Tag Archives: Oxidation

Cleaning up a WDC Milano Hesson 1925 Long stem Billiard

Another Painful 70s Era E.A. Carey Magic Inch Apple Restored

Blog by Steve Laug

Reading the title of this blog you might wonder why I called it another painful Carey pipe. As this refurb description unfolds I think it will become clear what I mean by the title. In the Montana pipes that my brother Jeff sent me there were four E.A. Carey Magic Inch Patent pipes. I worked on the first one in the photo below, the Freehand and found that the bowl was a piece of cake. Getting the plastic apparatus cleaned in the shank was a challenge that took a lot of pipe cleaner and patience to move through. Because of that I have honestly been avoiding working on any of the others in the foursome. I have worked on a lot of others that have been sitting just because the cleaning is a pain, but more importantly trying to clean up the chewed up stems and getting any kind of shine on them is painstaking. The plastic cleans up well enough and I am able to repair the bite marks. The dents will not raise with heat, the inside of the stem takes a lot of scrubbing and is cavernous so lots of cotton swabs are sacrificed and lots of pipe cleaners. The plastic does not take kindly to the boiling alcohol of a retort so I am left to do the work by hand. Then once cleaned polishing the stem feels like an impossible challenge. I don’t remember how many hours of sanding with micromesh pads and then carefully, lightly buffing with the buffer went into bringing the shine on the Freehand so the lot just sat taunting me in my refurb box.

Finally, a few days ago I went through the remaining threesome to see if I had any sudden urge to work on one of them. I looked them over one at a time, examining the internals, the condition of the rim and the briar and also the stem….argghh. The stems on all of them have identical chew and bite marks. All were a mess. One of them stood out to me though and I ventured into working on it. It is the second pipe down from the top in the photo below (I have circled it in red).
Before I jumped into working on it I figured I better take some of the advice noted in the photo to the left. These Carey’s are time consuming and I find myself frustrated often in the process of polishing the stem.

I knew without looking to deeply at this old pipe that it would be another one that drove me to the edge. The finish on the briar was dull and dirty. There was some interesting grain poking through – birdseye on the sides and cross grain on the back and front. The stamping was very clean and sharp. The rim was crowned and had a significant lava overflow build up on the top. The good thing was that there was no damage to either the inner or outer edge of the rim. The bowl still was half full of unsmoked tobacco but appeared to be heavily caked. It was hard and dense. The stem was a mess. Once I took it off the apparatus extending from the shank there was still a dirty papyrate filter in place on the tube. The inside of the stem was dark and oily. The outside was covered with deep tooth marks and also a generous case of tooth chatter. There was also a gummy substance on the clean top half of each stem that probably came from price tags that were in place at the antique shop where my brother found them.

I took the next two photos to show the set up of the apparatus with the papyrate filter in place and the state of the bowl and the rim.

The lava overflow on the rim took a lot of elbow grease to scrub it clean. I used Murphy’s Oil Soap and cotton pads to scrub it until I had it clean. I wiped down the rest of the bowl with the soap and then rinsed it with running water. I dried of the bowl and then cleaned out the shank with pipe cleaners and alcohol.

With the briar clean and the internals of the bowl and shank clean I gave the bowl a light wipe down with olive oil so that I could see the grain more clearly. I took the next photos to show the beauty of this bowl.

The next photo shows the stamping on the left side of the shank. The right side is stamped Grecian. I set the bowl aside to work on the stem. I sanded it with 220 grit sandpaper and a fine grit sanding sponge to clean off the tooth chatter and the grime. I wiped it down with alcohol on the outside to prepare it or the repairs on the deep tooth marks. I used black super glue and put drops into the dents, leaving a bubble so that when it dried and shrunk down the dents would be filled and could be sanded.

When the glue dried I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper once again to blend the patches into the surface of the stem.

Before going any further I decided it was time to clean out the inside of the stem. I used cotton swabs, pipe cleaners and alcohol to clean out the internals. With the inside cleaned and the repairs smoothed out I sanded the stem with a medium and a fine grit sanding sponge. They removed many of the scratches and the stem was beginning to take shape. I was not getting too excited however as this was when the tedious work really started. I wet sanded the stem with 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads and then gave the stem a coat of Obsidian Oil. It does not absorb into the stem material so I use it to give me more bite between the various grit pads of micromesh. I dry sanded with 3200-4000 grit pads and gave it another coat of oil. I buffed it lightly with White Diamond and then finished sanding with 6000-12000 grit pads. I gave it a last coat of oil to wipe down the dust and then hand buffed it.

I buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond Polish on the wheel and then gave it multiple coats of carnauba wax. I buffed it with a clean flannel buff and then buffed it by hand with a microfibre cloth. I don’t know how many hours I have in this stem but it certainly seemed to take forever. The bowl cleaned up great and the briar is quite remarkable. The beauty of the grain comes through clearly and the finished pipe looks great. I have two more Carey’s to clean up but I think I will wait awhile to tackle them. This one gets me half way through the lot. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. Thanks for looking.

A DadsPipe is Reborn! – Reinventing a Fletcher Billiard

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Blog by Charles Lemon

I was just putting the finishing touches on this pipe refurb when Steve Laug invited me to write a guest blog for rebornpipes. Timing couldn’t have been better, as the restoration of this old Fletcher billiard epitomizes for me the spirit of rebornpipes – taking an old, worn pipe and creating from it a beautiful and functional smoking companion.

Thanks for having me drop in on rebornpipes, Steve. I hope you and your readers enjoy this restoration journey.
– Charles
—–
I’ve had this old billiard pipe in my refurb box for a while now, so I decided that it was time to do something with it. It’s stamped “Fletcher, Genuine Briar, 4” on the flat bottom. A search online turned up absolutely nothing about the brand, though I can surmise that it was made somewhere in the USA circa 1950 to 1970 or so.

The bowl had a worn sandblast finish, and though covered in dirt, appeared to be in decent shape. There was a bit of cake buildup and tar on the rim that would clean up easily enough, but the stem was another matter. At some point in its history, the button had broken or been bitten off, and the remaining stem had been crudely “MacGuyvered” to allow the piper to continue smoking it. A file had been used to roughly gouge a line across the top and bottom of the broken bit to give at least some purchase in the teeth, and it had been left like that until the piper again bit through the stem, this time removing a chunk from the bottom of the “new bit”. This guy was a real pitbull!

I decided that, with about 3/4 of an inch missing, the mangled stem was too far gone to attempt to save it so I dug about in my stem box and came up with a replacement that fit the bill. This stem is brother to the one I used on my first parts pipe. They were both salvaged from estate pipes with ruined bowls, and both have the large silver dot on the side. The tenon on the replacement stem needed only a bit of tweaking with sandpaper to fit snugly in the mortise. As you can see in this pic, the shank diameter is a bit larger than that of the stem, so there will be some reshaping to do to get the flow right from bowl to button, but I like the shape of things to come. With the stem problem sorted, I got to work cleaning both stem and stummel before I got too far ahead of myself. I used my Castleford reamer to take the cake in the bowl back to bare wood. Luckily there was no damage hiding underneath, so I moved to the exterior, scrubbing the sandblast finish with Murphy’s Oil Soap and an old toothbrush. This lifted an inordinate amount of gunk from the stummel, leaving the briar quite patchy in places. I decided that a complete stripping of the old finish was in order, so I dropped the stummel into an alcohol bath, the stem into a Oxyclean bath, and left them to soak overnight.

The following day I retrieved the stummel from its soak and rubbed it in an old towel. To my surprise, most of the black topcoat came off on the towel! My guess is that our intrepid DIY piper “fixed” his pipe’s worn finish with a liberal application of black shoe polish….. I wiped the stummel down with acetone to remove as much of the loose colour as I could and then finished the basic cleanup of the stummel by scrubbing the airway and shank with alcohol & pipe cleaners.

The stem cleaned up easily enough after its Oxyclean soak with a run of 600 – 2000 grit wet sandpapers and a few pipe cleaners dipped in alcohol. Removing the built-up wax and dirt from the stummel had revealed a flaw in the briar. A “fault line” of sorts wound its way across the lower front face of the bowl. There was no indication that the flaw extended through to the tobacco chamber, but I flowed some CA glue into the line anyway. This may or may not have been necessary, but at least this way I hope that the line won’t expand to a crack the first time I light the pipe.

I also found a small flaw in the rim, which I filled with CA glue and briar dust. I topped the bowl lightly after the fill cured to sand it down flush with the rim and remove a few small rim dents at the same time.

As I pondered how to refinish the pipe, I worked on the shank with various grades of sandpaper to reduce the diameter to match that of the stem and generally improve the flow of the shape from shank to stem. This smoothed out the sandblast on the shank, so I decided to rusticate the entire stummel to replace the texture and hopefully disguise the stabilized fault line on the bowl face. For this I used a round carving burr mounted in my rotary tool, working my way around the stummel until the entire surface had been carved, eradicating the sandblast. I then made a second pass with the burr, carving deeper lines and pits into the briar to give a chunkier finish and help blend in a few deeper pits left from the sandblasting process. I finished up the new rusticated finish by going over the entire stummel very lightly with a wood rasp to knock off a few sharp points and rough edges.

I left the stummel at this point and went back to the stem to address a few issues there. The bite area had several deep tooth dents top and bottom and the button was quite worn. I dealt with both issues by mixing up some CA glue and activated charcoal powder and layering this mixture onto the stem, filling the tooth dents and building up enough material to carve a new button.

This repair always looks plain nasty at this point, but quickly improves once the CA has cured and I can get at the rough lumps of material with a file. I start by cutting the sharp leading edge of the button. This establishes the demarcation point between button and stem. After I have a nice sharp line all the way around the stem, I use files and sandpaper to remove excess material and create an even button height that matches the curvature of the stem.

Now in the home stretch of this restoration, I cleaned up the dust generated by the stem repair and set up my workbench for staining the pipe. I applied a two-step finish to the briar, starting with a diluted mixture of Fiebing’s Saddle Tan and Brown leather dyes. This matched the original colour of the smooth area on the bottom of the stummel, which will help tie this area in with the new smooth area on the bowl rim. When the first stain coat was dry, I rubbed off the excess colour with an old towel and applied a topcoat of stain made with Dark Brown and a little Black dye mixed together. I let this dry fully before scrubbing the stain off the high areas with 0000 steel wool. This exposed the lighter tan colour underneath, but left the black in the low areas of the rustication.

I finished the staining by wiping the stummel with mineral oil to add depth to the finish and moisturize the briar. Then it was off to the buffer for a run of White Diamond and several coats of Carnauba wax. This old Fletcher pipe is unrecognizable as the pipe I started with. I rather like the chunky rustication and the new stain. The grain on the rim and flat bottom really pops. A side benefit of old briar like this is the light weight. The pipe tips the scales at a mere 32 grams or 1.1 ounce. This rejuvenated old soul will be a comfortable all-day companion to its next piper. Here’s the finished pipe:

Breathing New Life into a mystery pipe and in the process finding out that it is a GBD

1 Reply

Blog by Steve Laug

I picked up this bowl in a purchase of bowls on EBay recently. All of them had a broken tenon in the shank and this one was no different. All of the bowls had stamping that was pretty unreadable or not present at all. This one had very faint stamping. When I first looked at it I put it aside and was in no rush to restem another bowl. Yesterday I took it out of the box and had a look at it through a lens with a bright light. I was pretty surprised to see that there was a faint GBD in an oval and underneath that it was stamped PREMIER and under that London Made. The shape number on the other side of the shank and any other stamping was gone. In the next three photos below it is circled in red – in the first it is the second bowl down in the left hand column. In the second it is the second one down and in the third it is at the top of the photo in the middle.

It was in pretty rough shape but underneath the grime there was a classic shaped billiard that was just waiting to be reborn. The finish on the bowl was worn, tired and water spotted. The rim was very rough from tapping out and was rounded on the edges. The bowl was caked but it also had about a half bowl of unsmoked tobacco. It also had the tenon broken off in the shank of the pipe. It almost looked as if the owner had dropped it mid smoke and the stem broke off and he just laid it aside. There were some serious deep gouges in the bottom right side of the bowl. It looked as if it was part of the fallout when the pipe was dropped. The photos below show what the pipe looked like when I received it. You can also see why I missed the stamping on the side of the shank.

When it arrived I used my usual process and pulled the broken tenons from all of the shanks. I used a screwdriver, pliers and a drywall screw. I thread the screw into the airway on the broken tenon and then use the pliers to wiggle it free. You can see how it works in the photos below. I removed five broken tenons in a matter of moments.

At this point I put all five bowls away and did not look at them for almost a month. The past two days I have been through them and already restemmed the tiny apple. This one came out next from the box. I wet the stem and looked at it through a lens with a bright light. That is when I discovered that the mystery pipe was a GBD. There was no shape number but it was a petite billiard. I had a stem in my stem can that was nearly perfect for the pipe. It did not have a GBD logo but it fit really well. I only needed to shorten the length of the tenon and the left side of the stem to get a perfect fit.

I wiped down the bowl with acetone to see what I was working with under the grime. I took a few photos of the bowl to show what it looked like.

I shortened the tenon and the fit was great against the shank. Now all that remained was to sand and clean the stem. I used a dental pick to remove the dottle from the bowl. You can see the amount of unburned tobacco that remained in the bowl. I think my theory of being dropped mid smoke was pretty accurate. I reamed the bowl with a PipNet reamer and took the cake back to bare briar. The bowl was between the smallest sized cutting head and the second one so I could only do a part of the job with the reamer. The round bowl made it not feasible to work with the KLEENREEM reamer. I cleaned up what remained with a pen knife to smooth out the walls of the pipe.

In the photo above shows the damage to rim top and the inner and outer edge of the rim. I decided to top the bowl to clean up as much as possible of the rim damage.

I repaired the deep gouges on the right side of the bowl with superglue and briar dust. I would have tried to steam them out but they had sharp edges on all of the marks and steaming would not have raised them. I sanded the dried repairs with 220 grit sandpaper to blend them into the surface of the briar. You will see in later picture what that looked like. I started to clean out the shank and stem with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and alcohol and soon began to realize that it was far dirtier than I initially expected.

I put the stem on the shank and set up the pipe retort. I boiled three test tubes of alcohol through the bowl and stem until it finally came out clear. The second photo is a cool picture of the boiling alcohol. I had to include it!

I ran pipe cleaners, a shank brush, cotton swabs and alcohol through the stem and shank to remove what was left behind by the retort and was pleased to see how clean it was. One surprise to me was the red stain that came out of the shank. Evidently the pipe had originally been stained with a oxblood stain. You would never have guessed that looking at what I started with. Now that the internals were clean I took a series of photos of the pipe to show where it stood at this point. In these photos you can see the repairs on the right side of the bowl.

Now it was time to polish the stem and work on the finish of the pipe. I worked on the stem with 220 grit sandpaper and a medium and fine grit sanding sponge to remove the grime and the oxidation on the stem. I don’t know what was on this stem but it was tacky, gummed up the sandpaper and was hard to clean. I wiped it down with alcohol and then repeated the sanding. I was able to remove the oxidation and the tooth chatter at the button. I sanded the stem with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-2400 grit pads and then giving the stem a coat of Obsidian Oil. I dry sanded with 3200-4000 grit pads and gave it another coat of oil. I finished with 6000-12000 grit pads and gave it a final coat of the oil. I let that dry.

I sanded the bowl with 1500-4000 grit micromesh to smooth out the sanding marks. I wiped the bowl down with a tack cloth and then gave it a coat of Cherry stain mixed with Danish Oil. I buffed it by hand and gave it a second coat. I set it aside to dry. Once it was dry I buffed it by hand with a soft microfibre cloth.

I put the stem on the pipe and then buffed the stem and bowl with Blue Diamond on the wheel and then gave the bowl and stem several coats of carnauba wax. I buffed it with a clean flannel buff to raise the shine. I hand buffed it with a microfibre cloth to give a deeper shine to the pipe. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below.The cherry stain brings out the grain and at the same time hides the repairs. While the pipe will never win any contests for beauty or perfection that must have once accompanied the PREMIER it is nonetheless fully functional and should deliver the next pipe man who owns a decent smoke at a decent price. Thanks for looking.

Cleaning an American Made Selected Bulldog

5 Replies

Blog by Steve Laug

I have had a straight bulldog in the refurbishing box for a long time now. It is an interesting older pipe that has the characteristic worm trail rustication on the sides of the bowl and cap but total only 5 trails. The rest of the bowl is a nice piece of briar. The shank is smooth with no rustication. It appears to be unstained and natural or if stained a light tan colour. The trails on the bowl sides and cap are slightly darker in colour. The bowl was lightly smoked and the bottom half still clean briar. There was no cake in the bowl. There was some burning on the inner edge of the rim on the back left side of the bowl. The stamping on the shank of this bulldog is standing lion inside of a shield and next to that – SELECTED – over Imported Briar. I have searched on the web and in my books for this logo and cannot find it or the company it refers to. Any help would be appreciated. The stem was in good shape with a little oxidation but no teeth marks except for two on top of the button itself. There was an internal stinger apparatus and a metal threaded tenon. The tenon screwed into a metal insert in the shank. The airway from the mortise to the back of the bowl was quite open to give room for the stinger apparatus. I took the following photos of the pipe when I brought it to the work table this morning.

I took the pipe apart to show the inner apparatus on the stinger. It is unusual in terms of shape. The spear end is very sharp! It is pressure fit into the stem so it should come out for a thorough cleaning of the stem. The briar was dirty and had what appeared to be the gum from a price tag stuck to it in several places. I scrubbed the bowl and rim with a tooth brush and Murphy’s Oil Soap to clean off the grime. I wiped it down with a paper towel. A lot of grit and grime came off. I rinsed it with warm running water and dried it off with a towel. The photos below show the grime on the paper towel and the clean bowl.

I heated the stinger with a lighter to soften the tars that held it in the threaded tenon. Once it was warmed I wiggled the stinger free and was able to clean it and the tenon. I scrubbed the inside of the tenon and the airway in the stem with pipe cleaners and alcohol. I used a brass bristle brush to clean the stinger and the threads on the tenon. The inside of the shank was wide open and served as a chamber for the stinger. It worked like a condensation chamber to collect the moisture before the smoke move through the holes and slot in the stinger and up the stem. Because of that it was very dirty. I cleaned the bowl and the shank with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and alcohol until no more grime would come out. The photo below shows the first batch of swabs. There were about that many more used before it was clean. I lightly sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper to break up the oxidation and then with a medium and a fine grit sanding sponge. I wet sanded it with 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads and then gave it a coat of Obsidian Oil. I dry sanded the stem with 3200-4000 grit micromesh pads and then gave it another coat of oil. I finished sanding with 6000-12000 grit pads and gave it a final coat of Obsidian Oil. I set it aside to dry.

I put the pipe back together and buffed it on the wheel with Blue Diamond and gave it several coats of carnauba wax. I buffed it with a clean flannel buff to give it a shine. I brought it back to the work table and hand buffed it with a microfibre cloth. The finished pipe is shown below. Thanks for looking.

A Tiny Apple Reborn – new stem and new finish

Wm Wales Billiard Restemmed and Restored

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Blog by Steve Laug

This is yet another pipe that my brother Jeff picked up in Montana and sent my way. It is stamped Wm Wales on the left side of the shank and on the right side it is stamped Grecian in script. The stamping though a different script than that found on the Carey Magic Inch pipes is similar in the way it is stamped and the stamping of Grecian on the right side of the shank. I did some digging on the internet and found nothing about the brand other than several pipes with the same stamping for sale. There is nothing about the brand on the various pipe information websites. There is nothing about the brand on Who Made That Pipe or in Lopes book so I am left with a bit of a mystery.

The pipe has some pretty decent grain on it. The sides of the bowl have some interesting birdseye grain and the front and the back of the bowl have cross grain on them. The stem is a mix of grains. The finish was worn and dirty. The rim had a cake of tar and grit on the top of the bowl. The inside of the bowl had a hard, thick cake that almost filled the bowl. The rim itself was undamaged and showed no burn marks or damage to either the outside edge of the rim or the inside bevel of the rim. The stem was at first glance workable but upon examination it had a crack in the centre of the button on both the top and bottom sides. There were also tooth marks that were deep and one split the button. The surface of the stem was wavy and rippled from the way it had been buffed. The slot in the stem was clogged and no air would go through the airway.

In the photo above to the left the pipe is the second one down from the top. The next set of four photos show the pipe as was when it arrived at my work table.

I took a close up photo of the bowl and rim to give a clear picture of what I started with in my clean up. The two photos following that give a good view of the stamping on the shank.

The next two photos show the damage to the stem. The more I looked at the damage the more I realized that a replacement stem would be less work than fiddling around with repairing the damage on that one.

I tried to ream the bowl with a PipNet reamer and found that the cake was so hard that reamer did not even cut into the surface of the cake. I tried a KLEENREEM reamer and made no headway either so I dropped the bowl in an alcohol bath to soak. It would soften the cake and clean up the grime on the finish of the rim and bowl as a bonus. While it soaked I looked for a new stem in my can of stems and found one that would work quite well. It was a little larger in diameter but once I fit it to the stem some sanding and shaping would take care of that. In the morning I took the bowl out of the alcohol bath and worked on it to ream it. I used the PipNet and the KLEENREEM reamer on the bowl. I also used a pen knife to work at cutting away the hard cake. In the process of reaming I found that the bowl was conical in shape rather than U shaped. I used the drill bit from the KLEENREEM tool to open the airway in the shank.

Once I had cleaned out the shank and the bowl with alcohol, pipe cleaners and cotton swabs I fit the new stem to the shank. I sanded it with 220 grit sandpaper to clean up the tooth chatter and the oxidation. I sanded it with a medium and a fine grit sanding sponge to further remove the scratching and oxidation. I wiped the stem down with Obsidian Oil.

I scrubbed the briar with acetone on cotton pads to remove the finish and the remaining grime on the rim and bowl.

I sanded the stem with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-2400 grit pads on the briar and the stem and then rubbed down the stem with Obsidian Oil. I dry sanded with 3200-4000 grit pads and gave it another coat of oil. I finished by dry sanding the stem with 6000-12000 grit pads and gave it a final coat of Obsidian Oil.

I buffed the bowl and stem with Blue Diamond polish on the wheel and then gave it multiple coats of carnauba wax. I buffed it with a clean flannel buff to raise the shine. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. The grain really shines through in the photos. It is a beautiful piece of briar. I would love to know more about the history of the brand to give more depth to my understanding of the pipe.

I took a few close-up photos of the stem and the bowl showing the grain of the briar and the shape and look of the stem. Thanks for looking.

Found an Old Patents Pending Generation 1 Kirsten A

2 Replies

Blog by Steve Laug

Another pipe from the treasure trove my brother Jeff sent me was an early Kirsten. The metal barrel is stamped Kirsten in script on the left side of the barrel and on the underside it is stamped Pats. & Pats. Pend. – A. When I received it the bowl would unscrew from the barrel and it had no metal cap on the bottom. It was a wooden bowl without the cap which along with the stamping pointed to an early Kirsten. The stem and rod were stuck in the barrel and the adjustable valve on the front of the barrel was frozen solid. The valve had evidently been frozen for some time as someone had used pliers on it to try to remove it. They had left behind the tooth marks of the pliers on the aluminum valve cover. Because of the vulcanite lip on the stem that sat against the barrel that there would not be a rubber grommet between the stem and the barrel. The bowl had a thick, rock hard cake and the bottom of the bowl was not visible to see what the condition of the screw head was like. I have no idea how the pipe man ever drew air through this pipe as the bottom of the bowl was solid. The finish on the bowl was dull and lifeless with no grain visible through the grime. The top of the rim was covered with over flow from the cake in the bowl. It was a large bowl initially so once the cake was gone it would be an inch in diameter. I looked up information to see if I could find a cut away drawing of the Kirsten and found this one and a bit of history and information on the concept of the Kirsten pipe. The following is from the Kirsten website https://www.kirstenpipe.com/page_pipestyles.shtml and https://www.kirstenpipe.com/page ourstory.shtml “It is by no means merely puffery to say that Professor Frederick K. Kirsten was a genuine American original. He first sailed to this country in 1902, as a cabin boy from Hamburg, Germany. After successfully rounding the Horn and eluding the shanghai gangs of the West Coast, he navigated the educational system at the University of Washington to become a Professor of Aeronautical Engineering. Here, his inventive spirit took wing. He created the world-famous Kirsten Wind Tunnel, Air-washing equipment for factories, an air-cooled Utopian Bed, and, most notably, a revolutionary propeller which enables boats to stop and turn on a dime. Today, in the same waters where he jumped ship almost 100 years ago, ocean-going vessels are landed by sturdy tugs driven by Kirsten cycloidal propellers, piloted by equally sturdy captains smoking cool Kirsten pipes.”

“Rightly called the coolest pipe in the world, this latter innovation came about when a doctor advised Professor Kirsten to switch from cigarettes. He quickly dreamed up a way to trap the moisture, tars and tongue-biting acids which attack the users of briar pipes. After 50 years and counting, Kirsten pipes are still produced by the Kirsten family, faithfully following the basic designs of this father of invention.”

“Professor Kirsten revolutionized pipesmoking by creating the Radiator stem. When tobacco, which is 30% to 60% moisture, is lit in the bowl, it creates steam. As the smoke is drawn through the stem, the steam is cooled and condenses into a liquid. This bitter-tasting liquid is trapped in the stem, along with tars, nicotine and tongue-biting acids.”

“Only clean, cool, moisture-free smoke passes through the intake tube to the mouthpiece. To remove the trapped liquid, you simply remove the valve. You can clean a KIRSTEN in seconds by pushing a tissue through the bore of the stem, exactly as you would clean a gun barrel.”

The cleaning in seconds must not have been something that the previous owner of this pipe ever read or understood. I decided to work on the bowl first as it was the only part of the pipe that I could remove at that point in the process. I took the photo below to give an idea of the thickness of the cake and the minimal size of the air hole at the bottom of the bowl. You can see that it is virtually clogged and the airflow would be very restricted. The lack of a cap on the bottom of the bowl can be seen in the next three photos. The first two photos show the state of the finish. In the second one you can see the grain peeking through the grime on the finish. In the third photo you can see the stamping on the bottom of the bowl. It reads Kirsten Pats Appl For.

I put the barrel and stem in an alcohol bath to soak overnight to try to loosen the frozen stem and rod. I reamed the bowl with the largest cutting head on the PipNet reamer and took the cake back to bare briar. I used a pen knife to work on the bottom of the bowl and was finally able to see the characteristic Kirsten screw. I sanded the inside of the bowl with 220 grit sandpaper and used an ice pick to remove the screw. From the underside of the bowl I inserted the ice pick into the drilled centre of the screw and tapped it gently and the screw came free from the bowl.

I lightly topped the rim on a topping board to remove the damage and the build up on that surface.

I scrubbed down the exterior of the bowl and rim with acetone on cotton pads to remove the grime and the remaining finish. I was quite pleasantly surprised by the grain that was revealed in the process.

I cleaned the inside and the outside of the screw with a tooth brush and alcohol until it shone.

I sanded the bowl with a medium and a fine grit sanding block to clean up the scratches and smooth out the finish on the sides and top of the bowl. I wet sanded the bowl with micromesh sanding pads from 1500-2400 grit and dry sanded with 3200-12000 grit pads.

I took the barrel out of the bath and put it in a cup of boiling water. I dipped both ends into the boiling water hoping to break one of the frozen ends loose. I was able to remove the stem and the rod assembly after the alcohol bath and the boiling water dip. The stem and the rod were quite brown with the shellac of old tobacco juices. Of course dipping the stem in the boiling water caused the oxidation on the stem to come to the surface.

I scrubbed the rod assembly with 0000 steel wool and alcohol to remove the shellac coat that had built up and polish it. There was some corrosion that came to light at the middle of the rod. I would need to work on that once I had cleaned up the stem. I sanded the stem and rod with 220 grit sandpaper and then with a medium and fine grit sanding sponge to remove the scratches.

I worked on the stem and rod with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-2400 grit pads and then rubbing down the stem with Obsidian Oil. The micromesh pads removed the last of the corrosion on the rod and polished it. I dry sanded with 3200-4000 grit pads and gave the stem another coat of oil. I finished sanding it with 6000-12000 grit pads and gave it a final coat of Obsidian Oil. I failed to take photos of the final steps in the micromesh process but it is the typical procedure and each successive grit of pads gave more of a polish to the vulcanite. I cleaned out the stem and tenon with alcohol and pipe cleaners inserted from both ends. I was able to clean out all of the oils and tars and the cleaners came out clean. Now the bowl and the stem unit were cleaned, polished and ready to go once I was able to remove the valve from the end of the barrel. This was proving a very difficult task. I had put the barrel in the freezer overnight hoping to loosen the valve – no luck. I had boiled it multiple times – no luck. I had given it several alcohol baths – no luck. I let it sit with penetrating oil in the barrel to try to loosen the valve end. I tried to drive it out with a round end file and a small hammer. Nothing worked. I posted that on rebornpipes and got a response from Old Man in the Cave suggesting that I heat it with a heat gun.

I geared up for the process. He had suggested setting the barrel in a wood vise which is a tool I don’t have yet. I chose instead to hold the barrel with some insulated leather gloves over the heat gun. I heated the barrel with gun until it was hot. Then I used a pair of pliers that had cotton pads on the jaws and gave it a light twist and the valve came free. I don’t know if the heat from the gun finally did what I should have done in the first place or if the combination of methods finally came together and it worked. It does not matter as the valve finally came free. I now know why the later models of Kirsten pipes came with a rubber o-ring around the valve and the stem so that it provided something between the two metal pieces and the barrel. Somehow the combination of tobacco juice and saliva left to sit becomes shellac or lacquer that is almost impossible to break free. Thanks to Old Man in the Cave the valve is free and I could finally clean out the barrel and put the pipe back together. The next photos show the condition of the valve once I was able to remove it from the barrel. You can see the tapered angle of the top portion of the valve (on the right below the cap). The lacquer or shellac that bound the valve in the barrel is also very evident. I am guessing that there would have been much more if it had not been sitting in alcohol and been heated so much. But even that little band held the valve tightly in place.

I scrubbed the valve and the inside of the barrel with 0000 steel wool. I ran the steel wool through the barrel to clean out the build up inside and then used a wooden dowel to push alcohol soak cotton pads through the barrel to clean it until it shone. I cleaned out the inside of the valve with alcohol and cotton swabs. I was able to get everything shining again. It took some work to remove some of the tooth marks that were on the valve end from previous owners who had attempted to turn it but I was able to sand them smooth with micromesh sanding pads. They are still present but not as obvious.

Once all the parts were clean and polished I greased the valve and the end of the stem and rod unit with Vaseline so that it would slide into the barrel with less resistance. I know that it will not stop the buildup of tars but it will at least slow it down. The next photos show the disassembled pipe and then the pipe put back together. The valve turned easily and I aligned the hole in the valve with the hole in the top of the barrel where the bowl screwed in place. The airflow was clear and unrestricted.

I hand buffed the barrel with Meguiar’s Scratch X2.0 to remove the scratches and give it a shine. I rubbed on some Conservators Wax and then hand buffed the barrel with a shoe brush. I buffed the briar bowl with Blue Diamond on the wheel and then gave it multiple coats of carnauba wax and buffed it with a clean flannel buff. Once I had finished I screwed the bowl in place and buffed it a microfibre cloth. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below.

I took the pipe apart so that I could take the next two pictures to show the cleaned and polished parts. Everything is once again in working order. It was clear looking at all of the parts that I was dealing with a Generation 1 Kirsten. These were made between the years 1936-1958. The wooden bowl on this generation connects directly to the metal barrel and there is no metal cup spacer. It is a pretty flush fit that goes flat against the barrel. On the underside of the metal barrel it is stamped with one or more of the following “Pat. Appl. For” (1936-38) and “Pats. & Pats. Pending” (1938-1958) over “Made in USA” – S” (or applicable size – S, M, L). There are no O-rings on the bit or metal shank insert.

Rescuing a Tinderbox Monza Horn – Restemming and Refinishing

4 Replies

Blog by Steve Laug

Another of the pipes that my brother Jeff sent me was a horn shaped pipe that was stamped Tinderbox Made in Italy in a circle with Monza in the centre of the circle. It is stamped on the underside of the shank. The shape is quite unique. The bowl had around 10-12 fills in it that went from tiny spots to huge plugs in the briar. The finish was a heavy urethane coat that made the pipe very shiny and really highlighted the fills around the bowl and the shank.

The shank had a split in the underside of the shank that went from under the band up the shank for one inch on the bottom side. It had just turned slightly upward and if left alone would have continued to the bowl. The rim was heavily damaged and there was a thick hard cake in the bowl that hurt my hand when I pushed the various reamers that I had trying to remove it. The bowl looked like it was conical in shape but was so thick that there was very little room in the bowl for tobacco. The stem was a replacement, like many of them in the pipes my brother sent me. It was a saddle stem and was missing a huge chunk on the left side of the button and up the stem about ½ inch. The person who had made the replacement had cut an angled end on the tenon which in my opinion was careless and not necessary. The airway into the bowl from the shank was plugged and when I blew into the end of the shank I could not get any air through it.

The next four photos show the pipe as it appeared when it arrived in the box from my brother.

I took a close up photo of the bowl and rim to show the damage and the cake in the bowl. The second photo below shows the broken stem. The stem was pretty much a throw away as it is very narrow after the broken button.

I started to ream the bowl with a PipNet reamer. I started with a small cutting head and soon gave up. I used the largest head that would fit the diameter of the bowl and still found the cake too hard to cut through with the reamer. I dropped it in an alcohol bath to soak to soften the cake and to soften the urethane coat on the bowl. After it had been soaking an hour I took it out of the bath.

In my can of stems I had one with the same diameter as the shank and a tenon that would work with some adjustments. The tenon was too long so I would need to trim it back and also adjust the diameter to get a snug fit in the shank. The alcohol bath did not even make a dent in the finish. As I expected the only way to remove a urethane finish is to sand it off. I did not mind as it was covering a lot of damage to the rounded rim and the sides of the bowl. I fit the new stem in the shank and took a few photos to get an idea of the look. The stem was a little too bent to my liking so that would need adjusting but the taper worked well with the horn shape. The last photo of the underside of the shank shows a dark area. That is where the stamping is present and also the crack in the shank.

I put the stem aside and used a pen knife, a KleenReam and a PipNet reamer to work on the hard cake. It was still rock hard but I was able to chip away at it until I had removed it from the bowl. I used the drill bit from the handle of the KleenReem to open up the airway into the bowl.

I sanded the bowl some more with some medium and fine grit sanding sponges. I wanted to clean up the cracked area on the shank bottom so that I could repair it. I took the photo below to show the crack in the shank. I used a micro drill bit on my Dremel to drill a small hole at the end of the crack to stop it from spreading further up the shank.

I packed some briar dust into the hole and then dripped super glue on top of that and then more briar dust and some more glue. I ran a dental pick along the crack to open it slightly and then put some glue along the crack to the band as to preserve that as well.

I sanded the repair to smooth it out and blend it into the shank and avoided the area inside the stamping. I heated the stem with a heat gun to take a bit of the bend out of it. Once it was pliable I bent it to match the flow of the curve of the horn. I wanted it to sit with the rim and the bend in the stem flat on the table when laid down. That angle would make it sit correctly in the mouth when it was smoked.

I worked on the curve of the rim and top with sandpaper and sanding sponges to get the flow of the rolled rim even all the way around the bowl. I worked on the inner edge of the rim as well to make it flow into the bowl rather than be an abrupt edge. I sanded the bowl with medium grit sanding sponges and fine grit sanding blocks to remove the scratches from the briar and to work on the oxidation on the stem. The grain was beginning to show through. I wiped it down with a tack cloth to remove the sanding dust in preparation for staining the bowl. The bowl had a lot of fills so I decided to try a contrast stain to both hide the fills and to bring out the grain. I started with a black aniline stain and finished with a brown. I stained the bowl with the black and flamed the stain to set it in the grain. I reapplied and reflamed it until the coverage was even. I wiped the bowl down with alcohol and cotton pads to remove the excess black and leave it only in the grain of the briar. I wanted it to show the grain and highlight the beauty. I also wanted to mask the fills to some degree.

I used a black Sharpie permanent marker to draw grain lines through the huge fills on the bowl to further blend them into the briar.

With that preparation done I gave it a top coat of dark brown aniline stain. I applied it and flamed it and repeated until I was happy with the coverage.

I hand buffed the bowl to check out the coverage of the brown and the contrast of the black and the black Sharpie marks. By and large I liked what I saw. There were some spots that needed some more work but it was looking good.

I worked the stem over with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-2400 grit pads and then giving it a coat of Obsidian Oil. I dry sanded with 3200-4000 grit pads and gave it another coat of oil. I finished sanding with 6000-12000 grit pads and then gave it a final coat of Obsidian Oil and let it dry.

I buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond and then gave it multiple coats of carnauba wax. I buffed it with a clean flannel buff to raise the shine and then with a microfibre cloth to add depth to the shine. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. It exceeds my expectations when I began the reclamation work on it. The fills on the sides, shank and back of the bowl have all but disappeared in the blend of stains and Sharpie pen. The large ones on the bowl front look better but are still somewhat visible. Overall I am happy with the results. Thanks for looking.

A Rescue Dog – Restoring a Chadwick “Supreme” Rhodesian

3 Replies

Blog by Steve Laug

The third pipe my brother Jeff picked up in the lot from the Montana was one of my favourite shapes. In the photo below of the pipes at the seller’s antique shop it is the pipe on the far right of the picture. Looking at it in the photos I wondered if it was a Peterson 999 or a GBD 9438 two of my all time favourite pipe shapes. I was pretty excited to see what it was once he got the pipes. Everything about that pipe shape made me think that my guess was not far off. When the pipes arrived in Idaho my brother called and read me the stamping. The pipe was stamped on the left side of the shank Chadwick over “Supreme”. On the right side it was stamped Imported Briar. At that point I was scratching my head. It still looked like an English-made pipe to me but I had not heard of the Chadwick brand. When the pipe arrived in Canada I looked it over and was still convinced it looked English-made. I looked in Who Made that Pipe and it was listed there as made by Wally Frank in the US and England. The next photos show what the pipe looked like when it arrived here. There is a lot of promise underneath all the grime. There was a thick cake in the bowl and the rim was covered with the overflow of tars and oils down the sides to the double ring. The finish was dirty and almost gone. I am not sure if the pipe had a natural finish or was stained but it was no longer clear what the original had been like. The double ring had a large chunk missing on the front of the bowl. There were two fills on the bowl front that were shrunken and looked like dents. The shank was dirty. The stem was chewed and gnawed on to the point that the button was virtually gone on the top side. There was a chunk missing from it on the top middle of the button. There were deep tooth marks on the top and bottom of the stem near the button. The stem was oxidized and scratched and had a build-up of calcification about an inch up the stem toward the shank. Inside the stem and shank was very dirty. The airway to the bowl was clogged and I was not able to blow air through it. It looked to me that there had originally been a stinger in the tenon but it was no longer present.

I took some close up photos of the stamping and the condition of the bowl, rim and stem before I went to work on restoring it. You can clearly see the stamping on the left side of the shank – Chadwick Supreme. The rim is in nasty condition. I am not sure how the last pipe man had ever fit much tobacco in the bowl. All I know is that it must have smoked really well because it looked as if he had never laid it down. The stem condition is also clearly shown with tooth marks and gnawing on the button top and bottom.

Before I started cleaning it up I wanted to learn a bit more about the brand. I have cleaned and used quite a few Wally Frank pipes over the years and knew that other companies in Europe often made their pipes for them. It was highly likely that this was a British made pipe. I checked on Chris Keene’s Pipe Pages and found the Chadwick name in the Wally Frank Catalogue for 1939. None of the other catalogues would open but at least I had the information that I needed. The first photo below is of the whole page. The second is of the right top corner where the Chadwick line is mentioned. The third is of a Chadwick Display Cabinet that was provided to tobacconists and stores that sold the line.

Now I knew that the Chadwick line was indeed made in England. My guess was correct and I would go one step further and guess that they were made by Comoy’s or GBD. The advertisement says that the pipe was “custom-made in London with the deliberate precision of English master pipemakers. The Chadwick is our sincere effort to present a fine quality London made pipe from sweet smoking Algerian Briar Root at a modest price.”

What interested me was that the pipe came in three different finishes – Rough-Rugged, Natural and Dark. I am pretty sure that the one I had was originally dark finished as the dark finish would hide the fills on the bowl and they would be blended into the briar. That gave me the direction that I would go in restaining the pipe once I got to that point in the restoration process.

I love reading these old catalogues and seeing the life time warrantee on the pipes and the fact that the pipe originally cost $2.50 with postage paid from the Wally Frank factory.

Armed with that confirmation of British origin for this old pipe I went to work to restore it to its former glory. I worked on the bowl first. I wanted to ream back the cake to bare wood to see what I was dealing with in the bowl. I set up the PipNet reamer with the smallest head first and found that the cake was incredibly hard. The cutting head barely made a dent in the cake. I took the largest sized cutting head – same diameter as the bowl and work on it and with a lot of force was able to begin to make a dent on the cake. It was just too hard to go too deep with the tool. I used a pen knife to try to cut back the lower portion of the cake but could not even cut into it because it was so hard.

I decided to soak the bowl and soften the cake in an alcohol bath. I dropped the bowl into the bath and left it overnight to soak and soften the cake. In the morning I took it out of the bath and dried it off with a coarse cotton towel. The soak also had the effect of softening the lava on the rim and cap so that when I dried the bowl most of it came off in the process. I was able to ream it back to bare wood with the use of a PipNet reamer and a KLEENREEM reamer. I used the drill bit part of the KLEENREEM tool to open the airway into the bowl and remove the clog. With that gone I could freely blow air through the bowl. The final photo in this set shows the conical bowl on the reamed pipe.

I wiped the bowl down with acetone on a cotton pad to clean off the remaining finish and the grime left behind after the soak and the reaming process. The damaged rings on the front of the bowl are visible in the photos as is the damage to the rim top.

I lightly topped the bowl on a topping board using 220 grit sandpaper to flatten the rim top and to remove some of the rounding to the outer edge of the bowl. I used a dental pick to remove the fills that had shrunk on the bottom front of the bowl in preparation for replacing them. I packed briar dust into the holes and then dripped super glue onto the packed briar dust. I packed briar dust into the missing section of the double rings on the front of the bowl. I put super glue on top of the briar dust fill to build up the repair. I added more briar dust on top of the fills on the bowl front and on the repair to the rings. I sanded the patches on the bowl front with 220 grit sandpaper and smooth it out to match the surrounding briar. I sanded the patch on the ring repair with 220 grit sandpaper to smooth it out. There were still some low spots on that repair so I refilled the area with some more super glue.

I set the bowl aside to let the repair on the rings cure before I cut the new rings into the bowl front. While it was sitting I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper to remove the oxidation and the calcification. I wanted to clean up the stem before I worked on repairing the tooth marks and gnawed button. I cleaned the stem with alcohol and pipe cleaners.

I scrubbed out the tooth marks on the stem and the button with a cotton swab and alcohol in preparation for the repair I would do there. I mixed the patching material using finely crushed charcoal capsules and black super glue. I mixed the two to blend the materials. I use super glue that gives me 45 seconds of time before it hardens so I have to work quickly.

When I had the paste mixed well I applied it to the tooth marks and built up the button with a dental pick and dental spatula. The repair is anything but beautiful at this point but the mixture adds strength to the repair that the glue by itself does not give with tooth marks and damage of this magnitude.

I set the stem aside to cure and went back to the bowl. I used a Buck Knife, a pen knife and a sharp-edged needle file to cut the lines in the patch on the bowl front. I wanted the new lines to connect seamlessly to the lines on either side of the repair. These three blades always have worked for me to get a good straight line match. When I had finished cleaning up the lines on the bowl the stem repair had cured enough to begin to shape the button and clean up the tooth repairs. I sanded them with 220 grit sandpaper to begin to shape and smooth out the repairs.

When I had the basic shape of the button set up the surface was quite porous on the button surface and in one spot on the tooth repair on top of the stem so I gave them a top coat of clear super glue to fill in the pores left behind by the super glue/charcoal mixture. I set that aside to dry.

I cleaned the bowl and shank with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and alcohol. It was one dirty shank. It took a lot of scrubbing to clean out the grime. I scrubbed until the cleaners came out clean and white. I wiped the bowl down with alcohol to remove any last dust or grime in preparation for staining the briar.

I decided to stain the bowl with a dark brown aniline stain that I had thinned by half to give it a medium brown colour. I wanted to aim for the dark stain that was noted in the Wally Frank Catalogue above. I figured it would give me good coverage on the fills and the repair to the rings. I applied the stain with a cotton swab and then flamed it with a lighter to set the colour in the grain. I wiped down the freshly stained bowl with alcohol on cotton pads to even out the stain and to give it more transparency so that the grain shows through. When I was through I was happy with the colour and with the way it hid the fills on the bowl and the repair to the ring on the front of the bowl.

By that time the stem repair had dried and I sanded it with 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the stem patch and do more shaping on the button.

I filed the slot in the stem to smooth it out and shape it. I also sanded the stem with a medium and a fine grit sanding sponge to further shape the button. I wet sanded the stem and button with 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads and rubbed the stem down with Obsidian Oil. I dry sanded with 3200-4000 grit micromesh pads and gave it another coat of oil. I finished by sanding it with 6000-12000 grit pads and gave it a final coat of Obsidian Oil. I set it aside for the oil to dry.

I sanded the bowl with the micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit to polish the briar – bowl, shank and rim, to bring out the grain. When the grain began to pop I buffed the bowl and the stem with Blue Diamond on the wheel and then gave both multiple coats of carnauba wax. I buffed it with a clean flannel buff and then with a microfibre cloth. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. It is a far cry better looking than when I started. This one is a keeper. Thanks for looking.