by Laxey Pipe Ltd. out of African Meerschaum. It was made for export for Peterson’s of Dublin. The flumed top on the bowl and the rustication around the bowl and shank make me think that it is a 1970s era pipe. That was as much as I could figure out.

Jeff had done a great job cleaning up the pipe as usual. He reamed the pipe with a PipNet reamer and cut back the cake back to the bare meerschaum. He cleaned up the walls with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He scrubbed the interior of the bowl and shank with pipe cleaners, shank brushes, cotton swabs and alcohol to remove the tars and oils. He scrubbed the exterior of the pipe with Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush to remove the grime from the finish. He worked on the rim top lava and darkening with the soap and tooth brush. He scrubbed the inside of the stem with alcohol and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the exterior with Soft Scrub and then soaked it in Briarville’s Pipe Stem Deoxidizer. He washed it off with warm water to remove the Deoxidizer. The pipe looked very good when it arrived. I took close up photos of the rim top and the stem surface. I wanted to show how well it had cleaned up. The rim top and edges looked very good. There was still some debris in the rustication on the rim top. I took photos of the stem to show the condition it was in. There was light chatter on both sides ahead of the button.I took a photo of the stamping on side of the stem. You can see that it is stamped as noted above and is clear and readable. I took the pipe apart and took a photo of the pipe. It is a good looking pipe with great grain.I used a brass bristle wire brush to cleanup the debris in the rustication on the rim top. I knocked out the debris with the brush and the top looked much better and the rustication showed clearly.I worked some Clapham’s Beeswax/Carnauba wax into the finish of the bowl. I used a horsehair show brush to work it into the rusticated finish. I set it aside to allow the wax to dry. I buffed the pipe with a soft cotton cloth to raise the shine on the meerschaum. I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. I “painted” the stem with the flame of a lighter to try and lift the tooth marks. I was able to lift some of them. I filled in the remaining tooth marks in the stem surface with black CA glue. I set the stem aside to let the repairs cure. Once the glue cured I used a small file to flatten the repairs on the surface of the stem. I used a piece of 220 grit sandpaper to blend them into the surrounding vulcanite. I sanded the stem with 320-3500 grit sanding pads to remove the tooth marks and chatter against the button edge and sand the logo. It worked well on the tooth marks but did little on the logo on the stem top.I touched up the P stamp on the saddle side with white acrylic fingernail polish. I worked it into the stamp with a tooth pick. Once it cured I scraped off the excess then ran some 1500 grit micromesh over the surface. It looked very good.I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding 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. I put the stem back on the Rusticated Peterson’s Block Meerschaum Bulldog and took it to the buffer. I buffed the stem with Blue Diamond to polish the vulcanite. Blue Diamond does a great job on the smaller scratches that remain on the surface. I gave the bowl multiple coats of Clapham Wax and the stem several coats of carnauba wax and buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. I hand buffed it with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. I am amazed at how well it turned out. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. This is a beautiful Peterson’s Genuine Meerschaum Bulldog with a rusticated finish and the vulcanite saddle stem has a great look. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 ½ inches, Height: 1 ½ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 1.31 ounces/37 grams. This is another pipe that I will be putting on the rebornpipes online store in the Irish Pipemakers Section shortly, if you are interested in adding it to your collection. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me on this beauty!

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 New Life into Dunhill Shell Briar RF F/T Pot

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by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table is one that we picked up from our contact in Copenhagen, Denmark on 08/09/2024. The Shell Briar Sandblast finish on this English made Pot shaped pipe and the white spot on the topside of the taper vulcanite stem are what caught our eye. It is stamped on the heel of the bowl and shank and reads RF followed by F/T followed by Dunhill [over] Shell Briar. That is followed by Made in [over] England with an underlined superscript 11 after the D. A circle 4 S is at the end of the stamping. It has a classic Shell Briar mixed brown/oxblood/black stain on the sandblast finish that is a stark contrast to the black vulcanite taper stem. It has a lot of grime and dirt in the sandblast finish on the bowl and straight shank Pot. The bowl was heavily caked around the top third of the bowl and the inner edge and the top were covered with a light lava coat in the sandblast. The vulcanite stem was heavily oxidized and had tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. The white spot logo on the topside of the taper stem looks to be in good condition. Jeff took some photos of the pipe to show the general condition of the pipe before he started his clean up. He took some photos of the rim top and bowl from various angles to give me a clear picture of the condition of the rim top and bowl. The inside of the bowl is heavily caked around the top 1/3 of the bowl and there was lava on the inner edge and in the sandblast on the rim top. He included photos that show the top and underside of the stem. It is as described above. Jeff took some photos of the sides and heel of the bowl to show the condition of the rusticated finish on the pipe. The photos showed some great grain around the bowl and shank even with the grime in the finish. It is a great looking piece of briar. He took a photo of the stamping on the heel of the bowl and the underside of the shank. It was clear and readable as noted above. I wanted to unpack the Dunhill stamping on the shank and work to understand each element of the stamp. I generally use the Pipephil site to gather as much initial information as possible (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/shell-briar1.html). The stamping is interpreted as follows: The shape is defined as RF is the shape reference for a taper stem Pot. The F/T is the designation for a Fish Tail stem. The Shell Briar stamp refers to the finish. The underlined, superscript number 11 following the D of England would give the date the pipe. The circle 4S tells me that the pipe is a group 4 sized pipe and the S is for the Shell finish. The photo below shows a pipe with similar stamping to the one I am working on. It is the same date stamp so I think the one I have is also a 1971 pipe. I will verity that.Pipephil also has some helpful dating keys on the site that are basically flow charts that you can walk through to date your pipe (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/cledat-en1.html). I turned to Part 1 of the Dating Key and followed the chart. This pipe has 16 following the D in England. There was no patent number so that took me to the section on the chart below (column one) which instructed me that the pipe could be dated as being made “posterior to 1954”.I followed the link under “Your pipe is posterior to 1954. Narrow down your dating”. That took me to Page 2 of the dating key (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/cledat-en1a.html). The second column – suffix [1…4] or [11…39] led me to the next section. Since the 11 after the D in England the date of the pipe spelled as 1960 + 11 making the date 1971.I then turned to Pipedia’s section on Dunhill Shell Briar to get a bit of background on the Dunhill finishes (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill#Root_Briar). I quote:

Shell

A deep craggy sandblast with a black stain finish (usually made using Algerian briar) – the color of the stain used has varied over the years. Although there is some doubt as to them being the first to sandblast pipes, Dunhill’s Shell pipes, and the sandblasting techniques developed to create them are considered one of Dunhill’s greatest and most lasting contributions to the art of pipe making.

The documented history of Dunhill’s inception of the Shell is largely limited to patent applications — there are no catalog pages or advertisements promoting blasted pipes at the time. The preliminary work on the English patent (No. 1484/17) was submitted on October 13, 1917. The patent submission was completed half a year later, on April 12, 1918, followed by the granting of the English patent on October 14, 1918. This was less than a month before the end of The Great War on November 11th.

In 1986 Dunhill released a line of premium Shell finish pipes – “RING GRAIN”. These are high-quality straight grain pipes which are sandblasted. Initially only Ring Grain, but now in two different finishes. In 1995 the “Shilling” was introduced with Cumberland finish – it is an extremely rare series. These pipes exhibit a deeper blast characteristic of that of the 1930’s – mid-1960’s (and the limited ‘deep blast’ pipes of the early 1980s) and show a fine graining pattern. These are considered the best new Dunhills by many enthusiasts today and are very rare. The finish is sometimes described as tasting like vanilla at first, with the taste becoming more normal or good as the pipe breaks in.

I turned to work on the pipe itself. Jeff had done an amazing cleanup of the pipe. He reamed the cake with a PipNet reamer and cleaned up that with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He scrubbed the internals of the bowl and stem with alcohol, cotton swabs, pipe cleaners and shank brushes. He scrubbed the externals with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap and rinsed the bowl off with running water. His scrubbing removed the varnish on the bowl with just a few spots remaining. He soaked the stem in Briarville’s Pipe stem Deoxidizer and once it had soaked rinsed it off with warm water to remove the residual solution. He dried it off and rubbed it down to remove any oxidation that was still on the stem. The soak did not penetrate the varnish on the stem at all but it certainly looked better. Other than the shiny spots in the finish where the varnish remained, the pipe looked very good when I received it. You can also see the sunken state of the white spot on the stem surface. I took close up photos of the bowl, rim top and stem to show how clean the pipe was. The bowl was clean and the rim top and the inner edge look good. The stem was clean and the tooth marks and chatter though not visible in the photos are still present.I took a photo of the stamping on the underside of the shank. It is very clear and readable and read as noted above. I also removed the stem from the shank and took photos of the pipe to show the look of the parts.The exterior of the bowl was beautiful. I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the briar with my finger tips and a shoe brush. I let it sit on the bowl for 10 minutes and then buffed it off with a paper towel and soft cloth. The product is a great addition to the restoration work. It enlivens, enriches and protects the briar while giving it a deep glow. It is a product I use on every pipe I restore. I set the bowl aside and turned to the stem. I sanded the it with 320-3500 grit sanding pads and wiped the stem down after each pad with some Obsidian Oil on a cloth. The shine is coming back beautifully.I polished it with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads and wiping the surface down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. It is really shining. I polished it further with Before & After Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine. I gave it another coat of Obsidian Oil to finish this step. This 1971 Dunhill Shell Briar RF F/T Pot with a vulcanite taper stem has a beautiful, unique Dunhill Sandblast finish that highlights the grain. The Shell Briar mixed brown finish highlights some great grain around the bowl and shank. The polished vulcanite 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 Dunhill Shell Briar RF F/T Pot is quite nice and feels great in the hand. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 inches, Height: 1 ½ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ½ inches, Chamber diameter: 7/8 of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 1.31ounces/37 grams. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked over another beautiful pipe. This one will be going on the rebornpipes store in the British Pipe Makers Section. Thanks for your time.

Restoring a beautiful Sasieni 4 Dot Ruff Root Light 5 Diamond Shank Bent Billiard

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by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table is one that we picked up in the lot from an eBay seller in Harrison Township, Michigan, USA on 08/22/2024. The sandblast finish on this English made pipe and the four blue dots on the side of the saddle stem are what caught our eye. It is stamped on the left underside of the diamond shank and reads Sasieni 4 Dot [over] Ruff Root Light [over] Made in London [over] England. That is followed by the shape number 5 or possibly the size number near the stem/shank joint. It has a classic Reddish Brown stain on the sandblast finish that is a stark contrast to the black vulcanite saddle stem. It has a deep sandblast finish on a bent Billiard. The bowl was heavily caked and the inner edge and the top were covered with a thick lava coat in the blast. The stem was oxidized, calcified and had tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. The Sasieni 4 Dot four blue dots logo on the left side of the saddle stem looks to be in good condition. Jeff took some photos of the pipe to show the general condition of the pipe before he started his clean up. He took some photos of the rim top and bowl from various angles to give me a clear picture of the condition of the rim top and bowl. The inside of the bowl is heavily caked with lava on the inner edge and in the sandblast on the rim top. He included photos that show the top and underside of the stem. It is as described above. Jeff took some photos of the sides and heel of the bowl to show the condition of the sandblast finish on the pipe. The photos showed some great grain around the bowl and shank even with the grime in the finish. It is a great looking piece of briar. He took a photo of the stamping on the left underside of the diamond shank. It was clear and readable as noted above. He also photographed the 4 dot pattern on the side of the stem.I decided to do some work on the stamping of this pipe to get an idea of the time period it was carved. I turned first to Pipephil’s site to see what I could learn (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-sasieni.html). I found a pipe that was shaped and stamped similarly to the one I am working on. It is stamped on the underside of the shank and reads like the first two lines on the one in the screen capture photo below. Mine is stamped the same way Sasieni in upper case letters without the flourish. It is followed by 4 DOT [over] Ruff Root Light [over] 5. I included the side bar notes below the picture. From that I knew that the pipe was made during Post-transition Period 1986-today.Post transition, 1986 – today, “4 dot”. Ruff Root Dark: Name for a sandblasted finish. Notice the 4DOT stamping replacing the FOUR DOT from 1986.

I then turned to Pipedia for more detailed information (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Sasieni). I quote a section of that article below. It refers to the Patent Number that is on the pipe I have on the table. The underlined portion below is particular pertinent to this pipe.

To begin with, there are three main elements to dating the Sasieni pipe, the patent number, the style of the name “Sasieni” as it appears on the shank, and the Dots themselves. Naturally, there are exceptions to these rules (this hobby would be boring without them), but for the most part these guidelines apply better than 95% of the time. All Sasieni One, Four, and Eight Dot pipes made before W.W.II and destined for the U. S. market carried a patent number on the shank which usually started with the numbers “15″, with 150221/20 and 1513428 being representative of the group. Also, the name “Sasieni” was stamped on the shank in a very florid manner, with the tail of the last “i” sweeping underneath the name forming a shape which has been compared to a fish by more than one collector. This script was discontinued by Alfred almost immediately after he took over the company, so this alone tells you your pipe is pre W.W.II. Underneath in block lettering are the words “London Made”, with the patent number making the third line…

…The nomenclature changed again in 1986, with the sale of the company to the Post-Transition firm. The three line nomenclature was changed to two lines, with the first reading “Sasieni 4 Dot” and the second identifying the finish, e.g. Natural, Walnut, or Ruff Root. Note how 4 Dot is spelled, using an Arabic numeral 4, as opposed to spelling out the word “four”. This is the easiest way to spot a Post-Transition Sasieni, as the new company has used both script and block lettering to spell the word “Sasieni” on the shank.

The pipe I have is one that does not have a flourished “i” as that was discontinued by Alfred so that confirms that the pipe was made Post-transition, 1986 forward. The stamping shows the Sasieni name and the 4 Dot stamp on one line. Underneath it bears the finish Ruff Root Light stamp. With all that information I knew that my pipe was from the period after the transition (Post Transition) so it was a newer one.

Since Jeff always follows the same pattern of work in his cleanup we do not include photos but rather just a simple summary. Jeff reamed the bowl with a PipNet pipe reamer and followed up with a Savinelli Fitsall pipe knife to remove the cake. He scrubbed out the mortise and the airway in the shank and the stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the exterior of the bowl, rim, shank and stem with a tooth brush and Murphy’s Oil Soap to remove the oils and tars on the rim and the grime on the finish of the bowl. He rinsed it under running water. He dried it off with a soft cloth. He was able to remove the lava build up on the rim top and you could see the damages to the top and edges of the rim. I think this pipe may well been before we worked with Mark Hoover’s Before & After Deoxidizer so he cleaned the internals and externals. The stem was clean but lightly oxidized. I took photos of what the pipe looked like when I brought to my worktable. I took close up photos of the bowl, rim top and stem to show how clean the pipe was. The bowl was clean and the rim top and the inner edge look beautiful. The stem was clean and the tooth marks on the topside are visible. The chatter is light and hardly visible.I took a photo of the stamping on the underside of the left diamond shank. It is very clear and readable and read as noted above. I also removed the stem from the shank and took photos of the pipe to show the look of the parts.The exterior of the bowl looked amazing. I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the briar with my finger tips and a shoe brush. I let it sit on the bowl for 10 minutes and then buffed it off with a paper towel and soft cloth. The product is a great addition to the restoration work. It enlivens, enriches and protects the briar while giving it a deep glow. It is a product I use on every pipe I restore. I set the bowl aside and turned to the stem. I sanded the it with 320-3500 grit sanding pads and wiped the stem down after each pad with some Obsidian Oil on a cloth. The shine is coming back beautifully.I polished it with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads and wiping the surface down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. It is really shining. I polished it further with Before & After Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine. I gave it another coat of Obsidian Oil to finish this step. This Sasieni 4 Dot Ruff Root Light 5 Diamond Shank Bent Billiard with a vulcanite saddle stem is a great looking pipe now that it has been restored. The beautifully grained sandblast finish really works well with the shape and the polished finish is stunning. I put the stem back on the bowl and carefully buffed the bowl and the stem with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel. I gave the bowl and 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. I wiped down the Sterling Silver band with a jeweller’s cloth to protect and polish it. The finished Sasieni 4 Dot Ruff Root Bent Billiard 5 fits nicely in the hand and feels great. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 ½ inches, Height: 2 inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ½ inches, Chamber diameter: 7/8 of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 50 grams /1.76 ounces. I will be putting it on the rebornpipes store in the British Pipe Makers Section shortly. Let me know via email or a message if you are interested in adding this pipe 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.

Restoring a Genuine Thompson Block Meerschaum Gt. Britain Rusticated Billiard

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by Steve Laug

The next pipe I have chosen is a medium sized rusticated African Meerschaum Billiard. The stem is a vulcanite taper. We purchased it from an Antique Store on 08/24/2024 in Wheeler, Oregon, USA. The rugged rustication on the meerschaum points me to an Isle of Man pipe probably made by Laxey Pipes Ltd. It was stamped left side of the shank and read Thompson. On the underside it is stamped Genuine Block [over] Meerschaum. After the “m” at the end of Meerschaum there is an arched Gt. Britain. The pipe was heavily smoked. The bowl was moderately caked there was lava on the rusticated rim top and inner edge. The condition of the rim and top were slightly worn and the fluming around the top edge are faded in places. The black vulcanite stem was in good condition other than being dirty and having light tooth marks and chatter on both sides of the stem ahead of the button. The fit against the shank end was snug and there was no damage to the shank end. There was no stamping or logo on the stem itself though it is certainly the original. Jeff took photos of the pipe before his cleanup work. They tell the story and give a glimpse of the pipe. Jeff took close up photos of the bowl and rim to capture the condition of the pipe before he started his cleanup work. The cake in the bowl and the lava on the edges and rim top are visible. There are also some chips on the top and inner edge where the white was visible. He also took photos to show the condition of the stem surface. There is oxidation, calcification and light tooth marks and chatter on both sides near the button and wear on the button surface and edges. He also took a photo of the bottom of the bowl and shank to show the condition of the finish around the top edge and rim top. The photo shows the general condition of the bowl and wear on the finish. It is very dirty but still an interesting pipe. He took photos of the stamping on the sides of the shank. They are clear and readable as noted above.I turned to the bog and looked for a blog that I remembered Dal Stanton had written on a Thompson Meerschaum pipe. Here is the link (https://thepipesteward.com/2024/03/23/diving-into-the-provenance-of-a-thompson-genuine-block-meerschaum-gt-britain-brandy/). I quote his research below:

My research on the origins of the Thompson Block Meerschaum name can be summarized like this: It was made with African Meerschaum from the Tanganyika Meerschaum Corporartion (Tanganyika Meerschaum Corporation – Pipedia) and produced by Laxey Pipe Ltd. on the Isle of Man.  This conclusion was deduced from comments made about Thompson from various pipe forum threads.  Here is one example from Pipesmagazine.com (2012) among several that I found that demonstrates what I have found generally:

@tschiraldi – Thanks! It’s my understanding that the Thompson Meerschaum pipes were made by the Manx Meerschaum Company on the Isle of Mann (Great Britain). Back story is that my 3x Great Grandfather was Sir Hall Caine who was a famous author known as the Manx Man and lived on the Isle of Mann. I thought it would be cool to own a pipe made by the Manx Meerschaum Company which was made on the Isle of Mann. Just thought it was interesting.

“It’s my understanding…” is the key idea.  I found several comments with the assumption that Thompson Block Meerschaum pipes were produced by ‘Manx’ or ‘Laxey’ – the same producer.  When doing the research on James’ first commission, I discovered that the Laxey Co. produced the Peterson’s Meerschaum.  Here is the Pipedia information on Laxey Pipes Ltd.:

Laxey Pipes Ltd. resided in a historical 19th century four-storey Man stone building at The Quay, Old Laxey, Isle of Man, which thankfully has been preserved.

The company specialized in the production of meerschaum pipes using the Meerschaum mined by the Tanganyika Meerschaum Corporation in the Amboseli basin in Tanganyika (since 1964 part of the United Republic of Tanzania).

Please note: you may often find names like “Manx Pipes Ltd.”, “Man Pipe Co.” and others more, but there is no indication of another Isle of Man pipe producer other than Laxey Pipe Ltd. at any time!

Laxey Pipes Ltd. marketed their own brands like “Manxpipe”, “Manxman”, “Manxland” e.c. Names like “John Bull”, “White Knight” (unwaxed), “Domino” (black, or lined) indicated some shapes / colours of Laxey’s own series. The stems either showed the astronomical sign for “male” or “man” (circle + arrow), or the crest of the Isle of Man, the 3-legged X in a circle. Manxpipes and Laxey’s other brands were available through pipe retailers in general, but also were sold (mainly) to tourists through their own shop in Laxey.

Furthermore Laxey Pipes Ltd. manufactured the meer bowls for Peterson, Barling, Nørding and others from the later 1960’s until 2001. Man Pipe e.g. was a brand distributed by Comoy’s. The bowls usually showed no nomenclature indicating the orderer. “Genuine Block Meerschaum” was engraved frequently. Often, just the stems were different, while bowls were the same.

Supply of meerschaum from East Africa ran out (Kenya / Tanzania exhausted, Somalia inaccessible), and thus the last Laxey meers were supplied to trade in May, 2001. Laxey Pipes Ltd. tried to survive continuing with briar pipes – mainly in the Danish style -, but to no success. It closed down business in July 2002.

In this article from Pipedia, there is no direct mention of Thompson Block Meerschaum however, it was left open that there were other brands produced from the 1960s until 2001 beyond those mentioned – Peterson, Barling, and Nording.

I tend to agree with the sentiments of the Thompson Block Meerschaum pipes being produced by Laxey. Why? First, with the COM being ‘GT. Britain’ leaves few options (if any) of a Meer block being produced other than on the Isle of Man.  Secondly, the Thompson on the worktable resembles other products of Laxey with the smokestack coloring and the usual stamping: “Genuine Block Meerschaum”.  Here are examples of Laxey pipes including our Thompson.The last characteristic that promotes the Isle of Man provenance is that the Thompson is made with African Meerschaum. Tanganyika Meerschaum that was used by the Laxey production is described as tougher, less porous, and cheaper than Meerschaum mined in Turkey (Tanganyika Meerschaum Corporation – Pipedia). The denser characteristics of the Thompson on the worktable I believe fits the general characteristics of African Meerschaum. Even though I can find no direct link with Laxey and Thompson, I believe it is a safe assumption that Thompson was produced by the Laxey Company on the Isle of Man.  If this is to be accepted, the dating of the Thompson would be no later than 2001 when Meerschaum ran its course from the mines of Tanganyika.

In terms of the pipe that I am working on I concur with Dal’s conclusions on the Thompson pipe he restored. This one is also a Laxey Made pipe using the African Meerschaum. The rusticated finish is precisely like some of the Laxey Peterson’s Meerschaums that I have worked on. It has a lot of promise to it.

Now it is time to work on the pipe itself. Jeff reamed the bowl with a PipNet pipe reamer and followed up with a Savinelli Fitsall pipe knife to remove the cake. He scrubbed out the mortise and the airway in the shank and the stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the exterior of the bowl, rim, shank and stem with a tooth brush and undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap to remove the oils, tars and lava on the rim and the grime on the finish of the bowl. He rinsed it under running water. He dried it off with a soft cloth. He was able to remove the lava build up on the rim top and the flat surface of the rim looked better. The inner edge of the rim and the outer edge looked much better. He soaked the stem in Before & After Deoxidizer and rinsed it with hot water. I took photos of the pipe to show its condition before I started my work on it. I took close up photos of the rim top and the stem surface. I wanted to show how well it had cleaned up. The rim top and edges looked very good. Somehow in the cleanup process the black stain on the fluming of the bowl filled in many of the spots on the rim top and edges that were faded and missing stain. I took photos of the stem to show the condition it was in. There was light chatter on both sides ahead of the button.I took photos of the stamping on the sides of the shank. You can see that it is stamped as noted above and is clear and readable. I took the pipe apart and took a photo of the pipe. It is a good looking pipe with great grain. The fit of the stem on the shank was perfect though loose as the tenon was not snug in the mortise. The look of the pipe at this point was a bit dull though clean to me. I decided to try a thin brass band on the shank to see what that would do to the look. Sometimes a band is not for restoration or repair but merely for adding a bit of bling to an otherwise dull pipe.I liked the look of the band on the shank as shown in the photo above but decided to get a few more opinions about the look. Everyone I asked like the look of the band on the shank. I decided to glue the band on the shank end. I used some white all purpose glue and applied it to the inside of the band and then pressed onto the shank. I set it aside and let the glue cure. I used a black stain pen to touch up the light spots on the rim top and the edges of the bowl – both inside and outside edges. Once the stain had set in the finish the rim top and edges looked very good. I worked some Clapham’s Beeswax/Carnauba wax into the finish of the bowl. I used a horsehair show brush to work it into the rusticated finish. I set it aside to allow the wax to dry. I buffed the pipe with a soft cotton cloth to raise the shine on the meerschaum. I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. I filled in the gap of the replacement tenon in the stem with black CA glue. I also gave the surface of the tenon a coat of the glue to build it up for a snug fit in the shank. Once the glue cured I used a piece of 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the joint and the surface of the tenon. Once finished the stem fit snugly in the shank.I sanded the stem with 320-3500 grit sanding pads to remove the tooth marks and chatter against the button edge and sand the logo. It worked well on the tooth marks but did little on the logo on the stem top.I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding 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. I put the stem back on the Rusticated Thompson Genuine Block Meerschaum Gt. Britain Billiard and took it to the buffer. I buffed the stem with Blue Diamond to polish the vulcanite. Blue Diamond does a great job on the smaller scratches that remain on the surface. I gave the bowl multiple coats of Clapham Wax and the stem several coats of carnauba wax and buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. I hand buffed it with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. I am amazed at how well it turned out. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. This is a beautiful Thompson Genuine Meerschaum Billiard with a smooth finish and the vulcanite taper stem has a great look. 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 1.83 ounces/52 grams. This is another pipe that I will be putting on the rebornpipes online store in the Meerschaum and Ceramic Pipes Section shortly, if you are interested in adding it to your collection. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me on this beauty!

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.