Tag Archives: pipe restemming

Louis Blumfeld 1901 BBB Bent Billiard – by James Gilliam of jsecpipes.com

When James posted his work on this pipe on the pipe forums I was amazed at how beautiful it looked. Wow a 1901 BBB – one of my favourite pipe makes and one of the old ones as well. Imagine the surprise when I got an email at the same time asking if I would like a write up and photos of the restemming for the blog. I did not have to think twice to answer that email. I quickly fired back an affirmative and what you have below is the story from James. Thanks again James for taking the time to document your work on this old timer. Enjoy smoking that great piece of pipe history. Below is his tale.

Every story has a beginning and this one even has a pre-story. The excerpt below was posted on several forums I’m a member of so I thought I would repeat it just for those that haven’t seen the posts.

“As some of you know I attend the 100km van Ieper in Belgium nearly every year since 2002. It’s a walk around the WWI Battlefields that consumed Ieper. I’ve been bitten by the pipe making bug, and how and along the way dabbled in restorations just because, but my search for a pre-WWI era pipe is finally over. I ended up getting this piece of history from Alan at Reborn Briar. Now he did the pipe restoration.. and a brilliant job he did, the only thing the pipe was missing was a stem.. well I can do that… I decided not to bore out the mortise and left it threaded, made a threaded tenon out of horn, since I don’t have any workable bone, and decided against using Ivory…… and went with Cumberland for my stem material.. I’m happy…Happy Columbus Day everybody”

Now for the rest of the story. What sticks around in usable condition for over 100 years… not too much, but since I’m kinda into this pipe thing, tobacco related history rates up there for my interest factor. This past July I was able to attend the Newark (UK) Pipe show, set up a table and sell some pipes. You never really sale (or at least I don’t) all the pipes you want to sale, but you do get to meet a lot of really interesting people, and the next table over was Alan Chestnutt from Reborn Briar. I’m always amazed at the folks like Steve and Alan that get into the restoration business. I’ve done a few, even wrote an article about it, but creation is where my passion lies.

Anyway, talking with Alan pre-World War I pipes came up, and fast forward to September he had one that he was going to restore but without a stem. As I mentioned above, stems are no problem…. that’s the making/creating/using machinery aspect I like. When the pipe arrived I was amazed at how well it looked. I mean wow, 1901, and all that.

The only real thing that threw me was the threaded mortise. Looking around the shop I pickup up a few of my mistake mouthpieces and tried fitting a few. The 7mm tenon fit without a problem, as it just slid into the mortise. But later that night while sitting around thinking about the mouthpiece I figured I’d make it as close to the original as I could. The stems profile was already in the leather case. So what do we know at this point.. 1900’s meant ivory, bone, or the like type of tenon. I don’t have any bone to use and didn’t really want to use ivory……but being a pipe maker I do have horn. I usually end up keeping the horn points after using the remainder of the material for a shank extension.

So horn it was to be. I shaped the tenon, drilled and set out to thread the tenon. I’m sitting with a 8mm tenon drilled to 4mm for the airway and went about threading the horn. Unfortunately it crushed under the pressure of my die, but I guess it only made sense… so I made another, except this time I threaded it first and then drilled it… And here is where the pictures come into play.

Threaded tenon, prior to drilling

And it fits just like it is supposed to. Looking right above the pipe you can see my trial delrin tenon with new threads.

Mouthpiece rough cut and drilled. The mortise is also threaded. I cleaned up the junction end before the next steps, so the fit would be flush

Epoxy’d and left to rest a while.

And it fits. So at least the scary parts are now done.

Drawing on the Cumberland to get my bearings at to decide where I want the saddle to sit. The line closest to the junction was chosen.

Time to sand a bit with a machine.

And done

Now it’s file time.

Now it’s sandpaper time.

And more sandpaper… I probably left a step or two out here…just to save the pictures, but my process is machine, medium cut file, fine cut file, another fine cut file, nail files, 180, 220, 320, 400, 600, 800, 1200 sandpaper, buffing paste, more sanding, high glass paste (Sometimes more sanding to remove scratches I missed) and a final buff. Here you can see the stem is bent to its final form.

And now it’s all shiny.

And here are the final pictures. Alan did the bowl, I did the stem and I have a pipe that is twice my age… gotta love it. Hope you enjoyed my story.

Restemming a Gift Pipe – a Savinelli Autograph 5

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On a recent work trip to Alberta I stopped by and visited Todd Bannard (aka Sasquatch) in his workshop. He did a bit of work on a Delrin sleeve for me and we smoked some bowls together. I left a couple of refurbished pipes with Todd and he gave me a Savinelli Autograph 5 bowl that needed to be restemmed. This afternoon I got around to fitting a stem to the pipe. The briar is a beautiful piece with a lot of gorgeous grain. The bottom of the bowl and the shank are sandblasted. The bowl has a plateau top and the shank took a flush fit stem. It had been barely smoked and certainly was not broken in. If it had been smoked one or two times that may be saying more than is true as the grain in the interior of the bowl is still quite visible. Below are some pictures of the bowl before I restemmed it.

I did research on the Savinelli Autographs to see what kind of stems they had and found a variety of them in pictures. About half of the photos showed a saddle stem with much the same proportions as the one that I chose to use. I went through my box of stems and found one that would approximate the look of the pipes online. I also wanted one that would fit after I turned the tenon. It would also take some minimal adjustment to the diameter of the saddle in order to align with the shank. I drilled open the airway to hold the guide pin on the Pimo tenon turner. I put it in the cordless drill and slowly cut away the diameter of the tenon until it was close to fitting in the shank.

I used a Dremel with a sanding drum to take down the tenon until it fit the shank. The next two photos show the newly cut tenon before I sanded it down to smooth out the marks left by the Dremel.

I sanded the tenon with 220 grit sandpaper and then with 1500 and 1800 micromesh sanding pads to smooth out the tenon. Once that was done the stem fit in the shank snuggly. In the four photos below the fit of the stem can be seen and the excess of vulcanite that needed to be trimmed away from the diameter is also visible.

I sanded the diameter with a Dremel and a sanding drum. I took off the casting marks left along the edges of the blade and on the sides of the saddle portion of the stem. I also used the Dremel to take off the excess diameter of the stem. I worked carefully and slowly along the joint of the stem and the shank so that I did not damage the briar with the sander. I was able to remove the majority of the overage with the Dremel and finished with sandpaper.

I sanded the Dremel marks out and further reduced the diameter with medium grit emery cloth. I sanded it until the fit was almost perfect. I would finish the fit with finer grits of sandpaper and the micromesh sanding pads later.

I set up a heat gun and the rolling pin I use to bend the stems next to it. I heated the stem with the heat gun set on the lower of the two settings. I held it over the heat until the vulcanite was flexible. At that point I bent the stem over the rolling pin in order to get an even bend in the vulcanite. Once it was bent to the angle I wanted I held it under the cold water tap in the sink to set the bend. The next four photos show the process and the resultant bend in the stem.

I took the newly bent stem back to the work table and did some more sanding on the diameter of the saddle to further match the shank. I used 220 grit sandpaper and a medium grit sanding sponge to clean up the stem and remove the scratch marks left behind by the emery paper. I scrubbed the bowl with Murphy’s Oil Soap and a soft bristle tooth brush to remove the dust and grit left in the sandblast portion and the plateau on the top of the bowl. I rinsed the bowl under warm tap water and dried it with a soft cotton cloth. I gave the bowl several coats of carnauba wax on the buffer before inserting the stem and giving it a light buff with red Tripoli. The next four photos show the status of the pipe and the new stem after the polishing on the buffer.

Next I sanded the stem with the micromesh sanding pads. I wet sanded it with 1500, 1800 and 2400 grit micromesh and then dry sanded with the remaining grits 3200-12,000.

When I had finished with the micromesh pads I gave the stem a coat of Obsidian Oil and rubbed it into the vulcanite. Once it was dry I buffed the stem and the bowl on the buffer lightly with White Diamond and then gave the pipe several coats of carnauba and buffed to a shine with a clean soft flannel buff. The pictures below show the finished pipe. It is now ready for the pleasure of breaking it in. I still have not decided what tobacco to use with it but there are several options on the table. I want to thank Todd for the great looking bowl to be restemmed and I will enjoy it and remember the visit to his shop.

A Unique Vertical Oval Shank Meerschaum Reborn

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I saw this old Meerschaum pipe bowl on Ebay and decided to put a low bid on it. I was not surprised to have won it and paid for it quickly. The seller packed it very well and shipped it off to Vancouver, Canada. Below are the Ebay photos that caught my attention. I think the thing that intrigued me the most was the vertical oval shank on the pipe. To restem that pipe would be a great challenge – find a stem large enough to work with and shape it until it fit. I thought I had just the stem in my box – a gift from a friend on Pipesmokers Unleashed Forum, Robert.

From the photos it looked to be in rough shape. The pipe case said it was a WDC but I have no way of knowing if that is true. The gold filigree on the band looks like the old WDC pipes of the late 1890s but I am still uncertain as to the maker. It was in rough shape as can be seen from the photos. There were many scratches and gouges around the outside of the bowl. The shank had marks on the top that looked like someone had taken a file to it. The rim was probably the worst. With the rough edges on the back right side of the bowl the rim/top appeared to be angled to the right side and worn down. The tar build up was heavy in the bowl and on the rim. The tenon was broken off in the shank. It appeared to be an old bone tenon and a bone insert in the mortise that was threaded to take the screw in tenon. I am assuming the pipe probably had an amber stem in its first appearance in the shop but that was long since broken and lost. The WDC case was also very rough – the edges were worn away, the wood broken and a hinge dangling unused. The inside was badly stained.

Yesterday afternoon I came home from work early and found a package awaiting me – I knew that the meer had arrived. I had to laugh when I cut open the box – it had a previous label a Funeral Home in Ohio. I don’t know if that was a commentary on the pipe bowl that resided inside the box or if a funny coincidence. I cut the tape and opened the box. The pipe inside was both in worse shape than I had imagined from the seller’s excellent pictures and in better shape. The meer under the band was cracked as can be seen in the photo above and that was as it was when it arrived. The scratches in the surface of the bowl were not as deep as they appeared in the photos and the pipe when place on the rim on a flat board was actually not slanted to the right – the damage to the outer edges of the right back side made it appear worse than it actually was in reality. The next photos show the pipe on the work table just out of the box.

After examining it carefully with my lens and a dental pick I decided to begin the clean up by trying to remove the tenon. I used the screw that I generally use to remove a tenon to no avail. The threads in the mortise were locked tight around the tenon. I picked at it with the dental pick and was unable to remove it that way either. I decided to drill out the old tenon. So I set up a cordless drill with a drill bit slightly larger than the airway in the broken tenon. I slowly drilled the airway with the bit and exchanged it for increasingly larger bits until I had the airway cleared of the debris. I then used a ¼ inch bit to open the mortise and clear out the remaining debris of the mortise and tenon. The second photo below shows the mortise after I opened it up. I used a dental pick to clean out the remaining pieces and hand turned the quarter-inch drill bit into the mortise to smooth out the walls of the airway and open it to receive a new tenon.

I took the pipe bowl back to the work table and set up a coarse sanding block on my worktable to top the bowl of the meer. I have used this block in the past with good success on the softer meerschaum material. I placed the bowl, rim down on the surface of the block and sanded it in a clockwise direction (no reason for that other than I am right-handed). I sanded it, checking often to see how the rim was cleaning up until the surface was clear and the top of the bowl once again level. Surprisingly I did not have to remove too much material from the rim to clean up the surface.

When I had finished the sanding, I used micromesh sanding pads to sand the top smooth once again and remove the scratches from the coarse sanding block. The micromesh sanding pads from 1500 – 12,000 grit bring a shine back to the surface of the meer and prepare it for rewaxing once the pipe is finished.

At this point in the process I decided to see if I could fit a new stem on the pipe. The diameter of the oval shank was quite large and would require a large diameter round stem. To make it an oval stem would require that much of the existing vulcanite of the stem would have to be removed in the shaping process. I had an old Brebbia stem that a friend on Pipe Smoker Unleashed Forum sent me for an old Peterson that I was restemming. The tenon was too small for the Pete but too large for the old meer. I used a Dremel with a sanding drum to remove the excess material from the tenon until the fit was very close. The remainder of the fitting was done with a wood rasp and sandpaper. Once the tenon was finished I pushed the stem into the old meer to check on the fit of the tenon in the newly opened mortise. As can be seen in the photo below, the fit was perfect. You can also see from that photo how much work would need to be done to fit the stem to match the shank of the pipe.

The stem had deep bite marks on the top and the bottom near the button. They did not break the surface of the vulcanite. I decided to heat the surface of the stem with a heat gun and try to lift the dents from both sides as much as possible. I also wanted to straighten the stem significantly to give a better profile to the pipe. The heat gun worked to achieve both aims. The tooth marks lifted quite a bit and would have to be filled with black superglue to finish the work and the bend straightened to the angle I wanted for the new stem.

I sanded the initial excess vulcanite off the diameter of the shank with the sanding drum on the Dremel. Once I had removed a large portion I took it back to the work table and used a rasp to continue to shape and reduce the stem to the right proportions. The next series of eight photos shows the effectiveness of the rasp in shaping the stem. (In the midst of the shaping my daughters brought down a bowl of popcorn for a snack while I worked – that appears in several of the photos.)

I removed the stem from the shank and cleaned up the tooth dents so that I could fill them with black superglue. The glue takes quite a bit of time to cure so I waited until I was finished for the evening and then filled the dents and set the stem aside to cure over night.

This morning I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper and also sanded the superglue patch on the underside of the stem. The next four photos show the stem as it begins to take shape and the repaired spot on the underside of the stem. The oval is coming along nicely but there was still a lot of excess material that still needed to be removed.

I continued to sand the stem to further tune the shape of the oval to match the shank. I used 220 grit sandpaper to remove the excess and shape the stem. I worked on the superglue patch on the underside of the stem with the 220 grit sandpaper as well. In the next series of three photos you can see the shape I am aiming for with this stem. You can also see the size of the patch on the stem. The patch is still larger than the marks it covers so more sanding will need to be done on it to blend it into the vulcanite.

I cleaned up the bite marks on the top of the stem and applied the black superglue patch to that surface as well. I set it aside while I worked on the bowl. I wiped the bowl down with Murphy’s Oil Soap on a cotton pad to clean off the grime on the surface while leaving as much of the old patina as possible. The first photo below shows the superglue patch. I applied it and used a dental pick to push it around the surface and also build up a few tooth marks on the edge of the button. The second photo below shows the patch after it had dried and I had sanded the patch with 220 grit sandpaper.

While working on the stem I decided to open the button to make it simpler to insert a pipe cleaner. I used needle files to make the slot larger. The second photo shows the opened slot in the button. I sanded the inside of the slot with a folded piece of sandpaper to smooth the surface and polish the slot.

I took the pipe back to the Dremel and sanding drum to remove more of the excess vulcanite. I had the basic shape in hand and just wanted to get it closer to the size of the shank before doing the finish sanding. I brought it back to the work table and sanded with 220 grit sandpaper until the fit was right. The next four photos show the progress in the fitting of the stem.

I sanded the stem with a medium grit sponge backed sanding pad. It helped to remove the scratches left behind by the 200 grit sandpaper. Then I sanded the stem with micromesh sanding pads from 1500-12,000 grit to polish and shine the vulcanite and the patched areas. The white Lucite band that was a part of the stem began to take on a shine as well in the process. The next nine photos capture what took about an hour to achieve in the sanding process. I wet sanded with the 1500, 1800 and 2400 grit sanding pads and dry sanded with the remaining grits of micromesh.

I buffed the stem with White Diamond and a blue plastic polishing compound to bring out the final shine on the stem. I hand waxed the meerschaum with beeswax and hand buffed it with a shoe brush. The next four photos show the finished pipe with the new stem. I like the marks and scratches in the meer as they seem to speak of the long journey the pipe took to get to me. The white Lucite band on the stem fits nicely in my thinking against the gold of the filigree band. The slight bend it the stem works nicely for me. From the last two photos you can see the oval shape of the stem now that it is completed. It has come a long way from the round stem I received as a gift from Ron.

Another Loose Stem Fix

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Blog by Greg Wolford

As I undertook this project I had no idea that Steve was writing and posting an article on tightening a loose stem. But when I saw it I figured that since this was a little different fix, and the pipe was already blogged about here, I would go ahead with the article.

If you have read the story of Big-Ben then you know I had to restem it. It was the first time I’d done this and the first use of my new tenon turning tool, too. So, in my haste and excitement I made a goof, one that Ric Farrah was kind enough to comment on: I had not cleaned the shank out real well before fitting the stem, leading to a loose new stem.

I tried beeswax and “smoking it in” but neither of these worked on this particular problem; as Steve noted often an application of beeswax and use will tighten up an estate pipe stem. But I suppose since this was just a goof on my part and the stem had not been for properly these solutions weren’t going to work.

I was aware of the tools sold for stretching a tenon, the pluses and minuses that Steve mentioned. But I wasn’t really inclined to buy one at this point, especially since I had another idea on what might work: a drill bit! So, since the two easy fixes failed I went down to the shop to try out this new-to-me idea.

I removed the stem from the pipe and checked the size of the air-hole against my set of drill bits. I thought I had drilled it out to 5/32 so this is where I started. However, I soon realized that I had drilled it at 9/64 so I took both of these sizes and the stem to the heat gun set up.

I almost always use leather gloves when I use my heat gun; things can get real hot, real quick. And since I was using steel drill bits I definitely wanted the hand protection. So, I donned the gloves and turned the heat gun on low to start stretching!

Now, the first thing I need to say here is when doing this you are inserting the blunt end of the bit that normally gets chucked into the tenon. The sharp end is the turning end, in your hand for this procedure. This part is very important.

I began to heat the tenon slowly, checking every several seconds on the progress; I only wanted it warmed enough to be slightly softened, not so soft that it could easily be deformed or badly bent. Keeping the tenon moving, I would take the smaller bit and try to insert it in the air hole until it went in. At this point I worked very gently to get the bit inside the tenon the entire length of the tenon, removing the bit/tenon from the heat. I kept the bit turning slightly while it was inside the hole so it wouldn’t stick. After about a minute I gently removed the bit and allowed the tenon to cool a few minutes before checking the fit, which ended up being too loose still. So, I picked up the larger bit and began the whole process over, this time resulting in a perfect fit: good and snug with no “play” or slipping but not too tight either. Finally, the new stem was fit properly!

I left of overnight and loaded it up the next morning, checking the for again; it was still perfect, like it had been made for it (a little humor there)! The pipe smoked good before the adjustment but it now smokes very well with a good fit on the stem, part of which I’m sure is in my head, not fussing or worrying about the bowl falling off.

I found this fix very simple and expect to use it again in the future: it was done with tools/items I had on hand and only required a bit of patience and slow going to do right. Of course if I’d applied that idea to turning the tenon to start with I wouldn’t have had to refit the the stem. But then I’d not have had the opportunity to try out this fix if I had done it right to start with either: I suppose that is the silver lining in this cloud of errors!

A New Look for a Duncan Hill Aerosphere

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Blog by Steve Laug

Over the years I have owned and sold several Duncan Hill Aerosphere pipes. The system on the pipes and the thinness of the bit always made the airway too tight for me and the draught sluggish at best. I have repaired several of them over the years as well and never found one that really worked well for me. Then in one of the lots I picked up on Ebay that needed new stems there was a Duncan Hill Aerosphere bowl without a stem. It had a wide open airway and was in decent shape. The bowl had a light cake and the rim was tarred but not damage. The bowl was still round and obviously the pipe had not been smoked very much. I figured it was an opportunity to restem it with a standard stem and see what I could get from it.

I tried two different stems on the pipe. The first was a flat blade saddle stem blank. I turned the tenon with a PIMO tenon turning tool and fit it to the pipe. I decided to put a nickel band on the shank for cosmetic purposes as I thought it would look good with the saddle stem. There were two problems with this fitting. The rustication pattern on the Duncan Hill made a smooth fit of the band virtually impossible and the gap around the shank did not work for me. The second issue was that the stem itself was just a few millimeters’ smaller in diameter than the shank. It was not noticeable except with the band it was accentuated. I removed the band and tried the stem without the band and it did not work well. I abandoned that option and went back to my can of stems to see what else I could find that might work in terms of both diameter and length.

For the second stem I found an older “pre-used” stem that worked in terms of length and diameter. I cleaned up the tenon and shortened it slightly and the fit was quite good. I left the band in place and tried to rusticate the band to match the bowl rustication. I heated it and used a scribing tool to carve it up to get the bowl finish look. I stopped that rustication process and worked on the stem fit. For some reason the stem taper on top and bottom did not match. With the fitting on the Duncan Hill bowl the angles at the top did not match the bottom. Reversing the stem made the stem fit even worse. The diameter needed slight adjustments to repair the taper and fit it well against the band.

I used a Dremel to take off material on the stem to adjust the taper to match on both the top and the bottom. I also used the Dremel to clean up the fit at the shank/band. I tried to mark the band with the Dremel in the process as well. I used a scribing tip and still did not get much more of finish than I had with the hand scribing tip. I did not like the look so I took the stem back to the worktable and sanded it to remove the scratches left behind by the sanding drum.

I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper, a medium grit sanding sponge and a fine grit sanding block to clean up the fit and also remove the scratches. The more I looked at it the less I liked the band. The area around the stem shank union looked terrible and the scribing merely looked like scratches. It was awful looking. I decided at this point to remove the band from the shank. I heated the band and slipped it off the shank. I cleaned up the light marks left by the band on the shank with micromesh sanding pads.

With the band off the pipe the tenon was too long for the stem to seat properly. This was not visible to me with the band in place. It felt tight but without the band there was a gap at the junction. I measured the tenon and found that I needed to remove some of the length on the tenon and also needed to countersink the mortise slightly. The countersink on the mortise is a slight bevel inward. I used a knife to bevel the inner edge of the mortise. Once the mortise was prepared and the tenon shortened to measure the stem fit tightly against the shank. I used 220 grit sandpaper and a medium grit sanding sponge to remove a little more of the diameter of the stem to clean up the junction. The two bands on the stem appear to be briar but are actually Cumberland/brindle inserts. I sanded the top of the bowl/rim and the colour matched the twin bands on the stem.

I sanded the stem with micromesh sanding pads from 1500-12,000 grit to remove the scratches on the vulcanite and polish the stem. I wet sanded with 1500-2400 grit micromesh pads and dry sanded with the remaining grits. Between 3600 and 4000 grit pads I polished the stem with Maguiars Scratch X2.0. It polished the stem considerably. I then finished sanding with the micromesh pads. While I sanded the stem with the micromesh I also sanded the rim to polish it. With each successive change of grit the rim and the twin bands on the stem began to truly match. The combination looked like it was factory designed to be a combination. I wiped the stem down with Obsidian Oil and set it aside for the evening. In the morning I rubbed the stem down and then waxed it with carnauba.

I gave the bowl a several coats of Halcyon II wax and buffed it with a shoe brush to raise the shine. I buffed the stem with carnauba several time to raise the shine as well. I then buffed the pipe with a soft flannel buffing pad. The finished pipe is pictured below. The look of the Duncan Hill with the banded stem that matches the rim is a great combination. The improved draught of the pipe is exactly what I was aiming for. The Duncan Hill Aerosphere pipe re-enters life with a new level of service to the pipeman who ends up with it in their collection.

Restemming the Peterson’s XL999 with a Cumberland Stem

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Blog by Steve Laug

I put out a request for a stem for a Peterson’s XL999 stem on various web forums I am on. I was sent several that almost worked but either the diameter of the tenon was wrong or that of the stem itself was off just a bit. I turned a tenon on a stem blank that was sent to me and made a nice looking black stem that I posted pictures of earlier on the blog https://rebornpipes.wordpress.com/2013/07/26/making-a-new-stem-for-a-petersons-kildare-xl999/ but Todd Bannard, who is a pipe maker in Alberta, Canada offered to cut a rough one for me from some rod stock he had available. He did not have black vulcanite but did have some Brindle or Cumberland stock. I sent him the rough dimensions of the stem – I needed tenon material that I could turn to ½ inches and I needed a piece of stock that was 7/8 inches or more in diameter to work with to match the shank. I have shaped stems from straight rod stock in the past so I was not too worried about doing that. However, I got an email from Todd saying the rod stock was ready and he was going to send it off. He sent the following two photos to me to show me what was coming. He did a lion’s share of the shaping work for me. I was amazed at how much work he had done on it. I needed only to turn the tenon and refine the shape and the button once it arrived. The Cumberland is vertical and swirling rather than horizontal and lined. It was intriguing looking and I was excited to see what I could do with it.

When it arrived I set up my PIMO tenon turning tool on a cordless drill to cut a tenon that was slightly over ½ inch which was the extent of the tools adjustment. I cut a slight step in the tenon first to get a rough idea on the setting on the tool (Photo 1 below). It was correct so I tightened the adjustments and and cut the new tenon for the stem (Photos 2 and 3 below). Once I had it turned close to size I used a Dremel with a sanding drum and gave it a once around sanding and fit the stem to the shank (Photos 4 and 5 below).

I used the Dremel with the sanding drum to also remove excess material from the stem at the shank stem junction. Afterward I sanded the stem with medium grit emery paper to remove the scratches and marks left by the Dremel. I followed up by sanding the stem with 220 grit sandpaper to further remove the scratches. The next series of four photos show the fit of the stem at this point in the process. The pattern of the Cumberland is also very visible. The pinkish swirls would polish into a reddish brown and the darker colour would be a dark brown fading into black throughout the length of the stem.

Once I had sanded the stem to the smoothness and fit pictured above I heated it to bend it to the finished shape. I set up the heat gun and held the stem over the tip until it was soft enough to bend. Cumberland like vulcanite bends quite easily. What made this one a bit harder was the thickness of the stem where I wanted to bend it. Once flexible I bent it over a rolling pipe and cooled it under running water to set the bend.

I continued to sand the stem with 220 grit sandpaper to get a better fit with the shank. I wanted the transition to be smooth between the two parts so it took a lot of hand sanding. I sanded it removed from the shank, checking often for the fit, until it was a smooth fit.

I sanded with a fine grit sanding sponge to smooth out the scratch marks more thoroughly and to also fine tune the fit. The next series of seven photos show that progress.

I worked on the button and slot with needle files to thin down the button and to also open the slot. The first photo below shows the slot and button before I started reworking it and shaping it. The second photo, though blurry, shows the button and slot after I had been working on it with the files and sandpaper. The button is thinner and the slot is beginning to open up. Photos three and four show the finished button and slot before buffing and polishing. The button is rounded and shaped, thinner than it originally was and the slot is oval and wide open. I used folded sandpaper to polish the inside of the slot and smooth out the edges. The fifth photo shows the profile of the button when I had finished working on it.

I sanded the stem with micromesh sanding pads from 1500-12,000 grit, with each successive grit giving the stem a more finished appearance and removing the scratches from the Cumberland. The next series of ten photos show the progressive shine developing. I included quite a few photos in this section to show the various sides of the stem and the developing clarity of the Cumberland patterns in the stem as it was sanded.

I took the pipe to the buffer and buffed the stem with White Diamond and Blue polish to further enhance the shine. I gave the entire pipe several coats of carnauba wax and buffed with a clean flannel buffing pad.

The photo below shows both of the stem that I turned and shaped for the pipe. The black vulcanite one is about ½ inch shorter than the Cumberland stem. Both look very good on the pipe and are comfortable in the mouth.

After staring at the pipe and handling it yesterday I was not happy with the stem shank union. There were some problems there with a slight taper to the shank that broke the smooth line of the pipe. I took it back to the work bench last night and did some more work on it. I will post the update later today.

Addendum
I took the pipe to work with me today and held it off and on while working on things and ran my fingers over the joint of the shank and the stem. There was a slight hip, with the shank tapering down slightly at the joint and breaking the flow of the lines of the pipe. It bugged me so when I got home I put it back on the worktable. I would have to deal with it and smooth things out. I knew it would take some more sanding and then refinishing the pipe and stem but so be it. I sat down and read the responses to my post regarding this pipe on Smokers Forums and also read my private messages. I had received a private message from bbqncigars (Wayne). I include his message in the paragraph below.

Steve,
Your restorations have been breathtaking. That said, I have a quibble with this pipe. The last 1/16″ or so of the shank exhibits a taper that is out of place with the lines of the rest of the pipe. This could be from over-buffing/sanding pressure on the end of the shank (BTDT). To restore the continuous line from the shank to the tip would require block sanding (might jeopardize the stamping) or removing the taper by shortening the shank. It’s a beautiful pipe and bit, but the bit/shank junction would drive me nuttier until I fixed it.

Yeah, I can be really anal about things I make that other people will see.

Wayne

I laughed when I read his words because they confirmed my own feelings and put into words some of my reserve regarding the restemming of this pipe. I looked at the pipe again and then wrote him back as follows:

Wayne
I agree with you totally! It bugs me as well. It forms a slight hip between the stem and the shank that really bugs me. I know that I am not finished yet either! The stummel came to me with a slight taper that was only clearly seen when there is a stem in place. The black stem has the same problem due to the shank. I have been contemplating hunting down a silver band to do deal with the issue and clean up the lines but we shall see. I could indeed block sand and may do that instead, we shall see. Thank you for your pm. I appreciate it as it has been bugging me.

Thanks
Steve

So after dinner this evening I decided to tackle the repair and remedy the situation. I used a pair of sanding blocks, one coarse and one fine to block sand the shank on the top and the bottom and more carefully along the sides of the shank around the stamping on the pipe. I sanded the briar and the stem material until the lines were smooth from the bottom of the bowl to the end of the stem and the same for the top. I worked on the sides to achieve the same thing. After sanding it with the coarse sanding block I sanded it with the fine grit block to remove the scratches.

I sanded the stem and shank with 1500-12,000 grit micromesh sanding pads to bring back a smooth finish to the stem and the shank. I heated the shank with a lighter to warm the briar, restained it with a dark brown aniline stain that I thinned with isopropyl alcohol – 1 part stain to 2 parts alcohol. I flamed the alcohol and continued to stain the shank until it matched the rest of the bowl on the pipe. I buffed it with White Diamond and then gave it several coats of carnauba wax and buffed it lightly with a soft flannel buff. Tomorrow morning I will give it a careful examination in the light of day and see where I go from there. Thanks Wayne for your help.

Restemming a Bruyere Krone Billiard

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I am just about finished restemming the lot of pipe bowls I picked up on EBay. This is one of the last two pipes that I have left in the lot below. It is the fourth pipe down in the left column. It has an interesting rustication pattern that reminds of one that is done on Saseini pipes. It is striated around the bowl and then tapers up from the bottom to a striated pattern around the shank. It has a flat bottom on the shank that is smooth and stamped Bruyere in a crown with a large R in the centre of the band on the crown. Underneath the crown is an unfurled banner that is stamped K R O N E. I have no idea of who the maker is or when and where it was made. The stamping is faint so I may be missing a few letters but I think this is an accurate rendering of what is stamped. The finish was pretty dirty with grime in the grooves on the bowl and shank. The rim was caked with a tarry buildup and the grooving on the rim was not visible. There were also place on the finish where the stain was missing and the briar underneath exposed. The inside of the bowl had dust and cob webs and a pretty large cake buildup that would need to be removed. The bowl came without a stem and fitting one would take flattening of the stem on the underside to match the shank.

I went through my box of estate stems and found one that was a good fit to the shank. Once the cleanup of the stem was done and a flattening of the underside of the stem the pipe would look like it came with that stem. The stem had a calcified buildup around the button and some tooth marks as well. The oxidation was not too bad but was present.

The clean angles of the button against the stem were gone so I recut them with needle files to clean up the edge. I reamed the bowl back to bare briar with a PipNet reamer starting with the smallest cutting head and progressing to the one that was the diameter of the bowl without the cake. Once it was cleaned out I scrubbed down the bowl with Murphy’s Oil Soap and a soft bristle tooth brush to remove the grime. I scrubbed the buildup on the rim with a soft bristle brass tire brush to remove the tars. Once I had scrubbed it I rinsed it with warm water to remove the soap and dried it off with a cotton towel. I wiped down the bowl with acetone on a cotton pad and prepared it to be stained. After heating it with a heat gun I stained it with a dark brown aniline stain. I used a permanent black marker to touch up the raw briar areas where it was scratched or damaged. I reapplied the stain and flamed it. The newly stained pipe is shown in photos 2 and 3 below.

I sanded the stem with medium grit emery paper to remove the calcification around the button and also heated the tooth marks with a Bic lighter to lift them as much as possible. I “painted” the surface of the stem with the flame to burn off the sulfur of the oxidation that I had loosened by sanding. I repaired the tooth marks on both sides of the stem with black superglue and set it aside to dry overnight.

The next morning I cleaned out the bowl and shank with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and Everclear. I sanded the stem and the superglue patch with 220 grit sandpaper and then with a medium grit sanding sponge to clean up the scratches in the finish. I put it back on the bowl to get an idea of the overall look of the pipe and see if the diameters of the stem fit the shank. I needed to flatten the bottom of the stem some more to match the bottom of the shank and also removed some more of the material on the diameter of both sides to bring it into line with the shank. Once the stem was well fitted I moved on to sanding with micromesh sanding pads from 1500-12,000 grit.

I buffed the stem with White Diamond and a Blue polish. I gave the bowl a light buff with White Diamond to bring up the shine. I gave the bowl a coat of Halcyon II wax and buffed it by hand with a shoe brush. I gave the stem multiple coats of carnauba and buffed it on the buffer with a clean flannel buff. I think the pipe came out well. Does anyone know anything about the brand?

Making a New Stem for a Peterson’s Kildare XL999

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The Peterson’s Kildare is the second pipe down in the left column in the photo below. The second and third photos are of the pipe bowl apart from the lot. The externals were in pretty decent shape but the rim has a heavy buildup of tars and the cake in the bowl is quite thick and hard. To give an idea of the thickness of the cake I was unable to put my little finger in the bowl. The shank was quite large – the tenon is ½ inch in diameter for a snug fit in a clean tenon. The shank itself is 7/8 inches in diameter. It is a large mortise and airway. The pipe is stamped Peterson’s “Kildare” on the left side of the shank and Made in the Republic of Ireland XL999 on the right side of the shank. The finish is quite clean. The top will need to be topped to remove the buildup and dents. I also will need to chamfer the inner edge of the rim to repair the damage that is present on the surface of the rim.

I reamed the pipe with a PipNet Reamer beginning with the smallest cutting head on the T handle and working up to the diameter of the bowl. I carefully ream the cake so as not to damage the bowl roundness or the inner edge of the rim any more than it already is. I emptied the carbon out of the bowl repeatedly until it was clean and empty. I reamed the cake back to bare wood to begin to rebuild on a clean surface. I scoured the bowl and shank with Everclear and cotton swabs and pipe cleaners.

Once the inside was clean I decided to gently top the bowl. I used a medium grit sanding sponge flat on the table top and worked the rim against that to remove the buildup of tars. The first photo shows the set up and the second the result of the topping. Very little briar was removed from the rim, mostly tars. The finish however also was removed so the rim would need to be restained. The third photo shows how I used a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to bevel/chamfer the inner rim to repair the damage that had been done to the rim.

I sent out several emails and private messages to folks on the online forums to see if I could find a Peterson stem with these dimensions. I received many answers and several possible stems that could work for this pipe. Thanks to those who sent them. For the most part they were either too long or the diameter of the stem was not large enough to fit the shank. Chuck (desertpipe on SF) sent me several that would work. I also have a piece of brindle rod coming that Todd (Sasquatch on SF) was willing to cut for me. So in the end I will have two different stems for the pipe. While awaiting the arrival of the Cumberland stock I decided to turn the tenon on a vulcanite stem blank from Chuck. I turned it with a PIMO tenon tool and fit it to the bowl. The end fit was a ½ tenon for the mortise so I did not need to remove much of the existing vulcanite on the cast stem to make it fit well. To fit the stem on the tool I drilled the airway so that it slid easily over the pin on the tool but did not have too much play. I held the stem and ran the drill over the tenon for a first pass (second photo below) I adjusted the cutting tip and spun it several more times until the fit in the mortise was close. I used the Dremel with a sanding drum to take off more of the material and fine tune the fit (third photo below). I spun it one last time to clean up the face of the stem where it sat against the shank. I want that surface to be smooth and seamless in its fit.

After fitting the tenon to the mortise I used the Dremel with a sanding drum to remove the excess vulcanite on the diameter of the stem. I carefully sand with the Dremel and bring the stem as close to the diameter of the shank as possible without nicking the briar. I also sand down the sides of the stem to remove the casting overrun on the stem and button. The idea is to get as close as possible to the stem diameter and then sand the rest of the fit by hand with medium grit emery cloth and 220 grit sandpaper.

I took the pipe back to my work table and removed the stem and sanded it until the fit was perfect and the marks left by the Dremel were gone. The hand sanding is probably the longest part of the process of fitting a new stem. I sanded it repeatedly with emery paper and 220 grit sandpaper until it was smooth enough to move to the next step in the process. At this point I am not looking for a smooth and perfect fit but one that is getting close. I then heat the stem with my heat gun in order to bend the stem to fit the flow of the pipe. I heated it until it was pliable and then bent it over the rolling pin and cardboard tube that I use for getting the curve of the stem smooth and correct.

I took the pipe back to my table and showed it to my sidekick and helper, Spence for his approval. He gave it a sniff and looked it over. It passed his inspection so I continued to sand and shape the shank/stem union. Lots of pieces of sandpaper and emery paper later the stem is getting closer and closer to a good fit.

The button was very tight and I was not able to push a pipe cleaner through the slot so I opened the slot with needle files and reshaped it into an oval that was open and flared back to the airway in the stem.

I sanded the stem with a medium grit sanding sponge and a fine grit sanding sponge to remove the scratches left behind by the sandpaper. Each step of sanding brought both the fit and finish closer to the look I was aiming for with the finished stem.

I wiped the bowl down with acetone on a cotton pad to remove the finish and prepare the bowl for a new coat of stain. I have found that if I do not remove the stain then it is very hard to match the rim to the colour of the bowl. With the finish gone the staining is very simple.

I thinned the stain, a dark brown aniline stain, with isopropyl alcohol – 1 part stain to two parts alcohol. I had picked a stain that matched the previous colour of the bowl and also matched another 999 Peterson that I have here. I heated the surface of the bowl with my heat gun to warm the briar and open the pores in the wood. Once it was warmed I applied the stain with a cotton swab and repeated until I had good coverage over the entire surface. I flamed the stain, repeated the application and flamed it a second time. Once it was dry I took it to the buffer and gave it a light buff with White Diamond to even out the stain coverage and remove the excess on the surface of the briar. I wiped down the inside of the bowl where the stain ran in with a cotton swab dipped in Everclear.

With the bowl finished and ready to buff it was time to finish the work on the stem. I sanded it with micromesh sanding pads. I wet sanded with 1500-2400 grit and dry sanded with 3200-12,000 grit. Each successive grit brought more of a shine to the stem and removed the scratches left behind by previous sanding.

I worked on the slot with a folded piece of sandpaper to smooth out the surface of the inside. I also shaped it with the sandpaper until I had the look I wanted. The oval slot now easily took a pipe cleaner no matter how fluffy.

After much sanding and fitting, the vulcanite stem is finished. The pipe is smokeable while I wait for the Cumberland/brindle rod stock to come from Todd. I like the look and feel of the pipe as it is very close in size and design to the GBD 9438 with a tapered stem. The finished pipe is pictured below after buffing with multiple coats of carnauba wax and with a clean flannel buff.

Big Ben Freehand: Re-Stemmed and Reborn

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Blog by Greg Wolford

This stummel was gifted to me by a friend from Louisiana. We met via one of the pipe smokers forums probably near a year ago and he recently sent me two stemless pipes, this one and one I have yet to get to, to restore. These are interesting pieces, in my opinion, because of their history, a little of which I will share with you before I get into the “meat and potatoes” of the work.

RJ, my friend, inherited a large quantity of pipes, near 100 if memory serves me. They were given to him by an aunt, I think it was, after her father passed away. Her father was Major in the US Army and served overseas in World War 2 (again, some of these details may be a tad off but they are close enough for our purposes). He was an avid pipe smoker and acquired many of his pipes while deployed overseas.

The Major’s wife was involved in a serious car accident many years ago. Her injuries were serious, leaving her with diminished mental, and to a lesser extent, physical capabilities. THe Major, as they affectionately called the man, took care of her himself after this accident. Sadly, the Major began to develop Alzheimer’s with dementia in his latter years, though he continued to care for his beloved wife; they were separated from their daughter, who gave the pipes to RJ, by miles, geographically.

The Major called his daughter the day after Valentine’s Day, 2005, and told her, quite confusedly, that her mother had gone missing. After much questioning, she called the police, local to her parents, and they dispatched a unit to the couple’s home. Shortening the story some, the Major had, in a state of mental confusion brought on by his disease, killed his wife. He was never found competent to stand trial for the killing of his wife 50-years. As far as I understand it, he was in a mental hospital for the rest of his life. A tragic story to be sure but an interesting one to go along with these unique pipes!

When the stummel arrived it was dull and dirty and, as I said, without a stem. The bottom of the pipe is stamped “Big-Ben” over “Handmade” and the stamping is pretty good overall. Doing a quick search on http://pipephil.eu, it seems that the Big-Ben brand is a brand of the Elbert Gubbels & Sons -Royal Dutch Pipe Factory. Here are a few photos of it before I began any work.

I actually began this restoration with the stem, finding the pipe a new one that is. I had planned on using an acrylic stem but changed my mind for a couple of reasons: I was turning my first tenon with my brand new Pipe Makers Emporium tenon turner and know that acrylic is more finicky than vulcanite and I thought, after looking at it, that the rubber stem would look better on this stummel.

The PME tenon tool is, by all accounts, essentially the same tool as the one offered by PIMO. I chose the PME tool because it was about $10 cheaper and they happened to have a couple of acrylic stems I liked on clearance for cheap. I plan on writing about my thoughts on the tool in a separate article.

I choose a pre-formed Italian ebonite freehand-style stem for this stummel. To my eye it looked like it would be something very close to what the pipe would have originally had. I took my time turning the tenon down to fit since it was the first time I had done this and I didn’t have another stem like this one to use if I fouled up. After I got the tenon very close with the tool I hand sanded the tenon to get to the final fit; I know from reading Steve’s articles that it is easy to over-turn a tenon and you can’t put the material back on once it is gone! Here is a photo of the stem placed in the stummel after getting it fit:

I decided to not bend the stem until after I had sanded and polished it. In retrospect, I probably should have bent it before I did all the sanding; there are some very small “marks” on the stem where the bend is now that I had not anticipated. Next time I will bend after the initial sanding is done I think,

I began the sanding with 220 grit sandpaper to take out the casting/molding lines on the sides. I forgot to photograph the stem before I had started to sand it. This shows it early on and beside a smaller ebionite stem from the same lot to try to give you an idea of what the lines looked like from the start:

I sanded out the marks with 220 then 320 grit paper. The stem had some, but not many, small sots on it that made me decide to go head and use the 320 wet/dry paper on the entire stem. I progressed to 400 grit wet/dry and then micro mesh 1800 through 12000 (I also used the plastic polish several times between grits to make sure I wasn’t missing any scratches). Here is a progressive photo along the way from rough through 12000 grit micro mesh.

The stem didn’t fit flush at the top and bottom due to the angle of the shank so I had to do a considerable amount of file work to get it almost completely flush to the shank on the top and bottom. At this point I stopped working on the stem and turned my attention to the stummel.

I wiped the pipe down with an alcohol soaked cotton pad. There was little wax left on the pipe and the wipe down removed what remained as well as some surface dirt. While the pipe was wet with the alcohol I could see there was a nice grain hiding under there, one that I hoped to bring out with a contrast stain. But first it would need an alcohol bath. So, I soaked the stummel a couple of in an alcohol bath. When I removed it I realized that the rim had a lot of build up on it; the rim, I thought, was stained black but that was just dirt, grime, and tar, and it was actually not stained black. I then scrubbed the rim with a brass bristle brush lightly to loosen the grime, with not a lot of success so I put the pipe back in the alcohol bath and left it overnight. The next afternoon I removed it from the bath and wiped it down then took it over another container of alcohol that I use for cleaning and dipped in my wire brush and started to scrub gently again. This time I saw much more removal of grime; the extra time in the alcohol has paid off in really softening the buildup. I switched to a toothbrush and scrubbed out all the remaining grime. I found that there were some rim char under there that the gunk had hidden. Below is a photo of before and after the 12-plus hour soak and scrubbing.

The charring made me decide that the rim would need to be stained black now. The large shank end was stained black so this would match and look good I was sure. But there was also a fairly large burn on the back, left side of the bowl that would have to be addressed. There were two fairly large fills near the burn but I didn’t plan on removing and/or refilling them; I planned on leaving them and seeing how they covered with the contrast stain. I had recently read a post suggesting that fills should be done with carbon dust, not briar dust, and super glue. The idea was that the pipe would darken over time with use and the black fills would blend in more naturally. I don’t know if that is a fact but I thought on this pipe I would stain the existing fills black and see how it ended up looking. Here are a few photos:

It was at this point that I decided to clean and ream the pipe. Knowing this pipe had more or less been in retirement for almost a decade, I expected it probably would be fairly dirty; I was right. The alcohol bath had softened the cake some, I suspect, and it was fairly thick and not very even so reaming was definitely in order. I used a Castleford reamer to do the job, using the second largest bit to ream the bowl; the two smaller sizes didn’t touch the cake in this large bowl. After reaming I began to clean the shank, which was terribly gunked up. I used the drill bit-tool on my Kleen-Reem to open up the shank, both with and without pipe cleaners on it. After many pipe cleaners, both on the drill bit and doubled over off of the bit, I finally decided that I needed to do an alcohol and cotton ball treatment; this is the same as a salt and alcohol treatment only you use cotton balls instead of salt. I put two large cotton balls in the bowl and, using an old medicine syringe, I filled the bowl with 91% isopropyl alcohol. Then I took the syringe and filled the shank; since this pipe is a sitter with such a large shank this idea worked very well and was quite easy to do. I topped off the bowl with a bit more alcohol and left it till morning. This is what the cotton balls looked like when I came back the next day:

The photos don’t really show how much tar leached out into them; they were really quite brown. The shank was much cleaner now as I went back to it, only taking less than a dozen pipe cleaners to get it clean now.

Back to the burn on the bowl, I started out with some course emery boards to remove some of the charred area. I had three different grits, from a package I bought at the local dollar store, and I worked through all three grits on it. The burn mark was reduced in size a fair amount but would need more, which I planned on doing with sandpaper. I thought the emery boards would be a good way to keep the more coarse sanding confined to a smaller area and it seemed to work fairly well.

From here I went to 220 grit paper and got out the biggest part of the burn, feathering out the sanding a little, too. I then went to 320 wet/dry paper and sanded the entire pipe, except for the bottom; I didn’t want to sand any where the nomenclature was if I could keep from it. I then moved up to 400 wet/dry paper, wiping ever so often with an alcohol pad to see how the pipe looked, making sure it was smooth and scratch free. After I got the pipe to where I thought it would be good I took it to the buffer and buffed it with black compound; I find that this buffing highlights any small scratches or dents that may have been missed during the sanding. Here is what the pipe looked like at this point:

I saw one small scratch I had missed so I took the 400 grit paper to it and got that one out, along with lightening the burn mark a bit more. Now it was time to bend the stem.

I heated the stem with my heat gun on low until it was pliable, after putting a pipe cleaner in the stem to keep from closing off the airway accidentally. I had set up my maul as my bending guide on my table. I heated and bent it and eyeballed it; it wasn’t quite what I wanted. So, I heated it again and bent it a little more and looked it over carefully; now it was more to my liking:

I used Fiebing’s USMC Black leather dye to the rim and shank end, since I knew these would need deeper penetration of color since they would remain black. I applied the stain, flamed it in and then repeated. I then heated up the stummel, setting the stem aside, to start the contrast staining. I got the stummel nice and warm, wearing leather gloves to protect my hand. I then applied the dye to the entire pipe, flamed and repeated. Next I hand buffed the pipe with an old cotton t-shirt leaving it at this point:

After the pipe had cooled for 10-15 minutes and was no longer warm I began to sand off the black; I wanted to remove the majority of the black but leave it in the grain areas as much as possible. I also wanted to try to blend in the burn as much as possible. I sanded and wiped it clean with a dry cotton pad until I thought I was getting close to where I wanted it to be; I didn’t want to use an alcohol pad until I had to in order to not lift any stain that I wanted left on the pipe. I think I sanded it over about three times before I wiped it with an alcohol pad. As the dust came off the alcohol wet pipe began to look more like what my mind’s eye had thought it would:

Now I applied a brown stain that I had mixed up earlier for another project; to be honest, I don’t recall what color I used or what I diluted it to. I applied the stain, flamed and repeated. After buffing it off with the old t-shirt I realized it was too dark for what I had wanted so I took an alcohol pad to it and removed some stain. But it was still too dark so back to the 400 grit I went. I sanded it over, wiped with an alcohol pad, and repeated until I was happy with the color; I think it took about four cycles to get it where I left it. I then buffed it off with the t-shirt one last time before heading to the buffer.

I buffed the stummel with Tripoli and then the stummel and stem, separately due to the way this pipe is made, with white diamond. Both parts then got several coats of carnauba wax, buffed on a clean soft wheel and finally hand buffed with my flannel gloves; I don’t know the flannel glove-buff is needed but it seems it adds a little “something” though it may only be in my head. But since it only takes a few extra minutes, and gets any stray threads of the pipe that the wheel may have left, I almost always finish this way.

I am really happy with how this old pipe came out. The new stem was a success, both in fitting it and in the look, and I really like how the contrast staining came out. The rim looks much better now stained black with dye not tar. The fills didn’t hold the stain as well as I’d hoped but are much less noticeable now. And the and burn mark is almost invisible, which really pleases me. The only thing that I am not happy about, really confused about more than unhappy, is that the stem has loosened from the tight fit it had the day I turned it. I don’t know if the humidity (it had been extremely humid here the last two weeks), the alcohol soak, the extended time of separation for stem and stummel or what caused that. Hopefully a few days seated together and/or some use will remedy that. If not, I’ll likely heat and gently expand the tenon a tad to get the fit better. At any rate, here is the final result:

Italian Made Sandblasted Canadian Brought Back to Life

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This pipe is another that came in that EBay lot of bowls that I purchased. Once I was finished with this one I have two more left to restem. It is a large oval shanked pipe with a large bowl. The sandblast is not deep and is particularly shallow on the shank where it meets the stem. The bowl was heavily caked and the finish was dirty and faded. There was a deep divot out of the left side of the bowl toward the bottom. It was a chipped out spot that looked like the pipe had been knocked hard against something when it was dropped. There was also a chip on the edge of the front right side of the outer rim. It is pictured below in the first photo and is the first pipe in column one on the left. The second photo shows the state of the bowl when I started working on it. The cake was hard and thick.

I sorted through my box of stems and found a wide oval stem blank that would fit the curves and width of the shank. The first photo below shows the new stem before any work was done on it. The second photo below shows the tenon being turned on the PIMO tenon turning tool. I removed enough material from the tenon to get it close to fitting. I hand sanded it to get a snug fit in the shank. The tenon turner literally peels the vulcanite back to the right diameter. The third photo below shows the newly turned tenon before the hand sanding to fit it in the shank. The fourth photo shows the fit of tenon. It still needed to be shaped to match the diameter of the shank but the fit was good and tight.

I removed the excess of vulcanite and shaped the stem close to the diameter of the shank with a Dremel with a sanding drum. I carefully worked the drum against the stem and worked to get it as close to the shank shape as possible without damaging the shank. Once I had it close I worked on the fit with emery paper to remove the marks left by the sanding drum. The next series of four photos show the shaping of the stem to fit the shank with the Dremel and the emery paper.

I reamed the bowl with a PipNet reamer. I started with the smallest head on the T handle and worked my way up to the largest head that would fit the bowl. The next series of three photos shows the reaming of the bowl and the finished reamed bowl.

I cleaned out the divot on the side of the bowl with a dental pick and then packed in briar dust with a dental pick and added drops of super glue. I created a briar dust and super glue fill for the divot. The next series of five photos show the progress of the patch. Once it was filled and even with the surrounding area I used a dental pick to scratch in grooves and crevices to match the sand blasted finish of the surrounding bowl. I wiped down the surface with Everclear and scratched the surface until the finish matched.

I wiped down the entire bowl with acetone on a cotton pad to clean up the finish on the bowl and prepare if for the new stain that I would add once the surface was clean. Note how well the patch on the left side of the bowl matched the grain of the sand blast on the rest of the bowl in first photo below.

I chose to restain the bowl with a dark brown aniline stain that I thinned with two parts isopropyl alcohol to one part stain. From experimenting I had found that this colour matched the original stain on the bowl. I heated the bowl with a heat gun, applied the stain, flamed it and stained and flamed it a second time. I put more stain on the shank near the stem as the smoother portion of the finish seemed to not hold the stain as well as the blasted areas. There had also been a black under stain on the bowl from the original and the thinned dark brown worked well with that under stain to give some depth to the finish of the bowl. I hand buffed the bowl with a shoe brush to give it the initial shine.

I sanded the stem with micromesh sanding pads from 1500-12,000 grit to polish the stem. Each successive grit of micromesh deepened the shine of the stem. Between the 2400 and the 3200 grit micromesh I polished the stem with Maguiar’s Scratch X2.0 – a plastic polish that I have used to polish stems. I then sanded with the remaining grits of micromesh.

After sanding, I buffed the bowl and stem on the buffer with White Diamond and then gave the stem several coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel. I used Halcyon II wax on the sandblasted finish on the bowl and shank. I finished the pipe by buffing it with a clean flannel buff to raise the shine of the wax. The finished pipe is pictured below.