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Ponderings on an Almost Lost Generation of Pipe Smokers, with a Restoration Thrown In – Robert M. Boughton

Guest Blog by Robert M. Boughton
Member, North American Society of Pipe Collectors
http://www.roadrunnerpipes.com
http://about.me/boughtonrobert
Photos © the Author, except when obvious

“If You’re Getting Dad a Pipe, Make It a FRANK MEDICO – HESSON GUARD MILANO…Frank Medico Is the filter-cooled pipe. Changing the filter keeps it fresh, cool, odorless. Milano has a special cushion-sealed guard. Handkerchief test proves it keeps the ‘vital zone’ spotless.”
— Newspaper Ad, 1944, http://209.212.22.88/data/rbr/1940-1949/1944/1944.06.15.pdf,pg.2

INTRODUCTION: THE SO-CALLED GOOD OLD DAYS
If that doesn’t pull your nostalgia trigger, try these other family-friendly happy piper ads, also from the 1940s and our same sponsor:

There is a reason I’m focusing on Medico ads, which will become clear, but first take as close a look at these as you can. I apologize for the sizes, but the words are unimportant, inane in fact. Take, as a further example, one short 1928 newspaper ad for the Demuth Milano with the Hesson Guard which read, “Would You Stick Your Handkerchief in the Stem of Your Pipe? This Is Possible with the ‘Metal Guard.’ It Stays Clean.” (http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19281028&id=aJVQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=siEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1833,4407321,p.51.)

I wanted to see that trick and by chance came across a “Scientific American” ad on how to “stop goo” in the October 1950 issue with instructions to try the hankie test on a Milano Lockmount, which was a metal gadget with a “permanent” cork tip, all attached to the stem that was inserted into the shank. The ad shows a handkerchief stuffed into the empty shank and suggested it would always come out clean. (http://books.google.com/books?id=7iwDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=hesson+guard&source=bl&ots=mVrSmRlYxu&sig=5Z3GWlOjardFbCsE6ToDTWjdJuI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1YIXVJeSEtDioATlzIGABw&ved=0CCMQ6AEwATgU#v=onepage&q=hesson%20guard&f=false,p.26.) My guess is that the operative word in the humongous URL is the last, “false.” What, my enquiring mind wondered, knowing what can happen to cork in pipes under the best of situations, becomes of the cork when it invariably will be saturated with goo? I, for one, do not care to think about it.

As Fred R. Barnard, himself a clever ad man,wrote in the text of one almost always misquoted example of his work in “Printer’s Ink” magazine in 1921, “One look is worth a thousand pictures.”I, for one, love these old ads, not only for their nostalgic value but their frankly corny (now) approach to selling pipes. Viewing them today we need to realize that times and life were not really simpler way back when; our advertising and entertainment were simply more diversionary tactics to deal with the horrors in the world. Who in those days wanted to see real life on the big screen or print ads? Ask the average Joe or Jane on the street that question today and you’re liable to get a litany of reality shows.

Although I am single, from what I gather of married smokers, mostly men, the wives if not the rental agreements rule the household, and so most smokers seem to enjoy their extramarital love affairs out of the home. A few, including our good host Steve, apparently just enjoy it more in the great Canadian outdoors, for example, as I would if I had the rural setting to accommodate my inclination. It’s dangerous enough where I live just to check the mail, so for me “outdoors” means driving my SUV about town with the doors auto-locked, a pipe in my mouth and the sun roof open.

But again, really take a good look at the classic expressions on the faces of the men and women in these ads – unadulterated agreement, if you will indulge perhaps only a fanciful imagination, that the pipe is no problem, so long as it has the vital filter space. Ah, yes, we all know the importance of that special spot. And get a look at the wide-eyed, half-crazed, sideways, Renfield-like peek of utterly tweaked fulfillment on the man’s face in all three, not to mention the “Better Homes and Gardens” Housewife of the Year leer from the woman that gives one the idea that she knows who the real boss in the house is anyway. Why, the man’s expression not only brings to mind Dracula’s bat-nuts servant played so memorably by Dwight Frye in the 1931 horror pinnacle for Bela Lugosi (the only real Dracula movie ever made), it’s even reminiscent of the 1936 cult classic movie, “Reefer Madness,” which with more than a little irony is seen today as the nonsense it is more than public and legislative attitudes aimed at the childish belief that outrageous taxes will eliminate smoking tobacco of any kind, no matter how contemplative and rarefied.

Happily, this brings me to one of my important points. The very word rarefied, in the sense of refined or purified, describes my new friend and fellow pipe club member, Laurence H. Lattman, Ph.D. Had I met Dr. Lattman under different circumstances, or even known when I met him a month or so ago that he earned the degree in geology at the University of Cincinnati with a special knack for geomorphology, I would follow my general urge to refer to him as such.

Larry Lattman, Honest-to-God Old Codger

Larry began a career as a professor at Pennsylvania State University in 1957; he chaired the University of Cincinnati’s Geology Department for five years before moving on to the University of Utah, where he was dean of the College of Engineering and then took the chair of the College of Mines and Mineral Industries; from Utah Larry moved at last to New Mexico, where he was president of New Mexico Tech (then known as the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology) until his retirement, and he has authored or co-authored at least 45 scholarly papers and two books.

His honors include the Penn State Distinguished Teaching Award in 1969, a Fulbright Professorship at Moscow State University in 1975, the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers’ (M.I.M.E.) Mineral Industry Education Award in 1986, as well as being a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and a 1981 Distinguished Member of the Society of Mining Engineers. His consultations to organizations and governments worldwide, including the National Academy of Sciences in the U.S., are prolific.

Therefore, of the many very intelligent people with doctorates in this or that whom I have met in my life, surely Dr. Lattman deserves the distinction, and I’m sure that is what his scores of students over the decades he has been an educator call him. To anyone who knows the excellent engineer and geologist better, however, he goes by Larry – just Larry, not even Mr. Lattman. Like most folks, Larry enjoys a good joke, but unlike most, he has a seemingly countless collection from which he can draw at any moment given the trains of thought of those around him, which are often numerous and fast-paced and drawn to the teacher as I imagine he attracts his students. I will not quote any of Larry’s jokes here for various reasons.

Something else special about Larry, and that touches on the purpose of this writing, is that he is 90 years old. This means he has survived being born in the Bronx, New York on November 30, 1923, when the’20s were just starting to Roar, living his formative years during the Great Depression, seeing Prohibition come and go, enlisting in the Army Corps of Engineers when he was 20 and serving the last two years of World War II – all by the time he was barely able to drink legally with today’s standards and morals in this country.

Still, the first thing I can remember Larry saying was, “I smoked my first pipe when I was 18, and FDR was president.” That’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the U.S. and the only one to be elected more than twice (four times: 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944), before the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was passed by Congress in 1947 and ratified by the states in 1951.

“I smoked my first pipe when I was 18, and FDR was president.” I will never forget those words. To me, as I suspect is true with most others, they are as hard to imagine as an email sent to me by Larry would have been for him when he was that 18-year-old. As he recalls the occasion of his first pipe experience, it was a rum and maple blend in a Frank Medico filter model that he says was similar to the Medico Harwood Gold Crest most prominent in the second ad above. He added that, during the time at his resume of universities, he “puffed pipes off and on accumulating a group of Dunhills and four dot Sasienis (including a group of seven matched ones in a box with each day of the week specified.)” After a hiatus of about 20 years, Larry continued in the email, he “began to puff in earnest.” Few know the importance of being earnest better than Larry.

Now I will flashback to 1943, when young Larry joined the military to do his part for Uncle Sam and the world. The Mills Brothers’ “Paper Doll” was No. 1 on Billboard, and Rudy Vallee and His Connecticut Yankees’ “As Time Goes By” was No. 11. (In case you wondered, I added No. 11 because it happens to be one of my favorites.) The U.S. population was 136,739,353, and unemployment was 1.9 percent (compared to 318,860,010 and 6.1 percent as of this writing). FDR’s Social Security aspect of the New Deal was meant to be a temporary fix, not permanent. The price of a stamp was three cents. Federal spending, most of it because of the war, was $78.56 Billion instead of today’s $3.8 Trillion (although at the inflation rate of 1,277.2 percent compared to 1943, federal spending then would have been $1.1 Trillion, but that’s still no excuse for either). The New York Yankees won the World Series, of course, 4-1 against the St. Louis Cardinals. FDR and Britain’s Winston Churchill held the Casablanca Conference, and the movie “Casablanca” with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, which was released the previous year, was still in theaters because there was nowhere else to see it. THAT ALONE SHOULD BLOW OUR MINDS! BTW (from the new invention that made Larry’s email possible), “Mrs. Miniver,” with Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, won the Oscar for Best Picture. Where have all the greats gone?

I should mention that Larry also has the distinction of being the first person to purchase a restored pipe online from my store, although I had sold five others in person to various associates. I’m afraid Larry might have gotten a wild hair somewhere, and ended up buying another. The rest of this blog is about the first buy, a straight large bowl Duca Carlo natural billiard by Savinelli, and how I cleaned it up.

THE PIPE RESTORATION

Photo 1

Photo 2

Photo 3

Photo 4

Photo 5 & 6

As can be seen from the photos above, this project posed almost textbook restoration issues to be overcome. First, although it was nowhere close to the dirtiest pipe I have ever cornered, it needed a good bath before I could really see what I had to do. Photo 3 shows the moderate ding and scorching on the rim, and a large amount of cake buildup in the bowl. It just doesn’t reveal the depth of the rim blackening or the incredible layers of cake and how thick they were in places. And so the rim and bowl were my main problems.

I give every pipe a quick-clean to make sure there are no truly serious interior problems with the stem’s bore or tenon and/or the bowl’s mortise or draught hole and then, in general, wait to clean and sterilize the inside of the pipe thoroughly until after I have at least reamed and sanded the chamber. This is probably the only general procedural step in every pipe restoration on which I choose to deviate from my mentor and friend, Chuck Richards. His perfectly sound idea is to clean the thing and be done with it, while I prefer to wait except as noted, although I know Chuck must give his finished work a final run-through with the stem cleaner anyway.

Therefore, after Rob’s patented Quick-and-Dirty Cleaning, in multiple senses of the description, I turned to the rim, which I had already scrubbed with purified water to a dull, dark and negligibly different appearance, and gave the task my absolute all with several grades of micromesh, working my way lower in number and only higher in bodily and mental temperature. Determined not to spend my night on the rim, I found a nice small piece of 400-grit sandpaper that worked wonders in moments. With a bit more elbow grease and attention to the exact location of the smaller but still present ding, I was able to remove the blight and finish up with a hand-buffing using 1800 micromesh, if I recall correctly.

Photo 7

With my micromesh kit handy, I flipped the bowl over (see Photo 4) to check out the little pit I noticed as I cleaned the briar. This time, with both Chuck’s and Steve’s repeated advice, in the echoes of my mind, to take it easy on the sanding, and Steve’s specific mention of 1500 micromesh in an email full of good constructive criticism (which I always appreciate because it seems to come to me more often in negative forms), I found my little Platte River box and dug out that exact numbered piece of paper. Careful again to apply the slow, even pressure of the grit only to the small hole in the wood with the 1500 curled around an index finger, it ended up looking much better.

Photo 8

After that, noticing what I was beginning to think must be my tell-tale scratch signature, I switched to 3200 and wiped until it had a nice shine. I used only the 3200 on other isolated parts of the bowl with almost microscopic scratches and other flaws, then wiped it all clean with a cotton rag.

In the event of any possible unevenness in the upper diameter of the bowl as a result of the reaming I contemplated to remove the years of staggered caking, like narrow ledges on the face of a mountain – with the peak being, as it should on a mountain but not in the bowl of any pipe, the smallest part – I put aside my plans to re-stain the rim. Instead I took my Senior Pipe Reamer from its box and had trouble finding a setting to insert it. Getting it all the way in and starting at the base being impossible, I began at the peak and slowly cranked away until the blades slipped lower. In that fashion I bored a path down to the bottom of the chasm, which resembled the inside of a volcano, crusted and jagged. Altogether this phase was accomplished in four or five small steps.

Along the way, I dumped out the loosening carbon into a growing mound that reached almost an inch high in the initial descent. Then I commenced the reaming proper, so to speak, turning the blades at an angle favoring the top of the bowl, and broke new ground there, where I actually reached bare briar for about three-eighths of an inch down the slope. In this fashion, I made several more slow descents before the interior was more or less convex, though still very rough. The only remaining wide fissure was at the very bottom of the bowl, which I determined to eliminate with sanding by hand until I achieved an overall smoothness that would be even with the bottom, with which I could then deal.
I started with 150-grit paper and made a surprisingly brief, easy time of it. After dumping more carbon, I stuck a small square of cotton over a finger and used it to wipe the inside of the bowl roughly to clear it of more soot. Switching to 400-grit paper, I used the only appropriate finger to finish the job, with the satisfying result of a bowl that was as smooth as obsidian and, except for the clean briar at the top, appeared to be pre-smoked. The final pile of carbon was higher than two inches, which is truly amazing given that the actual bowl interior was 7/8×1-1/2”.

I knew the time had come to clean the pipe, which proved to be unusually easy. All I needed was a few pipe cleaners, the alcohol and about 20 minutes. I deduced that whoever smoked the pipe for so long and with such disregard for upkeep of the bowl at least disliked the wet, acrid dottle backwash he must have generated to use pipe cleaners on the stem and shank fairly often.

With the end of the project in sight, I felt a surge of motivation to finish, but not in a rush. I just wasn’t about to stop at that point, if that makes sense. And so I reached for my brown boot stain. With the applicator brush dipped at one end into the liquid and then wiped as dry as possible on the rim of the bottle, I ran it twice with care around the pipe’s dull but smooth rim and immediately fired it gently with my lighter. Setting it aside for a few minutes to cool off, I then returned to my micromesh box and removed the darkened, dried excess stain with my 3200 paper using soft, even strokes. The final color was a perfect match.

I rubbed the entire pipe and stem separately with my cotton cloth and gave both an evil eye inspection, with my magnifier glasses on, of course. The bowl was ready, but one look at the stem almost stopped my heart. I had forgotten it completely! However, I was in luck, as there were no dings or chatter to fix, so all I needed to do was micromesh it. (See photos 3 and 4.) I chose 800 for one run, then 3200 for the other. In a few minutes, both parts were ready for buffing.

Red Tripoli followed by a good rub with a cotton rag and then White Diamond worked for the stem. The bowl I buffed with white Tripoli, White Diamond and carnauba.

Photo 9

Photo 10

Photo 11

Photo 12

Photo 13

Photo 14

CONCLUSION
The 1940s and ’50s, and into the ’60s, were the heyday of pipesmoking. Most young men at least experimented with them, and I remember my early boyhood when my father and nearly every friend of his, including many doctors, were devotees of the relaxing enjoyment of the magical, mostly briar personal and social tool that was as ubiquitous as cocktails at lunch and after work. My father, for one, believed in caring for all of his tools and keeping them in their proper places, whether it was in the garage, his home office space or the large walk-in closets he shared with my mother. The closets, I remember, were where he stored his boxes of pipes, high on the upper shelves like a gun, where I could not get to them.

Ironically, I played a key part in his abandoning the enjoyment of his pipes. Swept up by the foolishness of my sisters and mother, who all had heads full of the initial hysteria created by the Surgeon General’s warnings on all cigarette packages and in ads, and thereby harped on him to quit smoking “so you won’t get cancer,” and being only a lad of seven or younger, I gave in and joined them. In the end, my father succumbed to the incessant nagging from all of us and quit for good.

Now 81 and not likely to take up the old pleasure again, he has not talked to me for about 14 years, after a 15-year lapse, when I tracked down his phone number from his best friend, who was a medical doctor he met in college and lived on a different island in Hawaii. The purpose of the call was to follow up on a telegram I sent my father and his new wife, the wedding of whom I learned literally at the last minute the day of the ceremony. I paid for hand-delivery, which I learned in the conversation we had that was short and cordial they received and appreciated. Not that my role in his giving up one of his main pleasures in life was in any way part of the official reason for the gulf that came to divide us (which excuse I still do not understand), I’m sure my father, being the kind of man he is, never forgot.

At any rate, as my father would say to change a subject, the Surgeon General’s warning would seem to coincide with the decline of smoking in general and the pipe in particular. I could only guess how many times I’ve had my pipe with me in public and been stopped by strangers who almost invariably comment that my pipe and the pleasant aroma of its tobacco remind them of their father or grandfather. Fortunately, I’m long past the initial sting. After all, most of the time I could be either.

I will end with one story of Larry’s from his two years of service in Europe during World War II. This needs a little set up, naturally. Assigned at first to the Manhattan Project (which developed the atom bomb, for those who don’t know), Larry was without explanation transferred to the European Theater – a marvelous euphemism up with which only the military could come. As it turned out, the latent engineering talent with which Larry appears to have been born led the powers that were in the old War Department to conclude that Larry’s understanding of the Bomb and ability to speak pidgin German made him the perfect candidate to question or interrogate German scientists, depending on whether they fled on their own or were captured, as to their knowledge of the Fatherland’s own plans for a similar weapon of mass destruction.

At any rate, Larry’s day job, so to speak, in the Corps of Engineers mostly involved setting up Bailey Bridges, which could be assembled quickly with pre-made parts and engineer-soldiers using only wrenches. Conceived by a British civil servant named Donald Bailey while being driven home after watching another conventional bridge being blown up by enemy bombers, the Bailey Bridge proved to be a highly effective weapon to allow the rapid construction of means to transport troops and heavy vehicles including tanks across rivers anywhere.(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PcoozadA6A.)

Larry recalls his part helping to assemble these bridges, which not only are easy and fast to put together but last as long as most of their regular counterparts. In fact, many of the Baileys constructed in Europe during the war are still there. During a trip to France with his wife many years later, Larry decided to track down at least one of the bridges he helped to make. After hours of driving around the French countryside, he found what he was looking for but was horrified by what the locals had done to it.

“They painted it an awful shade of pink!” he exclaimed. “No Bailey should ever be painted pink! They should be left the way they were built.”

Indeed.

Rebuilding a Dr. Grabow Regal Adjustomatic Patent Billiard

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One of the few pipes with a stem included in my gift box of bowls was a nice little Dr. Grabow Billiard. It had a long stem that clearly fit the shank of the pipe and gave it an elegant look and feel. At first glance I figured this one would clean up quite easily. The varnish finish on the bowl was worn and spotty with pieces of the varnish coat peeling off the surface of the briar. The rim was coated with a thick layer of tars and oils but looked sound. The bowl had a thick cake particularly from mid bowl to the bottom of the bowl. It was very hard and was not crumbling at all. It had however, closed the bowl to a large degree. The mortise was part of the aluminum band on the shank. It was a threaded cast piece that was fitted against the briar and was oxidized. The internals were quite clean. The bowl was stamped on the left side: REGAL over Dr. Grabow. On the right side it was stamped Imported Briar over Adjustomatic over PAT. 2461905. I have written about the patent on the Adjustomatic tenon/stem in an earlier post on rebornpipes: https://rebornpipes.com/tag/dr-grabow-adjustomatic/ I included patent information and diagrams on that page so I will not repeat that material in this post. The stem had thick calcification on the top and bottom sides of the stem and looked like it had one time sported a softie bit. When I turned the stem over there was a large hole in the underside from the button forward. I wiped down the bowl with acetone on a cotton pad to remove the damaged varnish and prepare the bowl for possible restaining once the rim had been cleaned off. It took some scrubbing but I was able to get rid of the varnish from the surface and out of the grooves in the carved leaves on both sides of the bowl. It turned out that underneath the peeling varnish there was some very nice grain on the pipe. The top and bottom of the shank and the front and back of the bowl were really nice cross grain. There was a small nick in the back of the bowl near the top of the rim that had a small fill otherwise the briar was flawless. The sides were very nice birdseye grain. This was going to be a stunning pipe once it was finished. I wiped down the buildup on the rim and was unable to even dent the hard tar. I lightly topped the bowl on a topping board to take of the buildup and not affect the rim itself. I carefully removed the tars, checking every move across the sandpaper to make sure that I was not damaging the surface of the rim. Once I had cut through the buildup the briar was in very good shape. I used a PipNet reamer with the smallest cutting head to remove the carbon cake in the bowl. Even the smallest head was hard to turn against the rock hard cake of this bowl. I carefully worked it back and forth, being careful not to tip the cutting head to either side and lose the roundness of the bowl. Once I had gotten the head in as far as possible I used a pen knife to work on the bottom portion of the bowl and then reworked the reamer in that area. I decided to try to patch the hole in the stem. I cleaned hole and put Vaseline on a pipe cleaner. I inserted it in the airway then sprayed accelerator on the stem, put black superglue on the hole and let it sit. The hole was quite large and I was not sure that the repair would hold. I applied the glue in several layers building up the patch until it was quite thick. I sprayed it with the accelerator each time to speed the drying time. I sanded the patched area with 150 and 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the patch and then reapplied more black super glue and accelerator. I set the stem aside and let it cure. In the morning I sanded the stem patch until it was smooth in the process my fingernail went through the stem above the patch. I explored the thickness of the stem up the stem and found that I could push through the airway quite a distance up the stem (Photo 1 below). After that fiasco I noticed that the patch was also quite unstable. I was able to push out the patch with my fingernail. The stem after patching and pushing through the repair is shown in Photo 2. At this point it was clear that a stem patch would not work on this stem. With the thinness of the vulcanite extending up the stem about an inch it was not clear how far that would go. I was going to need to do something different. I cut off the stem with a Dremel and sanding drum. After cutting it off I could see the problem – airway was drilled very high in the stem. There was no room for cutting a new button on the stem and opening up the slot. The top of the stem was thin for another inch toward the tenon. I had to come up with something very different to address this issue. I had an old Kaywoodie stem in my can of stems that was about the same diameter as the damaged one. It was missing the club logo in the side of the stem but had a club shaped hole. I heated the stinger on the KW stem with a lighter and then was able to remove it with a pair of needle nose pliers. I also heated the Grabow stem with the lighter and worked on it with the pliers. It came out slowly. I finally screwed it into the bowl and turned it until the stem came off. I then unscrewed the tenon from the bowl. I tried it in the KW stem and it was just a little bit bigger than the hole in the stem. I would need to drill it one size larger to get a fit. I used my cordless drill to drill it out. It had to be slightly larger and slightly deeper than the KW stinger apparatus. To make room for the lip on the aluminum piece I used a sharp knife to bevel the inner edge of the hole to accommodate the lip. The Grabow tenon/adjustomatic apparatus fit in the shank and I pressed it into place to see if the fit was correct. I then removed it and used a white all purpose glue to hold it in place. There was a removable stinger end for the tenon so I reinserted that in place and the new insert was ready. The fit of the stem against the shank was perfect. The diameter of the stem was slightly larger than the diameter of the shank so I would need to sand it to make them match. I tried to remove the Grabow insert from the old stem so that I could use it on the new stem. I tried to pick it out with a dental pick but was not able to remove it. I filled the club hole with black superglue and then sanded it smooth. I used 220 grit sandpaper to work on the diameter of the stem. I also sanded the end of the stem around the button to remove the tooth marks and chatter. The next series of four photos show the stem after all of the sanding and shaping. The new stem looked quite good with the bowl. The fit was perfect and the lines and flow of the angles was exactly what I was looking for when I started. I sanded the stem with a medium and fine grit sanding sponge and then refilled the small holes around the patched club logo with more superglue. I sanded the patch down with 220 grit sandpaper and resanded it with the sanding sponges until it was smooth. The photo below shows the two stem side by side. I sanded the stems with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-2400 grit pads and dry sanding with 3200-12,000 grit pads. I rubbed it down with Obsidian Oil between each set of three grits of micromesh. I buffed the stem with White Diamond and then gave it a final coat of Obsidian Oil and set it aside to work on the bowl. I buffed the bowl with White Diamond and carefully buffed around the stamping on the sides. I polished the aluminum shank band with the higher grades of micromesh pads and then a polishing cloth to remove the scratches and bring up the shine. The next series of four photos show the polished bowl before I worked on it with some 8000-12,000 grit micromesh pads. I gave the bowl a wiped down coat of Danish Oil and walnut stain. I wanted to give the briar a shine coat but not add much colour to the finish. It really made the grain pop on this one. Once the oil had dried I buffed the bowl with White Diamond and then gave it several coats of carnauba wax. I buffed it with a soft flannel buff. I put the stem back in place and gave the bowl and stem several more coats of wax and buffed to a shine. The finished pipe is shown below. The look and feel of the pipe is like new. It is cleaned, restemmed, refinished and ready to fire up with its inaugural bowl of tobacco. It should last a long time and serve its owner well – whether I keep it or pass it on to another pipeman. (I decided to take these final photos on a piece of marble counter top to see if I could get a good contrast on the photos.)

Restoring a Dr. Grabow Meerschaum-Lined Stack

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Blog by Steve Laug

Another of the bowls I was gifted was a tall Meerschaum lined rusticated stack with a smooth spot on both sides of the bowl and the end of the shank. It is stamped on the underside of the shank, MEERSCHAUM-LINED over Dr. Grabow. The bowl exterior had some darkening on the back side of the bowl and the grooves of the bowl were caked. The rim had damage and the meerschaum lining was rough on the inside edge of the bowl. There were cracks in the meerschaum bowl insert on the rim. The bowl itself was cracked and missing from about mid bowl to the bottom of the bowl. The meerschaum pieces were lying in the bottom of the bowl and there was no stem for the pipe.

I did not know anything about the meerschaum lined Dr. Grabows and this one had a distinct look of an Italian made pipe. I went to my source on line for Grabow information the Dr. Grabow Forum (http://drgrabows.myfreeforum.org/sutra238.php). There I found a post on the meerlined pipes. It read in part as follows… “Meerschaum lined pipes were originally imported from M. Gasparini in Italy for Grabow. Sparta finally figured out how to do them and only imported the “plugs”. Early Grabow Meerschaum lined pipes were stamped Italy with no spade. After 1989 Dr. Grabow got rid of Italy and added the spade.” So, my sense of it being Italian was correct. It also dates this pipe as pre-1989. I had an old stem in my can of stems that would be a good fit for this pipe. I needed to sand the tenon slightly to get a snug fit against the shank. The diameter of the stem was slightly larger than the diameter of the shank and would need to be sanded down to make a matched fit. I used a pen knife to clean up the inside of the bowl. There was carbon build up on the lower part of the bowl about mid bowl that was holding together the broken pieces of the meer lining. I scraped away the carbon and removed the broken pieces of meerschaum that remained on the lower edge of the bowl insert. I topped the bowl with a topping board and 220 grit sandpaper to remove the damage to the rim and the lining top. I did not remove much of the bowl top but took off enough to make the bowl top and the rim top flush and smooth. In the photo below the cracks in the bowl insert are visible around the top edge of the bowl. I used clear superglue to fill the cracks on the top edge of the insert and sanded them down. I mixed a batch of plaster of Paris and used the dental pick, the cuticle tool that I was gifts and a pipe nail to build up the interior of the bowl and replace the bottom half of the insert that was missing. I inserted a pipe cleaner in the shank and then packed in the plaster around the airway and tamped it in place on the bottom with the pipe nail and on the sides with the cuticle tool. I used one of the stain pens that I have to stain the rim to match the bowl. I inserted my damp index finger into the bowl and rubbed down the sides of the bowl to smooth them out. I also pushed the plaster on the bottom of the bowl to more thoroughly pack it in place. I sanded the stem with 150 grit sandpaper to reduce the diameter of the stem and then 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the stem. I scrubbed the bowl down with acetone on a cotton pad to remove the finish and clean up the exterior of the bowl. I then rubbed it down with olive oil and let it soak into the finish. I also rubbed down the stem with the oil as I find that it makes sanding the stem easier to do. I sanded the stem with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-3200 grit pads and dry sanding with 3600-12,000 grit pads. I wiped it down between each of the sets of three pads with Obsidian Oil. Once it was dry I buffed the stem with White Diamond and then with carnauba wax. I put the stem back on the pipe and buffed it with White Diamond. I lightly buffed the bowl with carnauba wax and the stem more heavily. I finished by buffing the pipe with a soft flannel buffing pad to raise the shine. The finished pipe is shown below. The thin shank and the thin diameter of the stem give the pipe a delicate look. It is very light weight and fits well in the hand. I am going to let the plaster of Paris repair dry and cure for several days before I load a bowl and give it an inaugural smoke.

UPDATE: I just smoked this one after it had cured for two days. I loaded a bowl of The Malthouse Founder’s Reserve in the bowl and smoked it to the bottom of the bowl. It smoked cool and dry. The plaster of Paris is darkening nicely and will soon match the rest of the meer lining of the bowl.

Rejuvenating a Willard Straight Rhodesian

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Another of the bowls from the gift box was this Willard Rhodesian. It was in pretty good shape other than being dirty and stemless. The bowl had a broken cake at the top of the bowl and remnants of tobacco left in the bowl. The rim was dirty and lightly caked with some damage caused from tapping the rim on something. The outer and inner edges of the bowl were undamaged. The interior of the shank was dirty. The shank was fitted with a threaded mortise that would take a threaded stem. I had a stem in m can of stems that fit well in the shank, was overturned but workable. The diameter of the stem was larger than the shank. The photo below shows the stem on the pipe in the middle of the threesome. I set up a heat gun and held the stem about three inches above the heat. The first photo below shows the stem in place. To heat it I removed it from the bowl and heated the metal tenon. When it was warm I screwed it back in place and twisted it. I had to reheat it several times to get the alignment correct. The second photo shows the aligned stem. I sanded the stem with 150 grit sandpaper to reduce the diameter of the stem. I also sanded the slope to the button to highlight the tooth marks on the stem. I used a needle file to sharpen the inner edge of the button and make the angles more distinct. I wiped down the bowl with acetone to remove the grime and clean up the finish. I did not want to lighten the finish as much as to clean off the light coat of varnish on the briar. I lightly topped the bowl to clean up the rim damage. I used a sanding board and 220 grit sandpaper to remove the damaged briar and then followed that by sanding with a medium and a fine grit sanding block. I continued to sand the stem to match it to the diameter of the shank. I used 220 grit sandpaper to finish the sanding and shaping of the stem. I worked on the tooth marks on the top side and underside of the stem with 220 grit sandpaper until they were no longer visible. I reamed the bowl with a PipNet pipe reamer beginning with the smallest cutting head and working up to the one that was the same diameter as the bowl. I reamed the bowl back to bare wood. I sanded the stem with a medium and fine grit sanding sponge to reduce the scratches left behind by the 220 grit sandpaper. There was one stubborn tooth mark that I could not get out on the underside of the stem next to the button. I cleaned the area with alcohol and then used clear super glue to repair it. I sprayed the path with an accelerator so that I could sand the patch sooner. I sanded the stem with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-3200 grit pads and dry sanding with 3600-12,000 grit pads. I rubbed down the stem with Obsidian Oil between each group of three micromesh sanding pads and then when I finished sanding with the 12,000 grit pad I buffed it with White Diamond. I buffed the bowl and shank with White Diamond and then gave it a coat of Danish Oil and walnut stain to protect and preserve the finish. When it was dry I buffed the pipe with White Diamond and then gave it several coats of carnauba wax. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. The new stem fits well. In fact it looks like it came with the pipe. The repairs to the stem are not visible. The bowl itself dried well and buffing the finish gave it a softer look. The finished pipe was given several more layer of carnauba wax and then buffed with a soft flannel buffing pad. It is now ready for many more years of service to another pipeman.

Worn and Tired No Name Pot Given a New Look

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The next pipe I decided to work on from the gift box was a no name pot shaped bowl without a stem. There was a stem in the box that fit well in the threaded metal shank. The problem with the stem was that it was worn out. There was a large dent on the top of the stem and a large hole in the underside of the stem that also had much damage around the hole. The stem was also over turned. The shape was unique in that the bowl had a slight cant to it. The finish was ruined and the grit and grime on the bowl was heavy. There were four fills using pink putty that stood out on the bowl left side, front and bottom. The rim was thickly tarred and oiled. The outer edge was damaged all the way around the bowl. The cake was quite thick and was crumbling at the bottom of the bowl. The shank was thick with tars as well. The aluminum was oxidized. I used a lighter and a heat gun to heat the metal tenon and was able to adjust the stem to a proper fit on the shank. It softened the glue and lined up nicely but when I heated the top side of the stem to try to raise the dent it bubbled even at a distance of three inches plus above the heat source. Yet another reason I don’t like nylon stems. Looking at it carefully after I had straightened it out I could see that the stem was really worn out and would be better used on a different pipe after it had been cut down. I heated the tenon once again and was able to remove the stem from the tenon. The tenon itself was threaded and screwed into the stem. I had a taper stem in my can of stems that had a broken tenon. I sanded the remainder of the broken tenon until it was smooth. The new stem was the slightly longer than the original stem and it was vulcanite. I drilled out the airway until the metal tenon end fit the in the stem. I held the drill firmly and turned the stem onto the drill bit by hand. I used a tap to cut threads in the freshly drilled hole. I beveled the drilled hole to accommodate the lip on the threaded tenon so that it would sit flush with the face of the stem. I mixed a batch of two part quick dry epoxy and coated the threaded end of the tenon before threading it into the hole in the stem. I set the stem aside to let the epoxy cure and turned to work on the bowl. The bowl needed to be reamed so I used a PipNet reamer to do the work. I started with the smallest cutting head and continued until I used one the same size as the bowl of the pipe. I scrubbed out the shank and bowl with alcohol and pipe cleaners and cotton swabs until the shank and bowl were clean. I set up my topping board and a piece of 220 grit sandpaper and topped the bowl to remove the out rim damage and sharpen the edges of the bowl. I folded a piece of sandpaper and sanded the outer edge once it had been topped. I smoothed out the rough edges until the damage was minimized. I used a dental pick to remove the pink putty fills. I cleaned the surface with acetone to remove the dust and the remaining putty in the holes after I had picked them out. I packed briar dust into the holes in the briar and then dripped super glue into the briar dust to mix with the dust and make a hard fill. I over filled the holes in the briar with the dust and glue so that when it shrunk as it dried it would not leave dips in the surface of the briar. I sanded the filled areas with 220 grit sandpaper to remove the excess and smooth out the fill until it was even with the surface of the briar. I sanded it with a medium and a fine grit sanding sponge and a fine grit sanding block. The new fills were black instead of the bright pink that was previously used in the repairs. Once stained they would be less obvious in the surface of the bowl than the previous ones. I stained the bowl with Danish Oil and walnut stain and set the bowl aside to dry. The next morning I checked the fit of the stem as the epoxy had plenty of time to set and cure. I sanded the stem to reduce the diameter at the shank. I used 150 grit sandpaper to remove the excess while repeatedly screwing it into the shank to check that I had removed enough but not too much. I sanded the stem further with 220 grit sandpaper to remove more of the excess and to also reduce the scratches left behind by the 150 grit paper. I polished the aluminum with a fine grit sanding sponge and removed the oxidation and the scratches. When I had finished sanding the fit of the stem was exactly what I wanted and it only needed to be polished with micromesh sanding pads. I wet sanded with 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads and dry sanded with 3200-12,000 grit sanding pads. I rubbed the stem down with Obsidian Oil between each set of three grits. I buffed the stem with White Diamond to give it a final polish and then rubbed it down a final time with the Obsidian Oil. Once it was dry I hand buffed it and fit it on the pipe. I buffed whole pipe with White Diamond and gave it several coats of carnauba wax to raise a shine. I wanted to protect and shine the bowl and stem. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. The new stem with the retrofitted metal tenon fit extremely well. I like the overall look of the pipe far better than the original look with the saddle stem. The pipe is ready to give many more years of service to the next pipeman whose rack it graces. The end of the stinger is removable so that the pipe can be smoked with or without the stinger.

Giving New Life to a Kaywoodie Connoissuer Dublin Shape 45C

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This is the third old-timer I received in my gift box from Jim. It is stamped Kaywoodie over Connoissuer on the left side of the shank and 45C on the right side near the bowl. It was in rough shape. The finish was gone and the bowl was almost black with grit and grime. There were places on the sides and bottom of the bowl that had black spots of a sticky, oily substance. The rim was heavily caked and damaged as well. There were rough outer edges on the rim on the back right side and the front as well. The bowl was badly caked and appeared to be out of round from reaming with a knife. The stem was in pretty decent shape however. There was a buildup of calcium on the end of the stem about ½ inch from the button forward but there was only minimal tooth chatter and no deep bite marks. The stem even fit correctly and was not over turned in the shank. I looked up an old Kaywoodie shape chart to make sure the shape number 45C was indeed a Dublin, in fact a Large Dublin. I found it in the second column, third entry down that column in the chart below. I think that the name is quite relative as the size is not that large and would easily be a group 3 sized bowl in Dunhill terms. I also found that the Connoisseur line was the top of the line (at least in this chart of pipes). Read the notes on the bottom of the page, the last line that shows a price of $27.50 – the highest priced KW on this chart. When I removed the stem the stinger was black with buildup but was not damaged. It only had two holes in it, a flattened head rather than a ball and a space on the top of the stinger where the air went through. This was obviously a pre-Drinkless stinger. I reamed the bowl with a PipNet pipe reamer and used a dental pick to clean out some of the scale around the edges of the airway. I started with the smallest reaming head and worked up to one approximately the size of the bowl. I wanted to try to minimize the rim damage and bring the bowl back to as close to round as possible with the reamer. The amount of damage to the edges of the outer rim and the broken spots on the inner rim required that I top the bowl. I set up a topping board and 220 grit sandpaper and sanded the top of the bowl. I press the bowl into the sandpaper, taking care to keep the rim flat against the board so as not to slant the top of the bowl. I worked it until the top was clean and the outer edge was sharp once again. The second photo shows the topped rim and the damage down to the roundness of the bowl inner edge. It was going to take some work to work this back to round as much as possible. I sanded the inner edge with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to even it out and give it more of a round shape once again. I wiped the bowl down with acetone on cotton balls to remove the grime on the finish. I decided against using the oil soap this time around as the finish was basically gone any way so the acetone would make short work of removing the finish. I scrubbed it longer and harder than I expected to remove the grime. The next series of photos show the bowl after scrubbing. There was some nice grain under the blackness. I sanded the bowl and the stem with 220 grit sandpaper and also with a medium and fine grit sanding sponge and fine grit sanding block to further clean things up on the surface of the bowl and stem. The photo below shows the bowl after the work on the inner edge of the rim. It certainly has come a long way from the beat up inner edge pictured above. I dropped the bowl into the alcohol bath to soak out some more of the grime from the briar. I turned my attention to the stem. I cleaned up the stinger with alcohol, pipe cleaners and cotton balls until the aluminum shined once again. I continued to sand the stem with the medium and fine grit sanding sponges to remove the surface scratching. I cleaned out the area around the slot with a dental pick and finally after many pipe cleaners was satisfied with the cleanness of the internals of the stem. I sanded the stems with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-2400 grit pads and dry sanding with 3200-12,000 grit pads. I rubbed the stems down with Obsidian Oil between each set of three pads. I buffed the stem with White Diamond and polished it with a coat of carnauba wax to raise a shine. I took the bowl out of the alcohol bath and dried it off with a cotton cloth. I sanded it lightly with a fine grit sanding sponge to remove the last of the grit and grime softened by the bath. The bowl is shown in the photo below. It is cleaned and ready for staining. There were two areas that were dark on the bowl – the left side midbowl toward the front and the right side midbowl toward the back. I cleaned and stained the bowl with some Danish Oil and walnut stain and in the dark spots two small minor cracks showed up. At this point the cracks are not visible in the inside walls of the bowl. They may well be there and not seen in the darkening of the interior walls. Once the oil dried I exposed the two cracks with a dental pick to make them accessible. I then used superglue and briar dust to repair the cracks. I overfilled them with the glue and briar dust to ensure that the repair is solid and would have no pits in the surface once I sanded them. I sanded the repairs with a well used piece of 220 grit sandpaper and followed that with a fine grit sanding sponge and 1500-2400 micromesh sanding pads. I wiped the sanded bowl down and then gave it a coat of Danish Oil with Walnut stain to touch up the repairs and the entire bowl.
When the pipe was dry I buffed it with White Diamond and polished the bowl and stem. I gave it multiple coats of carnauba wax to protect and give it a shine. I buffed it with a soft flannel buff. The pipe is finished. It has come a long way from the pipe that I started with when I took it from the box. The repairs, though visible look pretty good. I expect them to hold for a long time and provide a quality smoke in an old Kaywoodie for whoever ends up with this old pipe. It is cleaned and ready for the next pipeman.

It’s All About The Aesthetics……. Isn’t It? – Alan Chestnutt

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This article on Alan’s blog was one in which I was particularly interested. I had recently purchased and estate pipe that was advertised as carefully restored only to find that both the externals and the internals had not been truly cleaned. It seemed that the pipe had only received a good buff and polish and that was it for the cleanup and restoration. I found it irritating to say the least that I had purchased a pipe that cost me enough that it should have been cleaned and wasn’t but that the damage to the exterior had also not been dealt with. In this article Alan speaks about the methodology used at reborn briar to clean estate pipes. It also provides a check list for the hobbyist when he wants to clean up the estate pipes discovered on a pipe hunt. Thanks Alan. The original article can be read at http://estatepipes.co.uk/pipeshop/blog/its-all-about-the-aesthetics-isnt-it.html. Also be sure to check out other articles on the blog and visit Alan’s online shop.
The aesthetics of a restored estate pipe are an important factor. How the pipe looks on the outside is where most restorers concentrate their efforts. Especially if selling your pipes on the online marketplace, you will want the pipes to look good in photographs. These pictures are what the buyer sees, and will most likely base his opinion on whether to buy the pipe or not. I get tons of emails from satisfied customers after they receive their pipes about how good they look – that they are like a brand new pipe. But these are just external aesthetics, which is the easiest part to achieve

However, to me the most important part of any estate pipe restoration lies not in the external aesthetics, but in the internal functions, cleanliness and sterilisation of the pipe. This is the point that most pipe restorers miss. You have to be prepared to roll your sleeves up and get your hands dirty to accomplish this task properly. I am amazed at the number of so called restored estate pipes that I get in from eBay that look wonderful on the outside, but have had no attention paid to the inside of the pipe – and I have to start the cleaning process from scratch.

The following is how I prepare the inside of a pipe to make it pleasurable and safe for a new smoker.
The Stem: It is amazing the number of pipes I receive that seem to have never had a pipe cleaner put through the stem. I have had pipes where the stem is completely blocked with tar. When I soak the stem in a bath to soften any outside oxidation, this also helps to start to soften any internal tars. A final bath in hot water and soap helps this process along. The inside of the stem will first be scrubbed with bristle pipe cleaners, and then the stem sill receive a hot alcohol retort. This will help to soften any remaining stubborn tar in the stem. Continual scrubbing with both bristle and normal pipe cleaners using alcohol follows until they come out clean. Particular attention is given to the sides of the slot and any filter chambers, as these are the places where most tars gather. Finally the stem airway and slot is polished internally to allow for smooth transition of the smoke. This provides both a clean and sterilised mouthpiece to the pipe.

The Bowl Chamber: All excess cake and carbon are removed. If you are restoring one of your own pipes, it is advisable to leave a thin layer of cake inside. The cake in a pipe will retain the oils of the smoked tobaccos. As I don’t know what either the previous smoker or the new smoker’s preferred tobacco is, I do not want to leave any ghosting in the pipe which is why I remove all remnants of carbon. The inside of the bowl is then hand sanded with 600 grit wet and dry paper to leave a smooth finish. Removing all the cake also lets me examine the inside of the chamber for defects.

The Airway & Draft Hole: Thick tars accumulate in the airway of a pipe, especially if they are not cleaned regularly after every smoke. I receive a number of pipes where the airway is completely blocked and wonder how the previous smoker was able to smoke the pipe at all. Pipes in this condition require the airway to be initially hand drilled using the correct size bit to remove this solid build up, as they will not even pass a pipe cleaner. After this the shanks are scrubbed with shank brushes and bristle pipe cleaners dipped in alcohol. This will never entirely remove all the residue on the first clean. The bowl is then given a hot alcohol bath using our special process. This will soften any remaining residue and the airway is again scrubbed with shank brushes and pipe cleaners until normal pipe cleaners come out clean. Finally the bowl receives a final hot alcohol retort to leech out any remaining flavours and totally sanitise the pipe leaving it clean and fresh.

The Shank: To me this is the most vital area of cleaning, yet it is the most disregarded area by the majority of restorers. The shank gathers a cake like build up, especially between the end of the airway and tip of the tenon. Given that this build up is made up from a mixture of tobacco tars and juices, ash and human saliva – it is vital that this is removed before the pipe is passed on to a new smoker! No amount of rubbing with Q-tips and alcohol will remove this hardened build up. In fact the cotton tips may come out looking clean leading the restorer to think that the area is ready for use – wrong! We use a specially adapted tool to scrape out this cake like residue. The first attempt at this will not remove all remnants. Only after the pipe bowl has been given its initial special process hot alcohol bath, will this soften the remaining residue and the shank is scraped out again. The shank can now be scrubbed out with a shank brush and Q-tips dipped in alcohol until they come out clean. Finally the stummel will be given a hot alcohol retort which will remove any remaining oils and leave the pipe clean, fresh and sanitised. The picture shows a before and after shot of a recently restored 1906 Peterson Patent pipe, displaying what a properly restored shank should look like.

At Reborn Briar, we pride ourselves on both the appearance of our restored pipes and the attention to detail of the internal mechanics. Using our special processes means that you will receive a restored pipe that will smoke as clean and fresh as a new pipe and provide you with many years of smoking pleasure ahead.

Giving New Life to a SINA Rhodesian

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When I first saw this old Rhodesian on Ebay I wanted it. It had the look of GBD 9242 but was chunkier than normal. I have had the 9242 on my wish list for a long time and have missed many over the years on Ebay. But this one seemed to be under the radar. It was stamped SINA on the shank and the stem and France on the underside of the shank near the stem. It looked to be in rough shape in terms of cake and finish. The stem looked oxidized and the rubber bite guard looked positively ancient. I watched the pipe for several days and there was no action so I bid a low-ball bid on it. No one else bid until the last two hours. Then there was some hot action between one other bidder and myself. I threw the top price I was willing to pay for the pipe in and sat out the auction to see what would happen. I won the pipe and only had to wait to receive it. The seller sent it out on a Friday from New Jersey in the US and it arrived in Vancouver, Canada on Tuesday. I was very surprised when I came home to find that it was already here. The photos below are from the seller. They give an accurate portrayal of the condition of the pipe. The photos showed that the condition of the pipe was rough. The cake build up on the rim was like rock. The finish was worn and had hardened pieces of tobacco stuck to the finish. The outer edge of the rim was actually still in good shape and the bowl was still round. The inner edge looked to be fine under the grime. The double ring around the bowl was in fair shape with some small chipping on the bottom edge of the ring. It was minor and would definitely clean up. The grooves of the rings were filled with grit so that they were almost the same height as the rest of the bowl surface in some places on the pipe. There were some fills on the side of the bowl and shank but they were hard to see under the grime. The shank was dirty and the stem did not fit flush against it due to the buildup. The stamping was crisp and showed white paint on both the shank and the stem. There was an ancient fossilized rubber bit guard on the end of the stem so I was hoping that it had protected the stem from damage.

I did a bit of research to find out about the maker of the SINA pipe. I looked on Pipephil’s site and was able to find out that there was indeed a connection to GBD. The connection was with the French branch of GBD. From the screen capture above you can see the two links under the photo on the left. The first connects the pipe to the Marechal Ruchon & Co. factory that made GBD pipes. They eventually sold out to the Oppenheimer group. The French brand was also connected to C.J. Verguet Freres and to Sina & Cie which were sold to Oppenheimer in 1903-1904. In 1905-1906 Oppenheimer merged the two companies. The accompanying chart gives an overview of the twisted trail of the GBD brand and its mergers and sales. The chart also comes from the Pipephil site and was the second link under the above photo. Armed with that information I knew that the pipe was made before the 1905-1906 mergers. This also fits well with the thick hard rubber stem and the shape of the button and orific opening. The thick shank also fits well with the period as the 9242 shape thinned down considerably in the later years of manufacture. I really like the shape and style of this era of pipe history so this one would be a pleasure to clean up.

I started by cutting off the fossilized rubber bit guard. Underneath the stem was in fairly decent shape. There was a tooth indentation on the top and bottom of the stem next to the button but it was very shallow. The rubber of the stem was clean underneath behind the calcified line on the stem. I reamed the bowl with a PipNet reamer using the smallest cutting head first and then working up to one that fit the bowl. I find that if I use this procedure I am less likely to damage the shape of the bowl and inner rim. The tarry buildup on the rim was impervious to Murphy’s Oil Soap or even saliva and a hard scrub. It was hard as rock. I sanded it lightly to see if I could remove the tar. It looked like that was the only way this stuff would be removed. I carefully sanded the bevel of the rim to remove the tars and clean it up. I wiped it down with oil soap after each sanding to make sure I was only removing the surface. I sanded the inner edge with a folded piece of sandpaper and reached down into the bowl with the sandpaper as well. I was able to remove the tar but there was some charring and darkening at the back inner edge of the rim that remained. I sanded it smooth but it is still visible in the photo below. I scrubbed out the shank which was absolutely filthy and smelled of sweet aromatic tobacco. The bowl itself also needed to be cleaned and I found that the back inside wall of the bowl around the entrance of the airway was damaged. It was pitted and the opening was very flared so I would need to use some pipe mud to repair that and reshape the opening. I used isopropyl alcohol 99%, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners to clean out the shank. I mixed a batch of pipe mud – water and cigar ash to repair the inside of the bowl. I put a pipe cleaner in the shank with the tip showing in the bottom of the bowl and rebuilt the wall around the bottom of the bowl next to the airway. I used a dental spatula that Joyal sent to me and it worked perfect for pressing the pipe mud into place and packing it into the rough wall. I was able to reshape the airway so that the wall was smooth and clean. Once it was packed and cured for a short time I removed the pipe cleaner so that the air would move freely through the bowl and shank and allow the mud to cure. I wiped down the outside of the bowl with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap to remove the grime and tobacco bits from the finish of the bowl. I also scrubbed the hard rubber stem with the oil soap to remove the grime on it. The rubber was not too badly oxidized at all once the grime was gone. I find that this old rubber does not have the same trouble with oxidation as later vulcanite stems. The rim damage is visible in the photos below. I would need to do some more sanding on the surface to smooth it out and remove as much of the damage as possible without changing the shape of the rim bevel. With the bowl cleaned I set it aside to let the pipe mud cure and turned my attention to the stem. There was a unique stinger apparatus in the end of the tenon that looked like a mushroom cap on the end. It was black with tars and the draw on the stem was quite tight. I cleaned the stinger with alcohol on cotton pads and swabs and was able to remove the tarry buildup. It took quite a bit of scrubbing but I was also able to push a pipe cleaner through the stem and out the button. I had to guide it around the mushroom cap end but I cleaned it until the metal was shiny. Once it was clean I could see that it appeared to be pressure fit into the tenon and not threaded. I was not certain so I wrapped a cotton pad around the end and carefully turned it by hand until it popped free of the end. The photo below shows the insert clearly. It had to slits on the sides that could be spread open to make a tighter fit if necessary. The end of the tenon was quite open without the stinger. The insert end of the stinger gives some idea of the diameter of the airway. With the stinger out of the way I cleaned the stem with cotton swabs, pipe cleaners and isopropyl alcohol until it was clean. I buffed the stem with red Tripoli and White Diamond and then sanded it with micromesh sanding pads. I wet sanded with 1500-2400 grit pads and dry sanded with 3200-12,000 grit pads. I gave the stem a final buff with White Diamond and then gave it several coats of carnauba wax. I decided not to stain the pipe but rather to give a rubdown with olive oil and let it dry for several days. The photo below shows the pipe after it has been drying for several days. The rich dark reddish brown colour of the briar comes out nicely and the fill areas are well blended into the finish. I used a correction pen with white out to restore the white in the stamping on the left side of the shank and also on the stem. I applied the white out and then let it dry before rubbing it off with a cloth. I gave the bowl a coat of Danish Oil to protect the finish and give it a completed look. I applied the oil with a cotton pad and set it up to dry overnight. The pipe is shown in the photos below after the oil has dried.
My old camera is slowly dying so I am adjusting to a new camera. I had my daughter help me with the following photos. I like the overall look that the new camera delivers as it is truer in terms of colour and shine of the pipe. I am still learning the ropes with all the settings though. I took two series of photos for the finished pipe. The first series of five photos I used a flat white background to see how that would turn out. The last series of four photos I used the same green background I have used in the past. The photos against the green background actually give a truer picture of the colour of the pipe. Ah well still a lot to learn with this camera. The finished pipe is cleaned and ready to fire up with its inaugural bowl. The old soldier from the early 1900’s will once again feel the warmth of the fire and tobacco and the draw of a pipe man enjoying its feel in his hand. I think this weekend will be the time to enjoy a nice bowl of aged 5100 in this pipe.

Restoration of a Barclay Rex HGP Briar Root Labelled “THE DUKE”

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I read a post by dmcmtk on Pipe Smokers Unlimited Forum regarding a pipe he picked up that was a Barclay Rex with a white spot on the stem. He had written to the store and received a response that the pipe was made for them by Dunhill. I had no idea that Dunhill had made pipes for the NY shop so I began to hunt down some of these pipes looking for the tell-tale white dot on the stem. I found some on Ebay under the Barclay Rex shop store there and one stood out to me and seemed to call my name. The write-up on the ad read:

“This is a HGP Stubby Briar Root estate pipe that has been carefully restored on-site.The stem is in excellent condition and has very little visible wear; there are a few nicks on the bowl. This pipe was made by hand for Barclay Rex and likely dates to before 1960. The letters HGP actually stand for the craftsman’s initials.”

The story and the shape intrigued me and it had the white spot on the stem. I was hooked. It had a buy it now price so I went for it. I contacted the store and paid the bill and the pipe was mine. I was not too concerned about the condition as I would work on it anyway. The ad said that it had been carefully restored on-site so I would see what that meant when it arrived. The photos below were on Ebay and give a good idea of why the shape caught my attention. I wrote to Barclay-Rex to find out a little background information on this pipe and the stamping it showed in the pictures. I received this email response:

Dear Steve,
This was made by a pipe maker who worked for Barclay Rex for a time in the mid-20th century. His initials were HGP and he would stamp his pipes as such. We are unsure why the maker decided to place a white dot on his stem, but we have come across one or two more of his with the same combination. Unfortunately, his full name has been forgotten with time.
– barclayrex1910

When the pipe arrived it was in good shape. The stamping indeed was HGP over Briar Root on the left side of the shank and The Duke on the bottom of the shank. Part of the shank and bottom of the bowl was flattened so that it was a sitter. I took it apart to examine it more closely. It was anything but cleaned and restored. The stem was rough – there was oxidation next to the band that went quite deep. There was a gouge on the right side of the stem that was quite deep. The top and the bottom of the stem from the taper to the button had obviously been modified to make a more pronounced taper. The file marks were still evident in the vulcanite. The width of the button end of the stem had also been modified and was narrower than originally designed as the sides of the stem also showed file marks. The button itself had a orific opening but someone had modified it into a poorly shaped slot. The stem had deep tooth marks on the surface of top and bottom near the button. There was a bite through on the top side next to the button. The angle of the taper was very abrupt and sharp with distinct cut marks. The tenon was fit for a filter by the appearance of it and the inside was very tarry. A filter would not have fit with all of the buildup in the stem. The bowl was another story. It was out of round with burn marks on the inner edge that needed some work. It had been reamed so that was not an issue. Then inside of the shank was filthy. The tars and oils were thick against the end of the mortise.

I decided to work on the stem first. I wanted to address the taper of the stem and cleanup the file marks and gouge in the top portion. I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper to remove the scratches and reshape the taper. This took quite a bit of sanding to reshape the angles and edges of the stem. There was a slight hip on both sides of the stem that needed to be sanded out to get a smooth flow to the lines of the sides. The next series of photos show the progress in reshaping and repairing the stem. I worked on the taper first to remove the sharp angles of the sides and top of the taper and work on a flow to the profile of the stem. I sanded the gouge on the top right side of the stem until it disappeared and also worked on the transition from the flattened top and bottom of the taper and the round end next to the shank. The wet spot on the first photo next to the button highlights the spot where the small hole in the top of the taper was. At this point the taper is smooth and the transition is beginning to look right. The profile shot below shows the work that has been done. I continued to sand and smooth out the taper to give it a look similar to a Peterson tapered stem. The first photo shows the taper after all of the shaping. I rubbed some Vaseline on a pipe cleaner and inserted it in the orific slot in the button so that I could patch the hole in the top side of the stem. The second photo below shows the size and placement of the hole. I used black super glue for the repair and sprayed it with the accelerator to harden it more quickly. I found that the accelerator allows me to sand more quickly but curing actually takes longer. I sanded it with sanding sticks to smooth it out and then build it up several more times to give more thickness to the stem at the button. I reshaped the sharp inner edge of the button with a needle file. After sanding with the sticks I sanded the patched area with 220 grit sandpaper and then with medium and fine grit sanding sponges to smooth out the scratches and blend in the superglue patch with the rest of the stem surface. I finished sanding the stem with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-3200 grit pads and dry sanding with 3600-12,000 grit pads. I rubbed the stem down with Obsidian Oil between each three grit sequence of pads and let it sit until absorbed before continuing with the next set of three pads. When I finished sanding with the last three grits of micromesh I rubbed it down with a final coat of Obsidian Oil and when dry put the back on the pipe and gave it a buff with White Diamond. I set the stem aside and turned my attention to the bowl. I decided to top the bowl to even out the rim as most of the inner rim damage did not go too deeply into the bowl. Topping it would smooth out the rim and allow me to correct the damage that made it out of round. I set up the topping board with the 220 grit sandpaper and sanded the top until the rim was smooth and the burn damage was minimized. I sanded the inner edge with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to further mask the damage to the inner rim. I sanded the topped bowl with medium and fine grit sanding sponges and then with 1500-4000 grit micromesh sanding pads. I cleaned out the sanding dust from the bowl with a damp cloth and wiped down the top of the bowl with an alcohol wipe to prepare it for restaining. I decided against restaining the whole bowl and to just stain the rim. Thanks to Greg I have a set of staining pens that make this kind of thing quite easy. I started with the lightest stain pen and then used the medium stain pen to match the colour of the bowl. I buffed it with White Diamond and then gave the bowl and rim a quick buff with carnauba wax. After the buffing I sanded the band with the micromesh sanding pads and then polished it with a polishing cloth. The finished bowl is shown in the photos below. The next photo shows what I did next, though in retrospective I probably should have done this first, I did not. I cleaned out the inside of the shank with isopropyl alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners to remove the tarry buildup in the mortise and airway of the pipe. Once I finished cleaning out the inside of the pipe I gave it a quick buff with White Diamond and then gave it multiple coats of carnauba wax, buffing with a soft flannel buff between coats. The finished pipe is shown below. The restoration and refurbishment are complete and now it can be honestly said that it has been “restored”. The amount of work it took to bring this pipe back to a finished look was far more than I expected when I bid on it. I honestly was surprised at how dirty and unfinished it was when it arrived. Now I have a pipe that I can be proud of and enjoy smoking. The look and feel in the hand is exactly what I like and I look forward to firing up the first bowl in it very soon.

Restemming and Rejuvenating a Pipe for my Son-in-Law

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Last evening my daughter and her husband had us over for a wonderful meal of pulled pork and salads. My daughter is a great cook but this time around her husband made the main course. My daughter called just before we went and asked that I bring my pipe and some tobacco to share. I could relax on the back porch and her husband, Lance and I could share a few bowls. It was a great evening and we shared a few bowls. I looked over his pipes and realized that most of them had come from me. In fact the first pipe he had ever smoked came from me – many years ago now. His brother had worked for me and I had introduced them both to the pipe. Anyway, as we spoke he said he had one with a broken stem. The pipe was an Italian basket pipe and had a hard Lucite stem. Somehow he had stepped on it and the stem had snapped in half. In the photo below you can see the break in the stem. It had been sitting with the stem out of the shank for a long time and the tenon no longer fit into the shank. The edges of the stem had been rounded to give it an interesting look, but it did nothing for me. The shank itself was also rounded so it would not take a stem the same diameter as the shank. To take out the rounded end would have shortened the shank by almost ½ inch so I decided to leave that detail alone and restem it with a stem similar to the original. I also decided to use vulcanite instead of Lucite. The new stem is shown below. It is the same diameter as the previous stem and would have a similar look to it. I would not round the end of the stem but rather leave it flat to sit flush against the top of the crowned shank. The stem was one from my stem can that had previously been on a different pipe. It was bent the proper angle already so I would not need to bend it or shape it. I just need to clean it up and remove the oxidation from the outside and clean out the interior as well. I also use some 220 grit sandpaper and worked on the tenon so that it had a good snug fit in the shank. I twisted it into place in the shank and took the photo below to get an idea of the new look. The next two photos give a picture of just a few of the pipe cleaners I used to clean out the stem. I also used a sharp knife to bevel the end of the tenon into a funnel. The previous stem had been drilled off centre and did not match the airway in the end of the mortise. It was well drilled and centered so the funnel on the tenon end would encourage good airflow through the pipe. A quick draw on the stem demonstrated that the draught was good and open now as opposed to the tight draw that it had before. I sanded the calcification on the stem with 220 grit sandpaper and then with medium and fine grit sanding sponges to remove the scratches and the oxidation at the end of the stem. I took the pipe to the buffer and gave it a quick buff with Tripoli and White Diamond to clean off the rim and also clean up the stem some more. I still need to sand the stem around the shank junction to remove stubborn oxidation and then polish it. I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper and medium and fine grit sanding sponges to remove the oxidation near the shank. Then I used my usual array of micromesh pads – wet sanding with 1500-2400 grit pads and dry sanding with 3200-15,000 grit pads. I wiped the stem down with Obsidian Oil and when it dried I buffed it with red Tripoli and worked on the area near the tenon. I buffed it with White Diamond after than to polish it. Then I took it back to the work table and sanded it with the last three micromesh sanding pads. I polished the stem with Meguier’s Scratch X2.0 and then buffed a final time with White Diamond. I gave the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax and buffed it with a soft flannel buff. I lightly buffed the bowl with wax and a soft buff as well. The finished pipe is shown below. On Wednesday evening I will deliver it to my son in law so he can fire it up after several years of not using it. I look forward to hearing what he thinks of the new stem.