I had this story I had written sitting on the hard drive. I reworked it quite a bit the last two evenings and thought I would post it. In it I try to capture the old stories that I find in the estate pipes I seek to bring back to life. Thanks for reading it.

Awhile ago I was working on cleaning up an old estate pipe. I had purchased this old timer on eBay and when I came home from work one afternoon I found it had arrived in the mail. When I opened the box I could not believe my eyes. The pictures the seller posted on eBay did not begin to capture the sorry state of this poor pipe. It was a disaster – the bowl was caked to the point of not holding any more tobacco. I could barely fit a pencil in what remained of the tobacco chamber. The cake that filled the bowl was not the typical hard carbon but was crumbling and very soft. The stem would not fit all the way into the shank as both it and the inside of the shank were covered with tar and a white lime crust. The airflow on this poor old timer certainly must have been miniscule, but there was no way I was going to put this thing in my mouth to even blow on it. I found that once I removed the stem that it had the weirdest stinger apparatus I have ever seen that would have constricted the airflow even more. It was short, thick metal and absolutely crammed full of tars and unidentifiable tan chunks. I know, the word “chunks” does not help understand what I am talking about but I don’t know how else to describe the brown stuff that was thick and packed all over this stinger. The metal of the stinger was rough and appeared to be pitted or at least it had craters and crevices all over the sides and top of it. It was in truly sad shape. It certainly must have been a beautiful pipe when all this started. It was that hope of hidden beauty beneath the grime that drew me to this pipe and caused me to want to take a risk on cleaning and restoring it. On top of that was also the challenge of restoring what looked to be a hopeless cause.

I carefully wiped the outside of the bowl with a damp rag to get some of the surface grime off. I wanted to see what the grain looked like underneath the grit. I carefully separated the stem from the shank and removed the stinger for a soak. I then used several reamers that I have to ream both the bowl and shank of the pipe. All of this was preliminary to the actual cleaning work. I wanted to be able to more knowledgeably assess the condition of the pipe under the years of grime. What a lot of carbon dust lay on the paper that I put on my work table. The grain did not look too bad. There was some interesting curly birdseye on one side and flame grain on the back and front of the bowl. A twisting grain flowed across both the bottom of the pipe and the shank. I turned the pipe over in my hands to inspect it for cracks. I have found that there are often cracks in pipes that have been smoked this hard. Surprisingly, there were none in this bowl at all. But this pipe had been smoked right through the bottom of the bowl – yes burned out. That would not surprise you if you had seen the condition of the pipe. But what made it surprising to me was that the bottom of the bowl had been plugged and repaired with a well worked briar plug. It had darkened but I could still see that it fit very snugly and carefully and showed some thoughtful work at the hands of a good repairman. All this caused me to reassess what I had originally concluded about the pipe and the piper who used to smoke it.

A pipe, that at first glance, appeared to have been “abused” this much, must have been ignored and not cared for by its owner. But I am not convinced of that verdict – in fact I was beginning to conclude just the opposite – it must have been a well loved and favourite pipe. The fact that it had obviously been smoked to the same point before in its life and then repaired with a well done plug and then smoked to the same point of cake again says a lot about what kind of pipe it must be and what kind of smoke it must have delivered to it owner. On the one hand, the original owner did not take care of his pipe in terms of daily maintenance and cleaning. I don’t think it had ever seen a pipe cleaner in all of its years. But on the other hand, he cared enough to take the time to have a well done plug put in the bottom of the bowl to fix the burn out and then smoked it again to this point a second or maybe a third or fourth time. That is the contradiction that exists when I look at a pipe like this. There is more to the story than initially meets the eye.

Only when it is stripped down and cleaned do I get a bit more of the story underneath all the surface grime. I think that the old fellow who must have owned this pipe would have been interesting to spend time with having a talk. I am certainly making an educated guess but I believe that this was a pipe that belonged to an old timer. By the looks of it, I would say it would have been disposed of with his other non-sellable or unwanted estate items. The fact is that if that was not true it would still be in his mouth. I would guess that he was a one pipe guy who refused to give up on an old friend and kept repairing and smoking his old buddy. Each problem that came up was a puzzle to be addressed and repaired before the pipe was returned to its smoking regimen. There is a silver band on the pipe that probably is original and matches the shape of other pipes like this one that I found on the web, but it is also engraved with what appeared to be initials – a monogram that possibly identified it as his. The band had turned around on the shank several times and had been obviously re-glued several times to keep it with the pipe. It was a not only a mark of ownership but of pride. It made me wonder if he had it engraved himself of if one of his children might have had it done as part of a very personal gift for “dad”. In the bottom of the bowl there remained a bit of old and very dry tobacco. The bowl had been smoked to that point and left. There is no way of knowing what the tobacco was as it was pretty well destroyed. But it was there and was crumbling with the cake in the bowl. It gave me pause to wonder what happened to the guy that made him stop at that point of the bowl and lay his pipe down.

As I moved to do the first stage of cleaning the stem I was amazed to see is that the stem was actually pristine under the grime. There were no tooth marks or bites on it. There was no sign of the kind of abuse that I have come to expect in this kind of pipe. Sure, the button was clogged and airway was almost solid with tars but there are no bite marks at all on the stem. There are no scratches and no problems that a good buffing and cleaning would not take away. That too tells me something of the old pipesmoker. He was not a clencher. He did not chomp on his bit. It was the original bit and it was in good shape under the grime. He was a man who held his pipe in his hand while he enjoyed the process of sipping the smoke. He was obviously one who was not to be hurried in his process and did not want to be bothered by anything that stopped the enjoyment of his pipe. I appreciate the care that he took to not bite the stem after having repaired many stems that have been marked by the fangs of the owner.

The cleanup was finished and the bowl was refinished and re-stained with a cherry stain to match the original colour of the pipe when it was made. The silver was polished and the stem was polished to a pristine black. The bowl was coated with a charcoal based coating to give it a bit of protection as I work to rebuild a hard cake in the bowl. I loaded a bowl of my favourite Virginia/Perique blend for the inaugural smoke. I chose a quiet spot to relax while I put the fire to the tobacco and sipped the smoke. The flame jumped to the tobacco and the smoke began to curl around the lip of the bowl and out the edges of my mouth as I puffed. Ahhh, now I had joined the ongoing story of this pipe to my own history. It smoked very well and delivered a cool flavourful smoke to the bottom of the bowl… I think next bowl I will remove that odd old stinger and see what I get from it. What a great pipe. I think I had begun to understand the charms of this old pipe. I tip my “new” pipe in quiet thanks to the old piper who had pointed the way to this well loved pipe.