flaming a bowl | rebornpipes

Blog by Steve Laug

I finished refurbishing this old timer. I love the looks of it and wanted to share it with you all. It is a bit of a mystery in that it has no stamping on the bowl. The only marking is a hallmark that dates it to 1909 and the letters stamped in the silver of the band AD. The pipe is a cased little thing – just 4 inches long. The stem has a bone tenon but a slotted button instead of the orific hole on most pipes of that era. The ivory band is part of the stem and it inserts into the metal band. The bowl is stained an oxblood red. I reamed and cleaned bowl and shank. I cleaned the threads and the inside of the stem with a shank brush, bristle pipe cleaners and fluffy cleaners. The silver band was polished with tarnish cleaner and a silver cloth. The stem was sanded to remove chatter and then I used Micromesh pads 1500,1800, 2400,3200 4000 and buffed with Tripoli and White Diamond. I rubbed down the case with some leather renewer and it definitely looks better.

The book, Who Made that Pipe attributes the AD stamping to Alfred Dunhill. The Silver Hallmarks site dates it as Birmingham Silver 1909 and the Makers Marks identify the work as being done by Arthur Downing Ltd. That sounds correct to me. The final attachment photo is the clip from the Hallmarks Site. So the mystery remains – is it a Dunhill or is it a nice older pipe banded by Arthur Downing Ltd? Who knows but it smokes great.

Here are the pictures of the pipe before I worked on it

Here are some pictures of the finished pipe.

And here is a picture of the logo on the silver band as found on the British Hallmarks site. It matches the stamping on the silver band exactly.

I just finished this beauty – a GBD International. It is a beautiful little pipe. The shape #9456 says it is a bent apple – I suppose that is so. I did some work on what they originally looked like. They had a plateau (Faux?? not sure) top that was stained black and the bowl was a medium warm brown.

This one was pretty well stained with dirt and grit. The finish was blown and the bowl was caked and dirty. The stem was brown and it was a pretty gross mess. It was one I was going to put off but today I decided to work on it. I am glad I did as it was actually quite fun to work on.

I cleaned the stem as usual. It was tough and still shows some oxidation under the flash of the camera. I will do a bit more in brighter light. But it looks good to the natural eye. The bowl was reamed and cleaned and put in the alcohol bath. I removed any of the bits of left over stain left. Then I used a pipe cleaner and stained the plateau black. Once I did that I had the notion to stain the whole pipe black as well. I then wiped off the stain on the bowl and washed it with a damp alcohol rag to get it to the tone of brown I was looking for. I am really pleased with the stain and how it came out. I love the contrasts of the brown undertones and the black overstain. The wipe and then sanding with micromesh really worked to highlight the birdseye and grain in it.

Thanks for looking.