Tag Archives: refinishing

Restoring a 1967 Dunhill Shell Briar 659F/T 4S Saddle Stem Billiard

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Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table is a Dunhill Group 4 Shell Briar Saddle Stem Billiard that is proportionally well done. It has a three digit the shape number that I will define below. Jeff and I purchased a group of pipes on 04/26/2022 from a woman who contacted us from Cleveland, Ohio, USA. They had belonged to her husband’s father. We spent time chatting with her and arrived at a price and she sent the pipes to Jeff. It included 28+ pipes including this one.

This Dunhill Billiard is stamped on the underside and reads 659F/T followed by Dunhill over Shell Briar followed by Made in England7 (two lines). A circle 4 followed by S is stamped on the flat underside of the saddle stem. The numbers and stamping tell me that the pipe is a Shell Briar and the size is a Group 4. The F/T refers to the Fish Tail style stem. The finish was very dirty with spots of grime and debris stuck on it. The bowl had a thick cake in the bowl and heavy lava overflowing onto the rim top. The rim top and inner edge appeared to have some damage. The stem had calcification, oxidation and tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. The button itself appeared to be in good condition. Jeff took photos of the pipe before he started his clean up work on it.He took photos of the bowl and rim top to show the condition. You can see the thick cake in the bowl and rim top and edges. The lava is so thick that is hard to know what the edges and top look like underneath. The sandblast on the rim top is also completely filled in with tar and lava. The stem was heavily oxidized, calcified and has tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. Overall the pipe is a real mess. Jeff took photos of the sandblast finish around the bowl sides and heel. It was nice looking if you can see through the grime ground into the rugged, deep blast. He took photos of the stamping on the underside of the bowl, shank and stem. The stamping is readable but filthy. It reads as noted above.Now it was time to begin to work on the stamping on the pipe. Pipedia had some great information on the Shell Briar finish and dates and how the finish was made (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill#Bruyere). The first quote below give the short version of the finish. I quote from both below.

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

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

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

With that information clear for me I wanted to identify the shape number and try to pin that down (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill_Shape_Chart). I turned to the section on the older 3 digit Shape Numbers and read it. I quote it below.

3-digit system – A 3-digit system (“Interim”) was developed that showed a logical approach to identify pipes in terms of size, mouthpiece, and shape, with the 1st digit being the size, the 2nd digit the mouthpiece, and the 3rd digit the shape, i.e. the old “85” became a “321” which was a group 3 Apple with taper mouthpiece. This was soon to be replaced by a more detailed, formal 4- and 5-digit system around 1978.

This interim numbering system is a bit confusing as the next paragraph and picture will illustrate. It says that the first digit is the size which in this case should have been a 6 but the pipe is stamped with a size 4 number. The second digit is supposed to point to the mouthpiece which is not clear to me. The third digit refers to the shape but again that is not clear. The paragraph below states that the shape number 577 has no special meaning accept for it being the model for that particular pipe.

The first image on the right, (with the shape number 577)  falls into this system, so 577 has no special meaning apart from describing/ being the model for that particular pipe shape (in this case a specific group 2 Billiard with saddle mouthpiece). Around 1973, with the introduction of computers, new categories were introduced that indicated size, mouthpiece, and shape. As for the “T”, in 1952 a full-size “T” was added after the circled group size stamp to further describe the Tanshell finish (in 1953 the “T” was reduced to about half the size). So this pipe dates from 1952.

With the information on the 3 digit stamp not making clear enough the meaning of the number I turned to another link on Pipedia (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill_Shapes_List) to a shape list that Eric Boehm put together for Dunhills. It is amazing to see the sheer number of variations on the Billiard shape. I copied the three of the three digit numbers in the list as it includes the shape 659 Billiard.

Billiards:

659 Billiard, saddle bit 4 5½” 1950, 1969 3

660 Billiard, saddle bit 4 5½” 1950, 1969 3

710 Billiard, tapered bit 4 5½” 1950, 1969 3

659F/T Billiard with a saddle bit. (This is the pipe I am working on. It is a tapered bit Billiard with an F/T or Fish Tail bit.)

I turned next to dating the pipe. There is a 7 following the D in ENGLAND on the right side of the shank. I turned to the dating chart on Pipephil to pin down the date on this twin (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/cledat-en1a.html). I did a screen capture of Part 2 of the Dunhill Dating Key and included it below. I drew a red box around the section dating this pipe. It is clear that the pipe was made after 1954 so that is why I went to Part 2. Once again, because the year suffix is a 7 that is the same size and on line with D in England that tells me that the pipe was made in 1960+7 for a date of 1967.Armed with that information I turned to work on the pipe itself. Before he sent it to me, Jeff had done an amazing job cleaning the pipe. It almost looked like a different pipe after his work. He reamed the pipe with a PipNet pipe reamer and removed the rest of it with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He scrubbed the bowl with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap with a tooth brush. He rinsed it under running warm water to remove the soap and grime. He cleaned out the inside of the shank and the airway in the stem with isopropyl alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. He soaked the stem in Briarville’s Pipe Stem Deoxidizer and then rinsed it off with warm water. He scrubbed the stem with Soft Scrub and a tooth brush and rinsed it off with warm water. It looked amazing when I took it out of the package of pipes he shipped me. I took photos of the pipe before I started my part of the restoration work. The rim top was cleaner and the inner edge of the bowl looked rough. There was burn damage all the way around but heavier on the front and the back of the bowl on the top and inner edge. The bowl was slightly out of round. The stem surface looked good with the oxidation gone and light but visible tooth chatter on either side of the stem.  I took a photo of the stamping on the underside of the shank and the saddle portion of the stem. It is clear and readable as noted above.I took the stem off the shank and took a photo of the parts of the pipe. The overall look of the pipe is quite nice.I started my portion of the work on this pipe by addressing the damage to the inner edge of the bowl. I used a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the edge and give it a slight bevel to deal with the chipping and cutting on the inner edge. It cleaned up remarkably well. With polishing and buffing it would look even better.I used an Walnut Stain Pen to restain the rim top and the inner bevel of the rim edge. Once it dried I buffed it with a cotton cloth and the match was very good. It looked much better with the work on the rim edge.The bowl looked very good at this point so I rubbed it down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the surface of the bowl and shank with my fingertips and a horse hair shoe brush to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I let the balm sit for about 10-15 minutes and buffed with a cotton cloth to raise the shine. I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. I “painted” the surface of the vulcanite stem with the flame of the lighter. I was able to lift almost all of the tooth marks and chatter except one on the top side that I needed to fill in with drop of clear CA glue. I sanded the repair and the remaining tooth chatter with 220 grit sandpaper. I started polishing the stem with 400 grit wet dry sandpaper to start the polishing.I polished the vulcanite stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. I used Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine to further polish the stem and gave it a final coat of Obsidian Oil to finish it. This Deeply Sandblasted Dunhill Shell Briar 659F/T Saddle Stem 4S is a great looking pipe now that it has been restored. The rich Shell Briar sandblast finish that highlights the grain and works well with the polished vulcanite stem. I put the stem back on the bowl and carefully buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel using a light touch on the briar. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing the entire pipe with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished Dunhill Shell Briar Saddle Stem Billiard is a Group 4 size pipe that will be a great smoker. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 ½ inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 34 grams/1.20 ounces. I will be adding the pipe to the British Pipemakers Section of the rebornpipes store shortly. If you are interested in adding it to your collection be sure to let me know. I take a moment to remind myself and each of us that we are trustees of pipes that will outlive us and the lives of many other pipe men and women who carry on the trust of their care and use. Thanks for reading this blog and my reflections on the pipe while I worked on it.

Restoring Another Lovely 1958 Dunhill Root Briar 34F/T 2R Billiard

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Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table is another Dunhill group 2 sized Billiard. It is a small Root Briar Billiard that is proportionally well done. It has a two digit the shape number that I will define below. It is identical in stamping, shape, size and condition to the previous Root Briar 34F/T I worked on yesterday (https://rebornpipes.com/2022/05/27/168579/). Jeff and I purchased the pipes on 04/26/2022 from a woman who contacted us from Cleveland, Ohio, USA. We spent time chatting with her and arrived at a price and she sent the pipes to Jeff. It included 28+ pipes along with this one.

This Dunhill Billiard is stamped on the left side and reads 34 F/T followed by Dunhill over Root Briar and on the right side is stamped Made in England8 (two lines) followed by a circle 2 followed by R. The numbers and stamping tell me that the pipe is a Root Briar and the size is a Group 2. The F/T refers to the Fish Tail style stem. The finish was very dirty with spots of grime and debris stuck on it. The bowl had a thick cake in the bowl and heavy lava overflowing onto the rim top. The rim top had burned area on the left front top and inner and outer edges. There was darkening and burn damage on the inner edge all the way around. There were burn marks toward the back of the rim top. The stem had calcification, oxidation and tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. The button itself appeared to be in good condition. The pipe came to us in a meerschaum pipe case (just like is twin). The case was not original. Jeff took photos of the pipe before he started his clean up work on it. He took photos of the bowl and rim top to show the condition. You can see the thick cake in the bowl and the burn damage on the rim top and edges of the bowl. It is the kind of damage that come from repeated lighting in the same place. The stem was heavily oxidized, calcified and has tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. Overall the pipe is a real mess. Jeff took photos of the grain and finish around the bowl sides and heel. It was nice looking if you can see through the grime ground into the finish. He took a photo of the stamping on the left side of the shank. There is no photo of the right side stamping that gives the Made in England date code. The stamping is readable but filthy.Now it was time to begin to work on the stamping on the pipe. Because I had just finished working on a twin to this pipe I used the information that I had dug up on that one. I quote below.

Pipedia had some great information on the Root Briar finish and dates and how the finish was made (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill#Bruyere). The first quote below give the short version of the finish. I quote from both below.

Root Briar – Introduced in 1931 and highly prized because the grain is more pronounced in this finish (usually made using Corsican briar – was made exclusively from that briar into the 60s). The Root Briar finish requires a perfectly clean bowl with excellent graining. Therefore, it is the most expensive of the Dunhill pipes. Corsican briar was most often used for the Root finish since it was generally more finely grained. This is a rare finish, due to the scarcity of briar suitable to achieve it. These pipes are normally only available at Company stores, or at Principle Pipe Dealers. Straight grained pipes were formerly graded A through H, but are now only “Dr’s” and graded with one to six stars, with the letters G and H still used for the very finest pieces.

“Dunhill introduced its third major finish, the Root finish, in 1931. Corsican mountain briar is characteristically beautifully grained and the Root was made exclusively from that briar into the 1960s. The pipe was finished with a light natural stain to allow the beauty of the graining to show through. Although always available with a traditional black vulcanite bit, the Root was introduced in either 1930 or more likely 1931 and fitted with a marble brown dark and light grained vulcanite bit that has since become known as the ‘bowling ball’ bit because of the similarity in appearance between the bit’s finish and that of some bowling balls of the time. With the war, however, the bowling ball bit was dropped from production. Through 1954 (and after) the Root pipe nomenclature (including shape numbers) was identical to that of the Bruyere except that instead of the “A” of the Bruyere, the Root was stamped with an “R”. In 1952 when the finish rather then LONDON was placed under DUNHILL, ROOT BRIAR rather then BRUYERE was used for the Root.” Loring, J. C., The Dunhill Briar Pipe, The Patent Years and After (self-published, Chicago, 1998).

With that information clear for me I wanted to identify the shape number and try to pin that down (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill_Shape_Chart). I turned to the section on the older 2 digit Shape Numbers and read it. I quote it below and added a chart on the numbers.

The original skus/model numbers from the 1920’s until the early 1970’s stood for very specific shapes and bowls. For example, the codes 31, 34, 59, 111, 113, 117, 196, LB, LBS… were all different types of Billiard shaped pipes and there were about 50(!), such codes for the Billiard shape alone.

There was a link there (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill_Shapes_List) to a shape list that Eric Boehm put together for Dunhills. It is amazing to see the sheer number of variations on the Billiard shape. I copied the first three in the list as it includes the shape 34 Billiard.

Billiards:

31 Billiard, tapered bit 1 4¾” 1928, 1950 3

32 Billiard, tapered bit 1 5″ 1928, 50, 60, 69 3

34 Billiard, tapered bit (Dental) 2 5½” 1928, 50, 60, 69 3. (This is the pipe I am working on. It is a tapered bit Billiard. It does not have a Dental bit as noted above. Rather than the Dental bit it has a F/T or Fish Tail bit.)

I turned next to dating the pipe. There is a superscript 8 following the D in ENGLAND on the right side of the shank. I turned to the dating chart on Pipephil to pin down the date on this twin (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/cledat-en1a.html). I did a screen capture of Part 2 of the Dunhill Dating Key and included it below. I drew a red box around the section dating this pipe. It is clear that the pipe was made after 1954 so that is why I went to Part 2. Once again, because the year suffix is 8 that tells me that the pipe was made in 1950+8 for a date of 1958.Armed with that information I turned to work on the pipe itself. Before he sent it to me, Jeff had done an amazing job cleaning the pipe. It almost looked like a different pipe after his work. He reamed the pipe with a PipNet pipe reamer and removed the rest of it with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife.  He scrubbed the bowl with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap with a tooth brush. He rinsed it under running warm water to remove the soap and grime. He cleaned out the inside of the shank and the airway in the stem with isopropyl alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. He soaked the stem in Briarville’s Pipe Stem Deoxidizer and then rinsed it off with warm water. He scrubbed the stem with Soft Scrub and a tooth brush and rinsed it off with warm water. It looked amazing when I took it out of the package of pipes he shipped me. I took photos of the pipe before I started my part of the restoration work.  The rim top was cleaner and the inner edge of the bowl looked rough. There was burn damage all the way around but heavier on the front and the back of the bowl on the top and inner and outer edges. There was also darkening on the rim top. The stem surface looked good with the oxidation gone and light but visible tooth chatter on either side of the stem. I took photos of the stamping on the sides of the shank. It is clear and readable as noted above.I took the stem off the shank and took a photo of the parts of the pipe. The overall look of the pipe is quite nice.I started my portion of the work on this pipe by addressing the damage to the rim top and inner edge of the bowl. I topped the bowl on a board with 220 grit sandpaper to take down the damage on the top of the rim and outer edges. I used a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the edge and give it a slight bevel to deal with the chipping and cutting on the inner edge. It cleaned up remarkably well. With polishing and buffing it would look even better. I polished the briar with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each pad. The rim top looked very good and the bowl began to take on a rich glow. I used an Oak Stain Pen to restain the rim top and the inner bevel of the rim edge. Once it dried I buffed it with a cotton cloth and the match was very good. There was some darkening on the back inner edge of the bowl but it is in far better condition.The bowl looked very good at this point so I rubbed it down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the surface of the bowl and shank with my fingertips to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I let the balm sit for about 10-15 minutes and buffed with a cotton cloth to raise the shine. I set the bowl aside and turned to work on the stem. I polished the vulcanite stem with micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. I used Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine to further polish the stem and gave it a final coat of Obsidian Oil to finish it.  This 2nd beautiful 1958 Dunhill Root Briar 34F/T 2R is a great looking pipe now that it has been restored. The rich Root Briar finish that highlights the grain and works well with the polished vulcanite stem. I put the stem back on the bowl and carefully buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel using a light touch on the briar. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing the entire pipe with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished Dunhill Root Briar Billiard is a small pipe that will be great for sitting and reading. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 27 grams/.95 ounces. I will be adding the pipe to the British Pipemakers Section of the rebornpipes store shortly. If you are interested in adding it to your collection be sure to let me know. I take a moment to remind myself and each of us that we are trustees of pipes that will outlive us and the lives of many other pipe men and women who carry on the trust of their care and use. Thanks for reading this blog and my reflections on the pipe while I worked on it.

Breathing Life a Peterson’s African Block Meerschaum Bent Pipe

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Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe I have chosen is a multi-faceted finish Peterson’s African Block Meerschaum pipe. This one is a Bent Meerschaum pipe that has facets around the bowl and shank. The rim top is flumed as was the style of the 60s and 70s. This pipe was purchased on 12/08/21 from Facebook Marketplace in Durham, North Carolina, USA.  This faceted bowl and shank adds a touch of depth to the pipe. The pipe was dusty in the meerschaum ridges and flat spots on the bowl and shank. The contrast of the colouration/patina developing on the high spots and shank with the flumed top looks very good. The bowl had a moderate cake and there was lava on the rim top and inner edge of the bowl. The Sterling Silver ferrule is oxidized and dirty. It is stamped Peterson’s [over] Dublin followed by Sterling [over] Silver. On the underside are three hallmark stamps – 1. Seated Hibernia (Ireland) 2. The Harp (symbol for the silver quality) 3. The lower case letter “l” for the date of the pipe. The stem was oxidized, calcified and had light tooth chatter on the top and underside on and near the button. Jeff took photos of the pipe before his cleanup work. They tell the story and give a glimpse of the pipe. Jeff took photos of the rim top and stem to show the general condition of the pipe. The bowl is moderately caked and the rim top and edges have lava overflowing on to them. The stem is oxidized, calcified and has light tooth marks on the top and underside near the button. Jeff took photos of the bowl sides and heel to show the faceted finish around this bowl. It is a nice looking pipe. He took photos of the Sterling Silver ferrule to show the stamping around it. You can see that it reads as noted above. He did not capture the hallmarks on the underside.I took some time to remind myself of the provenance of these Peterson’s Dublin Meerschaum pipes. I am pretty sure the pipe was made by the Laxey Pipe Ltd. on the Isle of Man for Peterson’s in Ireland (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Laxey_Pipes_Ltd). I quote from the Pipedia article in full:

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

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

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

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

As noted above the silver is stamped Peterson’s [over] Dublin followed by Sterling [over] Silver. On the underside are three hallmark stamps – 1. Seated Hibernia (Ireland) 2. The Harp (symbol for the silver quality) 3. The lower case letter “l” for the date of the pipe. I have included the Peterson’s Hallmark chart below as it is a very helpful tool that I have used repeatedly to date my Peterson pipes.I found a larger photo of the letter section of the above chart. The letter stamp is a lower case “l” which dates the pipe to 1977.

I know that the pipe was made on the Isle of Man by Laxey Pipe Ltd. out of African Meerschaum. It was made for export for Peterson’s of Dublin. From the hallmarks on the silver I know that the pipe (or at least the silver) was made in 1977. That fits the flumed top on the bowl and the faceted carving around the bowl and shank. That was as much as I could figure out.

Jeff had done a great job cleaning up the pipe as usual. He reamed the pipe with a PipNet reamer and cut back the cake back to the bare meerschaum. He cleaned up the walls with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He scrubbed the interior of the bowl and shank with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and alcohol to remove the tars and oils. He scrubbed the exterior of the pipe with Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush to remove the grime from the finish. He worked on the rim top lava and darkening with the soap and tooth brush. He cleaned up the tarnish on the silver ferrule. He scrubbed the inside of the stem with alcohol and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the exterior with Soft Scrub and then soaked it in Briarville Pipe Stem Deoxidizer. He washed it off with warm water to remove the Deoxidizer. The pipe looked very good when it arrived. I took some close up photos of the rim top and also of the stem surface. I wanted to show how well it had cleaned up. The rim top and edges looked very good. The stem showed some light tooth marks and chatter on the surface near the button.I took a photo of the stamping on the silver ferrule. You can see that once the tarnish was  removed it is stamped as noted above. It is clear and readable.  I took the pipe apart and took a photo of the pipe. It is a good looking pipe and has an interesting style of rustication around the bowl.I polished the meerschaum bowl and shank with micromesh sanding pads. I dry sanded it with 1500-12000 grit pads and wiped it down with a damp cloth after each pad. I polished the Sterling Silver ferrule with a jeweler’s cloth to shine and slow down the process of oxidation. The ferrule really looks good even with a few worn spots around it. Once it was polished with the Before & After Balm and buffed with a microfiber cloth the stain would blend perfectly. I rubbed the meerschaum down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the surface of the meerschaum with my fingertips to clean, enliven and protect it. I let the balm sit for 15 minutes and then buffed with a cotton cloth to raise the shine. Mark Hoover’s Balm is a product that I have come to appreciate and one I use on every pipe I have been working on. I set the bowl aside and turned to work on the stem. I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped it down after each sanding pad with Obsidian Oil. I polished it with Before & After Pipe Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine.  As usual at this point in the restoration process I am excited to be on the homestretch. I look forward to the final look when it is put back together, polished and waxed. I put the bowl and stem of this Peterson’s Meerschaum back together. I polished the bowl and stem with Blue Diamond to polish out the scratches in the meerschaum and the vulcanite. I gave the bowl multiple coats of Conservator’s Wax and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax. I buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. I hand buffed it with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The pipe polished up pretty nicely. The meerschaum has a rich glow with the wax and polish. The shiny black vulcanite stem is a beautiful contrast to the rich developing patina of the bowl and the polished silver ferrule. This Peterson’s meerschaum was made by the Laxey Pipe Ltd. on the Isle of Mann. The faceted finish on this pipe made it another fun pipe to work. It really is a quite stunning pipe whose shape and finish make it stand out. The thick/chubby shank makes it a very comfortable pipe to hold in the hand. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. The dimensions are Length: 5 inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 inches, Chamber diameter: 5/8 of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 44 grams/1.52 ounces. It is a beautiful pipe and one that will be on the Irish Pipe Makers Section of the rebornpipes store soon. If you are interested in adding it to your collection let me know. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked over this pipe. Thanks to each of you who are reading this blog.

Restoring a lovely 1958 Dunhill Root Briar 34F/T 2R Billiard

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Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table is another Dunhill that is a group 2 sized Billiard. It is a small Root Briar Billiard that is proportionally well done. It has a two digit the shape number that I will define below. Jeff and I purchased on 04/26/2022 from a woman who contacted us from Cleveland, Ohio, USA. We spent time chatting with her and arrived at a price and she sent the pipes to Jeff. It included 28+ pipes along with this one.

But now this Dunhill Billiard. On the left side it is stamped 34 F/T followed by Dunhill over Root Briar and on the right side is stamped Made in England8 (two lines) followed by a circle 2 followed by R. The numbers and stamping tell me that the pipe is a Root Briar and the size is a Group 2. The F/T refers to the Fish Tail style stem. The finish was very dirty with spots of grime and debris stuck on it. The bowl had a thick cake in the bowl and heavy lava overflowing onto the rim top. The rim top had burned area on the left front top and inner and outer edges. There was darkening and burn damage on the inner edge all the way around. There were a few burn marks toward the back of the rim top. The stem had calcification, oxidation and tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. The button itself appeared to be in good condition. The pipe came to us in a meerschaum pipe case from the owner. It was not original. Jeff took photos of the pipe before he started his clean up work on it. He took photos of the bowl and rim top to show the condition. You can see the thick cake in the bowl and the burn damage on the rim top and edges of the bowl. It is the kind of damage that come from repeated lighting in the same place. The stem was heavily oxidized, calcified and has tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. Overall the pipe is a real mess. Jeff took photos of the grain and finish around the bowl sides and heel. It was nice looking if you can see through the grime ground into the finish. He took a photo of the stamping on the left side of the shank. There is no photo of the right side stamping that gives the Made in England date code. It is readable but filthy.Now it was time to begin to work on the stamping on the pipe. I turned first to Pipedia as I remembered they had some great information on the Root Briar finish and dates and how the finish was made (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill#Bruyere). The first quote below give the short version of the finish. The second link goes into more detail. I quote from both below.

Root Briar – Introduced in 1931 and highly prized because the grain is more pronounced in this finish (usually made using Corsican briar – was made exclusively from that briar into the 60s). The Root Briar finish requires a perfectly clean bowl with excellent graining. Therefore, it is the most expensive of the Dunhill pipes. Corsican briar was most often used for the Root finish since it was generally more finely grained. This is a rare finish, due to the scarcity of briar suitable to achieve it. These pipes are normally only available at Company stores, or at Principle Pipe Dealers. Straight grained pipes were formerly graded A through H, but are now only “Dr’s” and graded with one to six stars, with the letters G and H still used for the very finest pieces.

“Dunhill introduced its third major finish, the Root finish, in 1931. Corsican mountain briar is characteristically beautifully grained and the Root was made exclusively from that briar into the 1960s. The pipe was finished with a light natural stain to allow the beauty of the graining to show through. Although always available with a traditional black vulcanite bit, the Root was introduced in either 1930 or more likely 1931 and fitted with a marble brown dark and light grained vulcanite bit that has since become known as the ‘bowling ball’ bit because of the similarity in appearance between the bit’s finish and that of some bowling balls of the time. With the war, however, the bowling ball bit was dropped from production. Through 1954 (and after) the Root pipe nomenclature (including shape numbers) was identical to that of the Bruyere except that instead of the “A” of the Bruyere, the Root was stamped with an “R”. In 1952 when the finish rather then LONDON was placed under DUNHILL, ROOT BRIAR rather then BRUYERE was used for the Root.” Loring, J. C., The Dunhill Briar Pipe, The Patent Years and After (self-published, Chicago, 1998).

With that information clear for me I wanted to identify the shape number and try to pin that down (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill_Shape_Chart). I turned to the section on the older 2 digit Shape Numbers and read it. I quote it below and added a chart on the numbers.

The original skus/model numbers from the 1920’s until the early 1970’s stood for very specific shapes and bowls. For example, the codes 31, 34, 59, 111, 113, 117, 196, LB, LBS… were all different types of Billiard shaped pipes and there were about 50(!), such codes for the Billiard shape alone.

There was a link there (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill_Shapes_List) to a shape list that Eric Boehm put together for Dunhills. It is amazing to see the sheer number of variations on the Billiard shape. I copied the first three in the list as it includes the shape 34 Billiard.

Billiards:

31 Billiard, tapered bit 1 4¾” 1928, 1950 3

32 Billiard, tapered bit 1 5″ 1928, 50, 60, 69 3

34 Billiard, tapered bit (Dental) 2 5½” 1928, 50, 60, 69 3. (This is the pipe I am working on. It is a tapered bit Billiard. It does not have a Dental bit as noted above. Rather than the Dental bit it has a F/T or Fish Tail bit.)

I turned next to dating the pipe as it would be more straightforward than the numbering on the shank. There is a superscript 8 following the D in ENGLAND on the right side of the shank. I turned to the dating chart on Pipephil (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/cledat-en1a.html). I did a screen capture of Part 2 of the Dunhill Dating Key and included it below. I drew a red box around the section dating this pipe. It is clear that the pipe was made after 1954 so that is why I went to Part 2. Because the year suffix is 8 that tells me that the pipe was made in 1950+8 for a date of 1958. Armed with that information I turned to work on the pipe itself. Before he sent it to me, Jeff had done an amazing job cleaning the pipe. It almost looked like a different pipe after his work. He reamed the pipe with a PipNet pipe reamer and removed the rest of it with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife.  He scrubbed the bowl with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap with a tooth brush. He rinsed it under running warm water to remove the soap and grime. He cleaned out the inside of the shank and the airway in the stem with isopropyl alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. He soaked the stem in Briarville’s Pipe Stem Deoxidizer and then rinsed it off with warm water. He scrubbed the stem with Soft Scrub and a tooth brush and rinsed it off with warm water. It looked amazing when I took it out of the package of pipes he shipped me. I took photos of the pipe before I started my part of the restoration work.   The rim top was cleaner and the inner edge of the bowl looked rough. There was burn damage all the way around but heavier on the front of the bowl on the top and inner and outer edges. There was also darkening on the back rim top and edge. The stem surface looked good with the oxidation gone and light but visible tooth chatter on either side of the stem.   I took photos of the stamping on the sides of the shank. It is clear and readable as noted above.I took the stem off the shank and took a photo of the parts of the pipe. The overall look of the pipe is quite unique. The stem shorter than the bowl and shank but looks quite good.I started my portion of the work on this pipe by addressing the damage to the rim top and inner edge of the bowl. I topped the bowl on a board with 220 grit sandpaper to take down the damage on the top of the rim and outer edges. I used a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the edge and give it a slight bevel to deal with the chipping and cutting on the inner edge. It cleaned up remarkably well. With polishing and buffing it would look even better. I polished the briar with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each pad. The rim top looked very good and the bowl began to take on a rich glow. I used an Oak Stain Pen to restain the rim top and the inner bevel of the rim edge. Once it dried I buffed it with a cotton cloth and the match was very good.The bowl looked very good at this point so I rubbed it down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the surface of the bowl and shank with my fingertips to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I let the balm sit for about 10-15 minutes and buffed with a cotton cloth to raise the shine. I set the bowl aside and turned to work on the stem. I polished the vulcanite stem with micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. I used Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine to further polish the stem and gave it a final coat of Obsidian Oil to finish it. This beautiful 1958 Dunhill Root Briar 34F/T 2R is a great looking pipe now that it has been restored. The rich Root Briar finish that highlights the grain and works well with the polished vulcanite stem. I put the stem back on the bowl and carefully buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel using a light touch on the briar. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing the entire pipe with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished Dunhill Root Briar Billiard is a beauty. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 24 grams/.85 ounces. I will be adding the pipe to the British Pipemakers section of the rebornpipes store shortly. If you are interested in adding it to your collection be sure to let me know. I take a moment to remind myself and each of us that we are trustees of pipes that will outlive us and the lives of many other pipe men and women who carry on the trust of their care and use. Thanks for reading this blog and my reflections on the pipe while I worked on it.

Brothers in Arms

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Blog by Kenneth Lieblich

Next on the chopping block is a lovely pair of pipes, formerly belonging to an old gentleman from Winnipeg. I acquired them in a lot of pipes from a relative of his here in Vancouver. The two pipes are both sub-brands of the famous Savinelli factory. The slightly bent Dublin is a Gulden Dansk; the stylized poker/sitter is a Silveren Dansk. They are really handsome pipes and clearly well-loved by their previous owner. The markings on these pipes are quite interesting. On the Dublin, the markings on the underside of the pipe read Gulden Dansk, followed by a model number which is obscured by the rustication. The number might be 4130, but it’s difficult to tell. On top of the stem are engraved the two letters GD, obviously referring to Gulden Dansk. Meanwhile, the Silveren Dansk’s underside shows the words Silveren Dansk, next to the model number 33 [over] Italy; the ‘s’ and ‘i’ have vanished into the rustication, however. Like its sibling, the top of the stem has the initials SD for Silveren Dansk, of course. These pipes were evidently cut from the same cloth (or block of wood?), as you can see in the pictures. The rustication and colour are the same on both. The rustication is actually quite well done, and there is a combination of both black and brown colour on the wood, which I will attempt to replicate.

The brands Gulden Dansk and Silveren Dansk are ones about which there is very little information. I cobbled together as much information as I could, and I will do my best to record that here. Both brands are sub-brands of Savinelli, according to smokingpipes.com. You can see in the photo below that smokingpipes.com states this clearly, and they are quite knowledgeable.Pipedia had no information at all regarding these brands. Meanwhile, pipephil.eu had precious little info (see below). One small clue is their reference to Italy in the Gulden Dansk image. Comments from some old pipe forums suggest that the brand(s) might be made for the Canadian market and came to full prominence in the early 1980s. See below.The newspaper ad above (sorry for the poor quality) is taken from the Montreal Gazette, November 1st, 1980. It shows that, in addition to pipes, they also sold tobacco.Furthermore, I found Canadian trademark registrations for both brands. I have shown some of that information below. For reasons unknown, the Silveren Dansk trademark is still active, whilst the Gulden Dansk one has expired. I also found an Australian trademark registration for the same, but it was noted on the Australian site that the origin of the application was Canada. In short, we can say a few things about both Gulden Dansk and Silveren Dansk. They were both made by Savinelli, probably for the Canadian market (and perhaps other markets). The Canadian connection obviously fits with the gentleman in Winnipeg. They made pipes and tobacco, and all the comments I could find on the quality of the pipes were very positive. If you have any further details on these brands, I would love to hear from you.

On to the pipes: both were in decent condition — they just looked a little shabby. Both pipes’ stems were dirty and had some oxidation, but the damage from tooth marks was minimal on both. Similarly, the bowls were dirty and definitely needed a cleaning, but there wasn’t any notable damage. The stems were first on my list. I wiped down the outside of the stem with Murphy’s Oil Soap on some cotton pads. I also took a BIC lighter and ‘painted’ the stems with its flame in order to lift the few bite marks and dents. Then I cleaned out the insides with pipe cleaners and isopropyl alcohol. They were fairly dirty, but not too bad and I only went through a handful of pipe cleaners to finish each one. Once this process was done, the stems went for an overnight soak in the Pipe Stem Oxidation Remover. The following day, I cleaned all of the de-oxidizing mess off with alcohol, pipe cleaners, et cetera. The oxidation had migrated to the surface and would be fairly straightforward to remove. I scrubbed with SoftScrub on some cotton pads to remove the leftover oxidation on each stem. After this, I used some nail polish to restore the two letters on each stem. I painted the area carefully and let it fully set before proceeding. It’s worth noting that the GD ultimately emerged from the restoration far better than the SD. Presumably, the SD had been rubbed more over time and lost some of its groove (literally, not figuratively).Then I sanded the stems down with 220-, 400-, and 600-grit sandpapers. Finally, I used all nine Micromesh pads (1,500 through 12,000 grit) to bring out the lovely black lustre on the stems. I also used Obsidian Pipe Stem Oil in between each pad scrubbing.On to the stummels, and the usual cleaning procedures were in order for these two. Firstly, I decided to ream out the bowls. I used the PipNet Reamer on Gulden and the KleenReem on Silveren to remove the built-up cake and followed that with 220-grit sandpaper to eliminate as much as I could. I took the two chambers down to bare briar, as I wanted to ensure there were no hidden flaws in the walls. Fortunately, there were none. I then proceeded to clean out the insides of the two shanks with Q-tips, pipe cleaners, and isopropyl alcohol. There was quite a bit of filth inside these stummels, and it took a lot of cotton to get them clean. I followed that up by cleaning the insides with some dish soap and tube brushes. I used a wire brush and some Murphy’s Oil Soap to remove the lava on the rims of the two pipes. This worked very well. I then moved on to cleaning the rustication on the outside of the stummels with Murphy’s and a toothbrush. That removed any latent stains that blighted the wood. A de-ghosting session also seemed in order, so I thrust cotton balls into the bowls and the shanks and saturated them with 99% isopropyl alcohol. I let the stummels sit overnight. This caused the oils, tars and smells to leach out into the cotton. The bowls were nice and clean after this.I wanted to redo the finish on the pipes: it may have looked good once upon a time, but no longer. So, I opted to soak the stummels in isopropyl alcohol overnight. This will usually remove some of the deteriorating finish I was faced with. When I took the stummels out of the alcohol bath, I scrubbed the wood with a brush (to remove any remnants) and left it to dry. At this point, I rubbed some Before & After Restoration Balm into the briar and left it to sit for 10 or 15 minutes. It really does wonderful things to the wood. On to the staining. This turned out to be an unnecessarily laborious and error-strewn procedure. As I don’t want to bore you with the details of my minor blunders, I will simply give you the quick and dirty version of the staining procedure. I began by applying a layer of Fiebing’s Black Leather Dye to both pipes. After applying the dye, flaming it with a BIC, and letting it set for a few hours, I wiped the stummels down with isopropyl alcohol to remove much of the dye. I wanted to achieve a two-tone effect of black and brown to replicate what had been there originally. Then it was time for the second round of staining. To do this, I applied some of Fiebing’s Medium Brown Leather Dye over both stummels. As before, I applied flame from a BIC lighter in order to set the colour. I then used all nine Micromesh pads (1,500 through 12,000 grit) on the stummels to polish the surface. I then added a second coat – just to make sure. It looked so much better with a richer colour. Once again, I wiped the stummels down with isopropyl alcohol to remove any excess. After that, a light application of Before & After Restoration Balm brought out the best in the stummels’ grain. These siblings are a good-looking pair and they feel great in the hand!  Then it was off for a trip to the bench polisher. A dose of White Diamond and a few coats of Conservator’s Wax (from Lee Valley) were just what these two pipes needed. Boy – that wax really makes these pipes pop! The lovely shine made the wood look absolutely beautiful. The Gulden Dansk and Silveren Dansk look fantastic and are ready to be enjoyed again by the next owner. I am pleased to announce that these pipes are for sale! You can buy them either individually or as a set (as you wish). If you are interested in acquiring them for your collection, please have a look in the “Italy” pipe section of the store here on Steve’s website. You can also email me directly at kenneth@knightsofthepipe.com. The approximate dimensions of the Gulden Dansk Dublin are as follows: length 5⅛ in. (130 mm); height 1¾ in. (45 mm); bowl diameter 1⅜ in. (35 mm); chamber diameter ¾ in. (19 mm). The weight of the pipe is 1¼ oz. (35 g). The approximate dimensions of the Silveren Dansk poker/sitter are as follows: length 5⅝ in. (143 mm); height 2 in. (51 mm); bowl diameter 1⅛ in. (29 mm); chamber diameter ¾ in. (19 mm). The weight of the pipe is 1½ oz. (44 g). I hope you enjoyed reading the story of this restoration as much as I did restoring them. If you are interested in more of my work, please follow me here on Steve’s website or send me an email. Thank you very much for reading and, as always, I welcome and encourage your comments.

What would you call this Dunhill Bruyere 54791 – a Scoop?

3 Replies

Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table is another Dunhill but one that I am not sure how to identify the shape. It is kind of a scoop with a long oval shank but the shape number is not on any charts that I have looked at. Even though it has five digits the number is the same as a four digit number. The extra digit defines the bowl style. Anyone have any idea what to call this or perhaps can give me a chart that shows the number? Much appreciated. Jeff and I purchased on 04/26/2022 from a woman who contacted us from Cleveland, Ohio, USA. We spent time chatting with her and arrived at a price and she sent the pipes to Jeff. It included another 28+ pipes with this one.

But now this Dunhill is the question. On the left side it is stamped 54791 followed by Dunhill over Bruyere and on the right side is stamped Made in England19. I know that it is a Bruyere finish but the shape number still is a mystery. It has a long oval shank, scoop like bowl and a ¼ bent taper stem. The finish was very dirty with spots of grime and debris stuck on it. The bowl had a thick cake in the bowl and heavy lava overflowing onto the rim top. It was hard to know the condition of the top and edges without removing the lava. The stem had calcification, oxidation and tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. The button itself appeared to be in good condition. Jeff took photos of the pipe before he started his clean up work on it. He took photos of the bowl and rim top to show the condition. You can see the thick cake in the bowl and the lava overflowing onto the rim top. It appears to me that the rim is damaged but I will not know for sure until it is reamed and cleaned. It is also hard to know the condition of the rim top at this point. The outer edge of the bowl looks to be okay. The stem was heavily oxidized, calcified and has tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. Overall the pipe is a real mess.Jeff took photos of the grain and finish around the bowl sides and heel. It was nice looking if you can see through the grime ground into the finish. He took a photo of the stamping on the left side of the shank. There is no photo of the right side stamping that gives the Made in England date code. It is readable but filthy.Now it was time to begin to work on the stamping on the pipe. I turned first to Pipedia as I remembered they had some great information on the Bruyere finish and dates and how the finish was made (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill#Bruyere). The first quote below give the short version of the finish. The second link goes into more detail. I quote from both below.

Bruyere – The original finish produced (usually made using Calabrian briar), and a big part of developing and marketing the brand. It was the only finish from 1910 until 1917. A dark reddish-brown stain. Before the 1950s, there were three possible finishes for Dunhill pipes. The Bruyere was a smooth finish with a deep red stain, obtained through two coats, a brown understain followed by a deep red.th

https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill_Bruyere

Initially, made from over century-old briar burls, classified by a “B” (denoted highest quality pipe); “DR” (denoted straight-grained) and an “A” (denoted first quality), until early 1915. After that, they became a high-end subset to the Dunhill ‘Bruyere’. The DR and B pipes, a limited production, they should be distinguished as hand-cut in London from burls as opposed to the Bruyere line which was generally finished from French turned bowls until 1917, when the Calabrian briar started to be used, but not completely. Only in 1920 Dunhill took the final step in its pipe making operation and began sourcing and cutting all of its own bowls, proudly announcing thereafter that “no French briar was employed”.

Bruyere pipes were usually made using Calabrian briar, a very dense and hardy briar that has a modest grain but does very well with the deep red stain.

“Before the 1950s, there were three possible finishes for Dunhill pipes. The Bruyere was a smooth finish with a deep red stain, obtained through two coats, a brown understain followed by a deep red. The Shell finish was the original sandblast with a near-black stain (though the degree to which it is truly black has varied over the years). Lastly, the Root finish was smooth also but with a light brown finish. Early Dunhill used different briars with different stains, resulting in more distinct and identifiable creations… Over the years, to these traditional styles were added four new finishes: Cumberland, Dress, Chestnut and Amber Root, plus some now-defunct finishes, such as County, Russet and Red Bark.”

With that information clear for me I wanted to identify the shape number and try to pin that down (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill_Shape_Chart). I turned to the section on the Five Digit Shape Numbers and read it. I quote it below and added a chart on the numbers.

The 5th digit indicated the style of the bowl within the group of a similar classification, each identified by the last digit, which could be any number between 1-9.

While e.g. within the Gp.4 Billiard there were 5 different styles of bowls (5th digit being either 1,2,3,4, or 9), for a Gp.1 Billiard there were only 3 styles used (5th digit being 1, 2, or 9).

Although the 5-digit code was stamped on the pipe and thus was visible to the consumer, it was mostly used for internal production planning purposes and to a lesser extent for retail staff. The system proved to be quite complex.

The elimination of the 5th digit on the pipes (in 1984) resulted in better management of the pipe stock as there were less skus and it also facilitated the work for the sales staff in the retail shops as the complexity and number of skus was considerably reduced.

Notes:

When 5 digits occur, the meaning of the 4 first remain the same. 5 digit shape numbers was added in 1976 and ended in 1984.I turned next to dating the pipe as it would be more straightforward than the numbering on the shank. There is a superscript 19 following the D in ENGLAND on the right side of the shank. I turned to the dating chart on Pipephil (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/cledat-en1a.html). I did a screen capture of Part 2 of the Dunhill Dating Key and included it below. It is clear that the pipe was made after 1954 so that is why I went to Part 2. Because the year suffix is 19 that tells me that the pipe was made in 1960+19 for a date of 1979.Armed with that information I turned to work on the pipe itself. Before he sent it to me, Jeff had done an amazing job cleaning the pipe. It almost looked like a different pipe after his work. He reamed the pipe with a PipNet pipe reamer and removed the rest of it with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife.  He scrubbed the bowl with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap with a tooth brush. He rinsed it under running warm water to remove the soap and grime. He cleaned out the inside of the shank and the airway in the stem with isopropyl alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. He soaked the stem in Briarville’s Pipe Stem Deoxidizer and then rinsed it off with warm water. He scrubbed the stem with Soft Scrub and a tooth brush and rinsed it off with warm water. It looked amazing when I took it out of the package of pipes he shipped me. I took photos of the pipe before I started my part of the restoration work.  The rim top was cleaner and the inner edge of the bowl looked rough. There was burn damage all the way around but heavier on the left half of the bowl. There was also darkening on the edge. The outer edge looked good. The stem surface looked good with the oxidation gone and light but visible tooth marks and chatter on either side of the stem. I took photos of the stamping on the sides of the shank. It is clear and readable as noted above.I took the stem off the shank and took a photo of the parts of the pipe. The overall look of the pipe is quite unique. The stem shorter than the bowl and shank but looks quite good.I started my portion of the work on this pipe by addressing the damage to the rim top and inner edge of the bowl. I used a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the edge and give it a slight bevel to deal with the chipping and cutting on the inner edge. It cleaned up remarkably well. With polishing and buffing it would look even better.I polished the briar with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each pad. The rim top looked very good and the bowl began to take on a rich glow. The bowl looked very good at this point so I rubbed it down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the surface of the bowl and shank with my fingertips to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I let the balm sit for about 10-15 minutes and buffed with a cotton cloth to raise the shine. I set the bowl aside and turned to work on the stem. I “painted” the surface of the stem ahead of the button with the flame of a lighter to raise the tooth chatter and marks. It worked exceptionally well and all were lifted enough that sanding what remained removed them. I sanded the stem surface with 220 grit sandpaper and started polishing it with 400 grit wet dry sandpaper. I polished the vulcanite stem with micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. I used Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine to further polish the stem and gave it a final coat of Obsidian Oil to finish it. This beautiful and unique 1979 Dunhill Bruyere 54791 Scoop is a great looking pipe now that it has been restored. The rich Bruyere finish that highlights the grain and works well with both the polished vulcanite stem. I put the stem back on the bowl and carefully buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel using a light touch on the briar. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing the entire pipe with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished Dunhill Bruyere Scoop is a large pipe that will be great for sitting and reading. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 7 inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: 7/8 of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 55 grams/1.94 ounces. I will be adding the pipe to the British Pipemakers section of the rebornpipes store shortly. If you are interested in adding it to your collection be sure to let me know. I take a moment to remind myself and each of us that we are trustees of pipes that will outlive us and the lives of many other pipe men and women who carry on the trust of their care and use. Thanks for reading this blog and my reflections on the pipe while I worked on it.

What is a City de Luxe Gold Star Unique Freehand?

2 Replies

Blog by Steve Laug

Jeff and I have been picking up pipes from a fellow in Los Angeles, California for a few years. We have picked up some excellent pipes from him. This one came to us in September, 2020 (though the photos are stamped April of 2022). It took us awhile to get to the pipe and clean it up. It was a uniquely shaped Freehand that caught our eye. The shape is partially a Dublin but with a pointed heel. There is a carved ring around the top of the bowl setting of a cap. The top of the bowl is almost like a flat hat with a crowned centre portion and small trough between the bowl edge and the crown. The bottom portion of the front of the bowl is flat and shaped like a heart and allows the pipe to be stood on a desk top. The grain on it is stunning with only one small fill/flaw on the left side of the shank ahead of the stamping. It is stamped on the left side and reads City de Luxe [over] GOLD STAR [over] London Made. It is stamped on the right side and reads Made in England [over] UNIQUE in script. There is no shape number on the shank. The stem has an inlaid gold star on the left side of the saddle stem. Jeff took photos of the pipe when it arrived before he started his clean up work. He took close up photos of the rim top and stem to give a clear idea of the condition of the pipe. The bowl had a thick cake and a heavy overflow of lava on the inner edge and top of the rim at the back of the bowl. The stem is heavily oxidized and had tooth chatter and marks on both sides ahead of the button. Jeff took photos of the bowl from various angles to show the condition of the briar and the style of the pipe. It is a beautiful pipe under the grime and grit of the years.   Jeff captured the stamping on the shank sides and the left side of the stem. It is clear and readable as noted above. You can see the fill/flaw in the first photo to the left of the London Made stamp. There is a fill there that is partially missing and will need to be replaced.  This pipe was quite stunning under the grime and has beautiful straight grain. From what I can see there is one small flaw with a damaged fill on the left side of the shank and otherwise nothing else. I decided to do some digging into the City Gold Star stamp and see what I could learn. I turned first to Pipephil (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-c5.html). There was an example of the City Gold Star but it was a French Made pipe while the one I am working on is Made in England. The example is stamped Unique like the one I have. There are no shape numbers on it either. There is a tie to GBD and generally the pipe is a second for that brand. Perhaps the flaw that I mention above is what kept it from being a GBD Unique and relegated it to City de Luxe status. Truly though it is a small flaw on an otherwise stunning pipe. I have included a screen capture of the pipe from PipePhil below.I am also including information from the side bar. I wonder if the Gold Star is a step up from the normal City de Luxe. If so that would explain the stamping on this pipe.

While the City de Luxe logo is a silver outline star, this one is a solid gold color star. This GBD second was crafted in the French facilities of the brand.

I turned then to the article on Pipedia about GBD pipes (https://pipedia.org/wiki/GBD). I quote a section from the article that talked about the introduction of the City Deluxe sub brand.

The solid demand for GBD pipes also encouraged the management to introduce a number of sub brands designed to win new buyers. We can list such sub brands as follows:

  • The City de Luxe (1921) had an inserted star on the stem as trademark and were marketed in England and in France. These pipes were the bestseller of the 5½ Shilling class in the 1930s in Great Britain.
  • Reserved for the French market remained the even more favorable GBD brand Marcee, a derivative of Marechal Ruchon & Co. Ltd. that was offered until the 2nd World War and for another one or two years afterwards.
  • The Camelia – made in London as a 2½ Shilling line – was only around for a few years.
  • Important to mention is also the Riseagle—completely produced in Paris before the wartime for England’s smokers who wanted “a cheap but dependable British made pipe”… one of the most successful 1 Shilling pipes until 1939! The introduction of the luxury impact on the excise tax for pipes after the war put an end to this cheap brand.

The section on City de Luxe had a link to another article on Pipedia specifically on the brand so I followed the link (https://pipedia.org/wiki/City_de_Luxe). There was a short article and I quote from it below.

City De Luxe was a sub brand of GBD and Oppenheimer Pipe started in 1921 and for a time the most popular pipe in the 5/6 shilling range of pipes in Britain in the 1930s.

The trademark of the line was an inserted star on the stem, and pipes were made with both English and French markings. For more information see GBD.

I knew that the brand started in 1921 and hit is height in the 1930s. I have included an advertisement from the page below that has some great lines about the brand.With that information I knew what I was working on – a sub brand of GBD and a step up from the City de Luxe – a City Gold Star. Now I wanted to know about the Unique stamp on the shank side. What did it mean? There was nothing on either the City de Luxe article or on the City Gold Star article that referred to that. There was a photo of a pipe stamped City Gold Star but no data regarding the Unique. So I went back to the GBD article and followed the link to GBD Model Information (https://pipedia.org/wiki/GBD_Model_Information). I found the unique listed there and quote that below.

Unique — England, unknown if also made in France: smooth freehand shapes, mostly large/oversized pipes. Possible made by the Jameson brothers. –TH

This led me to more questions so I turned back to the GBD article to see if I could find some answers to those questions (https://pipedia.org/wiki/GBD). The major questions I had were as follows.

  1. Where did the Uniques fit in the hierarchy of GBD pipes?
  2. When did they come out?
  3. Who carved them? (Remember the quote above that they were possibly made by the Jameson brothers.)

I found a section on that hidden in the middle of the article. I quote the pertinent paragraphs below.

The premium lines of GBD offered very good values, and are considered amongst the most affordable high end pipe of the 1960’s and earlier and a rival in quality, design, and price to Dunhill. Smokers’ Haven was the main retail supplier for GBD’s in the US until the early 1980’s.

GBD produced consistently well made pipes, almost entirely of Algerian or Grecian briar. In the late 1960’s to late 1970’s, they introduced the “Collector” and “Unique” lines, made primarily by Horry Jamieson, who had carved for Barling for many years, and was skilled in freehand design. Older GBD pieces are excellent smokers and unique in design. They did an excellent executions of classic pipe shapes, as well as some beautiful freehands in the “Unique” line. [2]

These paragraphs answered my questions. The Unique line was made in the late 1960s to late 1970s and were primarily carved by Horry Jameson. The line was created at the height of the Freehand craze in the US and introduced some beautiful GBD Freehands. Now I knew that I working on a pipe from that time period, carved by Jameson. The fact that it was not a GBD Unique but lower in the hierarchy in the City de Luxe line was because of the small flaw/fill on the left side of the shank ahead of the stamping. The grain otherwise is stellar and the shape is worthy of the UNIQUE stamping.

Armed with that information I turned to work on the pipe itself. Before he sent it to me, Jeff had cleaned up the pipe with his usual cleaning process. He reamed the pipe with a PipNet pipe reamer and removed the rest of it with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife.  He scrubbed the bowl with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap with a tooth brush. He rinsed it under running warm water to remove the soap and grime. He cleaned out the inside of the shank and the airway in the stem with isopropyl alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. He soaked the stem in Briarville’s Pipe Stem Deoxidizer and then rinsed it off with warm water. He scrubbed the stem with Soft Scrub and a tooth brush and rinsed it off with warm water. It looked amazing when I took it out of the package of pipes he shipped me. So much so that it is the second of those pipes that I chose to work on. I took photos of the pipe before I started my part of the restoration work.    The rim top and the inner and outer edges of the bowl all look very good. The lava on the surface and inner edge is gone. It was thick enough that it protected the rim and edges from damage. The stem surface looked good with the oxidation gone and light tooth chatter on either side of the stem. The stamping on the sides of the shank and on the gold star is clear and readable as noted above.I removed the stem and took a photo of the pipe to give a sense of the whole. It is a beautiful pipe that really flows with the grain on the briar.I took some photos of the uniqueness of the sitter shape and the flat heart on the front of the bowl. It is a nice looking pipe. I started my work on the pipe by addressing the flaw/fill on the left side of the shank. I have drawn a red box around it to clearly identify it for you. I filled in the area and repaired the fill with clear CA glue and briar dust working it into the area with a toothpick. I set it aside to cure and once the glue hardened I sanded it smooth with 220 grit sandpaper to blend it in. I started polishing that area with 400 grit wet dry sandpaper. I touched up the area around the repaired fill with an Oak Stain Pen to blend it into the shank colour. I polished the briar with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped the bowl down after each pad to remove the sanding dust. The bowl looked very good at this point so I rubbed it down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the surface of the bowl and shank with my fingertips to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I let the balm sit for about 10-15 minutes and buffed with a cotton cloth to raise the shine. I set the bowl aside and turned to work on the stem. I polished the vulcanite stem with micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. I used Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine to further polish the stem. This Beautifully Grained GBD Made City de Luxe Gold Star Unique is a great looking pipe now that it has been restored. The shape of the bowl follows the grain and highlights the beauty of the briar. The rich brown stain works well with the polished vulcanite stem. I put the stem back on the bowl and carefully buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel using a light touch on the briar. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing the entire pipe with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished GBD Made Unique Freehand is a large pipe that will be great for sitting and reading on the porch. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 6 ¾ inches, Height: 2 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 2 inches, Chamber diameter: 1 inch. The weight of the pipe is 73 grams/2.54 ounces. This is one gorgeous pipe. It is one that I will be adding shortly to the British Pipe Makers section of the rebornpipes store. I take a moment to remind myself and each of us that we are trustees of pipes that will outlive us and the lives of many other pipe men and women who carry on the trust of their care and use. Thanks for reading this blog and my reflections on the pipe while I worked on it.

A Chunky and Squat Custom-Bilt Pot

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Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe I chose to work on is one that has been here in my box to work on since around 2016. It is a well made, interesting looking Custom-Bilt chunky Pot. The more I looked at it the more I thought that it had not gone through Jeff’s cleaning before it came here. I actually have no idea where it was from and when it came us. The bowl had moderate cake and the inner edge had damage and the rim top was darkened. The pipe is a classic Custom-Bilt piece – a rusticated Chubby shank Pot shaped pipe with some deep carving around the bowl. The pipe is stamped on the heel of the bowl and reads Imported Briar [over] Custom-Bilt. On the right side of the shank it bears a carved circle near the stem/shank junction. Looking at the pipe you can see signs that the bowl had been heavily caked with an overflow of lava on the rim top and the inner edge. The bowl and shank smelled dirty and seemed to be oily. The stem looked good and had tooth chatter and marks on the top and underside near the button. There were no markings or a logo on the taper stem. It looked pretty good when I brought it to the worktable. I took photos of the rim top and bowl to give a clear picture of the appearance of the rim top and edges of the bowl. There was some darkening on the rustication on the top and some lava in the grooves. There was also some damage to the inner edge of the bowl. I took photos of the top and underside of the stem to show the chatter and tooth marks. The stamping on the heel of the bowl is faint but still readable and read as noted above. I removed the stem and took a photo of the pipe to give a sense of the whole. It is a stubby pipe.I turned to Pipephil (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-c8.html) to get a quick view of the brand once again. I knew that I was working with one of the older pipes and probably made by Tracy Mincer himself. He stopped making the Custom-Bilt pipes in the early 1950s. The screen capture I included below shows a brief history of the brand. It also has a comment on the symbols stamped on the shank near the stem including the square that is stamped on this one.I turned to Pipedia (https://pipedia.org/wiki/File:CustomBilt_Stamp1.jpg) for a quick read. The majority of the information there included two book reviews of the “Custom-Bilt Story” by Bill Unger.

The one line I culled was the following: “Tracy Mincer started the original Custom-Bilt pipes it appears in 1934”.

I did a screen capture of the stamping that matched the stamping on the pipe that I am working on. What I learned from that is that the stamp was used by Tracy Mincer in Indianapolis in the US from 1938-1946 and possibly in Chicago before 1938 as well. So now I had a possible date for this pipe. It was an old timer and it was well worth working on.Armed with that information I turned to work on the pipe itself. I started my work on the pipe by cleaning up the reaming in the bowl with a PipNet pipe reamer. I used a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife to remove the remainder and then sanded the bowl walls with 220 grit sandpaper wrapped around a piece of dowel. The bowl walls looked very good. I scrubbed the externals with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush. I worked over the rim top and the rest of the bowl and rinsed it off with warm water. I dried off the briar with a cotton towel.   I turned next to the remaining darkening on the rim top and used a brass bristle brush and worked it over to remove the grime and debris that was still present there. It looked better when I finished.  I cleaned up the damage to the inner edge of the rim. I used a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to reshape the edge. The finished rim top and edge looks better. I wiped the rim top down with alcohol to remove the sanding dust. Once I had dried it off I rubbed it down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the surface of the bowl sides and shank with my fingertips and a horsehair shoe brush to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I let the balm sit for about 10-15 minutes and buffed with a cotton cloth to raise the shine.  While I was buffing it I found that I had forgotten to clean the insides of the shank and stem. I cleaned it with isopropyl alcohol, pipe cleaners and cotton swabs. It smelled much better.    I set the bowl aside and turned to work on the stem. I “painted” the stem with the flames of a lighter to lift them as much as possible. I filled in the remaining tooth marks with black super glue.     Once the repair cured I flattened the repair on the topside and shaped the button edge on both sides with a small flat file. I sanded the button edges and the repairs on the stem with 220 grit sandpaper to blend them into the surface of the vulcanite. I started polishing it with 400 grit wet dry sandpaper. It is starting to look very good.    I polished the vulcanite stem with micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. I used Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine to further polish the stem. This Custom-Bilt Pot is a great looking pipe now that it has been restored. The style of rustication that is used around the bowl is highlighted by the stain application and works well with both the shape and the polished vulcanite stem. I put the stem back on the bowl and carefully buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel using a light touch on the briar. I gave the bowl multiple coats of Conservator’s Wax and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing the entire pipe with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished Custom-Bilt is another pipe that fits nicely in the hand and feels great. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 ½ inches, Height: 1 ½ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ½ inches, Chamber diameter: 7/8 of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 42 grams/1.48 ounces. I will be putting it on the rebornpipes store in the American Pipemakers Section shortly. If you are interested in adding this pipe to your collection send me a message or an email. Thanks for reading this blog and my reflections on the pipe while I worked on it. There are many more to come!

Cleaning up an Ehrlich Special Panel Billiard

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Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe I chose to work on is one that has been here in my box to work on since around 2016. It is a well made, beautifully grained Panel Billiard with a square shank and taper stem. It had gone through Jeff’s cleaning before it came here so it was quite clean. The bowl had been reamed and the rim top scrubbed. The stem was still oxidized so I would guess that we picked it up before we started using Mark Hoover’s Before & After Stem Deoxidizer. The finish looked very good with amazing cross grain on the front and back of the bowl and birdseye on the bowl sides. It was very beautiful under the dull finish at this point. It was stamped on the left side of the shank and read Ehrlich in block caps. On the right side it was stamped Imported Briar [over] Special. It has a vulcanite square taper stem that is oxidized and is very tight in the shank. The stem bears Ehrlich “E” logo on the left side. I took photos of the pipe when I brought it to the work table.  I took photos of the bowl and rim top and the stem surfaces to show the condition of both. The bowl, rim top and edges look very good. There was some darkening on the op and inner and outer edges look very good. The stem is also in great condition other than the oxidation and speckles of grime stuck to the surface of the stem.I took photos of the stamping on the sides of the shank. It is clear and readable as noted above. The Ehrlich logo of E is on the left side of the stem is also in good condition. I took the stem off the shank to show the overall look of this interesting panel pipe. It really is a beautiful piece of briar.I set the pipe aside to do a bit of reading on the history of the brand before I worked on it. I have worked on quite a few Ehrlich pipes in the past and wanted to refresh my memory of the back story of the brand. I checked first on Pipephil (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-e1.html) and found photos of various pipes. The picture of the second pipe is stamped similarly to the one I am working on. The EHRLICH is stamped the same way and the E logo is the same. There are no photos of the SPECIAL. I am including a screen capture of the pertinent information. There was no other information in the sidebars.Then I turned to Pipedia and was more successful (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Ehrlich%27s). I quote a portion of that article below that gives a bit of history and more importantly cleared up where the pipes came from for me.

The David P. Ehrlich story – Pipemakers and Tobacconists for a Hundred Years, 1868-1968.

The David P. Ehrlich Company has remained solely in the hands of one family during its century of business, yet it has had several firm names and locations. David P. Ehrlich went to work in 1881 at the age of twenty for Ferdinand Abraham, who dealt in cigars and tobacco and who had begun business in 1868 at 1188 Washington Street in the South End, but in 1880 moved to the center of the city, where the firm has been ever since. David Ehrlich married the boss’s daughter. In 1916 the name became the David P. Ehrlich Company and Mr. Ehrlich devoted the rest of his life to this business. Since David’s death in 1912 it has been owned by – his nieces and nephews including Richard A. and William Ehrlich.

Ehrlich shop has since 1880 had a predilection for historic sites. 25 Court Street was close to the spot where from 1721-1726 James Franklin had, with the assistance of his brother Benjamin, published The New-England Courant. In 1908 the firm moved a few doors up Court Street to number 37, on the opposite corner of the alley that is grandiloquently named Franklin Avenue. This new location was on the site of the one-time printing office of Edes and Gill, publishers of the Boston Gazette, in whose back room some of the “Indians” of the Boston Tea Party assumed their disguises. Soon after the end of World War II at which time the store was located at 33 Court Street a move around the corner to 207 Washington Street brought the shop diagonally across from the Old State House and onto the site occupied from 1610-1808 by the First Church of Boston. The demolition of 207 Washington Street in 1967 caused still another move to 32 Tremont Street, adjoining King’s Chapel burying Ground, which is the oldest cemetery in Boston.

The David P. Ehrlich Co. has not just occupied sites intimately associated with Boston history and institutions; it has in the past century become a Boston institution in its own right. It has specialized in fine cigars, pipes, and pipe tobacco. In addition to the retail business, the firm has long specialized in the manufacture of pipes, both from Algerian briar root…

That gave the history of the brand and was written in a way that fascinated me. I included a lot of because of that. I knew that the pipe I was working on was stamped Imported Briar which generally points to a pipe made elsewhere for Ehrlich and brought to the US.

There were some deep scratches on the underside of the shank that I decided to steam out. I used a flat table knife, a damp cloth and the flame from my gas range to heat and create steam to raise the scratches. It worked quite well and removed some and minimized the others.  I polished the briar with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I was able to remove the varnish coat on the bowl and shank with the pads. I wiped the briar down with a damp cloth between each sanding pad. The briar took on a rich shine and there was some nice grain around the bowl and shank sides. I rubbed some Before & After Restoration Balm into the finish of the pipe. I worked it into the briar because the product cleans, enlivens and protects the briar. I let the pipe sit with the Balm for 10 minutes then buffed it off with a soft towel. The Balm did its magic and the pipe looked really good. I turned my attention to the stem. It was oxidized but did not have any tooth marks or chatter on either side. I scrubbed it with cotton pads and Soft Scrub all purpose cleanser. I worked on it until the stem surface was clean and ready polish.I touched up the E stamp on the side of the stem with white acrylic nail polish. I worked it into the E stamp with a tooth pick to get it into the grooves of the stamp. It was deep enough that it looked very good.I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped the stem down after each pad with a cloth impregnated with Obsidian Oil. I polished it with Before & After Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine then gave it a final coat of Obsidian Oil and set it aside to dry. This Ehrlich Special Imported Briar Panel Billiard with a Taper Vulcanite stem looks really good. The grain around the bowl and shank stands out with the contrasting brown stains. I put the pipe back together and buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the wheel (being careful of the stamping on the stem so as not to damage it). I gave the bowl and stem multiple coats of carnauba wax and buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. I hand buffed it with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The dimensions of this pipe are – Length: 5 inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 1.34 ounces/38 grams. It is a great looking pipe and one that will be going on the rebornpipes store in the American Pipe Makers section. If you want to add it to your collection let me know via email to slaug@uniserve.com or by message. Thanks for walking through the cleanup with me.

Restoring a Mark Tinsky American Pristine 5 Rhodesian

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Blog by Steve Laug

I have worked on several pipes for a fellow in Israel over the past few months and he is great to work with. He has great taste in pipes and the ones he has purchased from me have also been beautiful. Periodically I receive an email from him about another pipe he was interested in purchasing EBay. This next one was one that caught my attention. He sent me the link and wanted my opinion on it. It was a nice Mark Tinsky signed American Pristine 5 Rhodesian. I really liked the look and the Rhodesian with a twin ring cap around the rim top. The pipe appeared to be in decent condition. Not too many days after that he wrote me to say he had won it and he had it shipped to me rather than to him in Israel. We chatted back and forth about it via email and I would let him know when I received it. Here are the pictures that the EBay seller included with the advertising.  The seller took several photos of the stamping on the left and underside of the shank. It is faint on the left side in the photo but is very readable on the underside. The inlaid American Smoking Pipe Five Point Star in a brass circle is visible in the first photo.I have collected and smoked Mark Tinsky’s pipes for over 30 years now and thoroughly enjoy them. I cannot speak highly enough about the quality and craftsmanship of his pipe. I have pipes made by Mark and by Curt Rollar in my collection and both are great smokers and pipes that reach for regularly in my choice of pipes. I turned to his website for a quick summary of the history of the brand (http://www.amsmoke.com/Index%20Folder/PipeHist.html). I quote from the site as it is a short, concise history.

The American Smoking Pipe Co. was formed in 1978 by Mark Tinsky and Curt Rollar. Both started making pipes for Jack Weinberger ( JHW Pipes ) while in high school and throughout college. Determined to blaze their own path, they formed their own company- its goal to create unique pipes, lightweight and comfortable, where attention to detail was the rule not the exception. Exulting in their new freedom, they carved out new shapes that were balanced between the radical freehand era of the 70’s and the board pipe look of other conservative companies. Hungry for recognition, they stormed the Eastern and Southern shops looking for markets to sell their pipes. Many hidebound retailers refused to try something new, preferring to sell, well, what has always sold before. However, their pipes did take root in many shops and the business thrived.

They continued expanding their pipe making capabilities, adding employees to help finish the pipes. In 1990, over a disagreement over how much to expand, Curt Rollar left the company. This put a break on expansion and coupled with a U.S. recession and rising anti-smoking fervor served to limit production to supplying existing retailers, thus ending a decade of growth. With pipes sales in decline, we turned to pipe repair as a way to supplement revenues. Finding that we liked fixing things, American concentrated on pipe repair. While working hard at repair and manufacture American is ready once again to expand its markets through its existing network of shops serviced by pipe repair.

With the advent of the Internet, we are exploring marketing pipes directly to consumers in markets not covered by retail accounts. Feel free to e-mail us at MT@MT.NET

From the history reminder, I turned to the section of the site that gave the price breakdown and information on the finishes and stamping of the pipes and stems. I have included that below (http://www.amsmoke.com/Index%20Folder/PRICE.html). The pipe I am working on is noted below with a red square – PRISTINE and the size is a 5 which sells for around $240USD.He also included a description of the Pristine finish and a photo below that is helpful to me as I restore this pipe.I am also including Mark’s description of the stamping and logo on the stem below.

Stamping:

Pipes are stamped with :
My signature
The American logo : with the year it was made( starting from 2000) This year reads 00
A Finish stamp
Size indication
Stars for straight grain rating
Special Orders are stamped SO, Special orders are priced using the above structure with possible some additional charge for a very difficult shape.

Difficulty of Shape:. A size six billiard is the same price as the same size hawkbill, which is a lot harder to make.Pipes that are more difficult to make now carry an “X” next to the Size designation. If a pipe is extremely difficult it may carry an XX, tho those are extremely rare.

Logos

Silver Star: All pipes except freehands & pipes with very thin stems carry a handmade sterling silver star logo with a black enamel backing.

Gold Star: A grade of pipes that will carry a solid gold star as the logo. So far only three have been made and if I get one every couple years I d consider it lucky.

The pipe I am working on has Mark’s signature as noted above. The American logo with the 00 under the American in the oval tells me that the pipe was made in 2000. The finish is  Pristine and the size is a 5 in a circle. There are no stars for a straight grain rating.

The pipe arrived this week in a Bubble Mailer from the seller. To me it is a questionable way to ship pipes as they can be easily damaged. I was concerned when I opened the mailer to examine the pipe inside. Fortunately the seller had separated the stem and bowl and wrapped each in thick bubble wrap which certainly helped. I examined the pipe carefully to assess both the condition of the pipe and what I needed to do with it. There was a light cake in the bowl and no lava on the rim top or edges. There was a nick in the rim top and inner edge on the right side in the middle. Otherwise the rim top looked quite good. The pipe was stamped on the on the sides the shank and on the left side was the Mark Tinsky signature. On the underside it was stamped American in an oval [over] Pristine [over] 5 in a circle. The finish was surprisingly clean but dull with some great grain hiding in the dullness. The stem had the inlaid metal five point star in a circle logo on the left side of the saddle. The acrylic was fairly clean and there were tooth marks and chatter on the top and underside. I took some photos of the pipe before I started my work on it. I have included them below. I took a photo of the bowl and rim top to show the thickness of the cake in the bowl and the slight darkening on the inner edges of the bowl. The nick on the rim top and edge on the right is visible in the photo. I took photos of the stem surface to show the condition and tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. I took photos of the stamping on the shank sides (left and underside). It is readable as noted above and though faint is clear. I took a photo of the Silver Star with a black background logo on the stem as well. It is in excellent condition.I removed the stem from the shank and took a photo of the pipe parts. It is quite a stunning piece.I started my work on the pipe by reaming the bowl with a PipNet pipe reamer and took the cake back to bare walls. I cleaned up the reaming with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. I sanded the bowl walls with 220 grit sandpaper wrapped around a piece of dowel. I examined the walls with a lens and they were solid and undamaged. I worked over the darkening on the inside edge of the bowl and the rim top with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper. It began to look a lot better.I used a butter knife, wet cloth and the flame of our gas stove to steam out the dent on the top right of the rim edge. I heated the knife with the flame on the stove and put the wet cloth on the dent. I touched the area of the dent with the hot knife. It came out easily and looks great. I cleaned out the airway in the shank and the stem as well as the mortise with isopropyl alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. It was surprisingly quite clean.I scrubbed the exterior of the bowl with Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush to remove the grime from the finish of the bowl and rim top. I rinsed off the bowl with warm water and then dried the bowl with a cotton cloth. The grain that came to the surface once it was clean is quite stunning. I polished the briar with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. After each pad I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth to remove the sanding debris. It really took on a shine by the last three sanding pads. I rubbed the bowl down with Before & After Restoration Balm. I worked it into the surface of the briar with my fingertips and a shoe brush to get it in the grooves. It works to clean, restore and preserve the briar. I let it do its magic for 15 minutes then buffed it off with a cotton cloth. The pipe looks incredibly good at this point in the process.  With that the bowl had come a long way from when I started working on it. I set it aside and turned my attention to the stem. I filled in the few deep tooth marks in the acrylic with clear CA glue. Once the repairs cured I sanded them smooth with 220 grit sandpaper and started polishing them with 400 grit wet dry sandpaper. I continued to polish the stem with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped it down after each sanding pad with Obsidian Oil. I polished it with Before & After Pipe Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine and wiped it down with Obsidian Oil one more time. I am excited to finish this beautiful Mark Tinsky American Pristine Rhodesian size 5. I put the pipe back together and buffed it with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax. I hand buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. It is fun to see what the polished bowl looks like with beautiful mixed grain all around it. The polished grain on the pipe looks great with the black acrlyic stem. This smooth Tinsky American Pristine Rhodesian is great looking and the pipe feels great in my hand. It is light and well balanced. Have a look at it with the photos below. The dimensions are Length: 5 ½ inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¾ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 72 grams/2.54 ounces. It turned out to be a beautiful pipe. I will be packing it up and sending it to my friend in Israel. I think he will enjoy this beauty once it is in his hands. Thanks for your time reading this blog and as Paresh says each time – Stay Safe.