Tag Archives: removing tooth marks

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

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.

Restoring an older KBB Yello-Bole Imperial Dublin

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Blog by Steve Laug

This is the last of the pipes I picked up when I was down in Washington State with my wife for 38th Anniversary. It is an older KBB (no ampersand between the two B’s). It had no shape numbers on the right side of the shank, but on the left side it had the KBB in the cloverleaf/club and next to it was stamped Yello-Bole over Imperial over Imported Briar. The Imperial stamping had been over-stamped with a cross hatch pattern. The bowl was in decent shape. The finish had dark soiling and oils on both sides of the bowl. There were also some dark spots on the sides of the bowl. There was a heavy coat of varnish over the bowl except for the worn spots where the oils and darkening was. The rim was heavily caked with tars and oils. The bowl was caked from the top half way down the bowl, though the yellow honey coating was still visible on the bottom half of the bowl. There were some burn marks along the outer edge and top of the rim.

Again since Yello-Bole is one of my favourite older US brands I did some more reading online to see if I could narrow down when this one was made. I have come to understand that these older Yello-Boles are great smoking pipes and underrated. I turned to one of my go to sources of information on all things KBB and Kaywoodie – the Kaywoodie forum http://kaywoodie.myfreeforum.org/ftopic13-0-asc-0.php. There I found a very helpful article by Dave Whitney that helped narrow down the date. The pipe I have has the shovel drinkless mechanism, the KBB-in-a-clover logo on the left side of the shank and the yellow circle on the stem. From what I can ascertain from Dave’s information it seems to have been produced between the years of 1938-42. I am fairly certain that it did not come from the later period of 1945-50 (World War II) since it did not have the aluminum stem ring and the aluminum drinkless mechanism which came out during those years.

The photos below show the pipe as it was when I found it in the antique shop. The stem is made of nylon rather than vulcanite. It has the yellow circle inset in the top near the shank of the pipe. The button area was chewed and dented. There was a shallow dent on top of the stem and deeper ones on the underside of the stem next to the button. The button had been chewed down and had deep dents on the underside while the slot had been dented in so that it was not longer straight. I sanded the stem down and was able to remove the dents on the topside. The underside tooth mark was too deep to sand or even heat and raise. I sanded it with 220 grit sandpaper to clean up the chatter further up the stem and then picked the area clean around the large dent with a dental pick. I wiped the stem down with alcohol to clean off the dust and then filled it with black super glue that I purchased from Stewmac online. I filled it the first time and sprayed it with an accelerator. Once it dried it had shrunken and left a divot in the stem surface. I refilled it with the glue and then sprayed it again with the accelerator. I set it aside overnight to cure and worked on the bowl. The bowl and rim were caked with an uneven cake so I reamed it with a PipNet pipe reamer to take it back to the briar. The cake was soft and once I removed it from the middle portion of the bowl I could see the yellow coating on the bottom half and partway down from the rim. The only portion that was darkened was in the centre of the bowl. I set up my topping board to remove the hard tars on the rim and also the burn damage. Fortunately the burn damage did not go too deep but merely sat on the surface under the tar coat. I wiped down the bowl with acetone on cotton pads to remove the finish and as much of the dark staining on the side of the bowl as possible. The dark spots were deep in the finish of briar so I was not sure I would be able to remove them. Even after wiping down the bowl repeatedly the dark stains on the sides remained, lighter though still present. The dark spots appeared to be ink stains and they too remained. I decided to let the bowl soak in an alcohol bath overnight and address it again in the morning. The next morning I removed the bowl from the alcohol bath and found that it had done its magic. The stains were gone and the ink stains were significantly lighter. I cleaned out the shank with cotton swabs, pipe cleaners and alcohol. I kept cleaning until the pipe cleaners and swabs came out clean. I stained the bowl with Fiebings Dark Brown aniline stain. I applied the stain and then flamed and repeated the process until the coverage was even. I wiped it down with alcohol on cotton pads to remove some of the opaque colour of the stain and to make the grain more visible. I buffed the bowl with White Diamond. The next three photos show the bowl at this point in the process. Once I had finished the work on the bowl to this point I decided to work on the stem. I used a coarse grit sanding stick to cut the sharp edge of the button. While it worked relatively well I could see that the hardened super glue needed something with more teeth to cut into the repair. I used a file to take off the overfill on the repair and then followed that with the sanding stick and 220 grit sandpaper.
I sanded the stem further with the 220 grit sandpaper and then with medium and fine grit sanding sponges to remove the scratches in the surface. I wet sanded with 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads and dry sanded with 3200-12,000 grit pads. Between each grit of micromesh I wiped the stem down with olive oil. I have found that the olive oil allows the micromesh sanding pads to really cut into the surface of the nylon stem. I cleaned up the stinger with alcohol and cotton pads and then 0000 steel wool. I gave the bowl a coat of walnut stain and boiled linseed oil to bring out a shine. I wanted the pipe to have a similar shine to what it originally had when it left the factory but did not want to use a varnish coat. I wiped it on the bowl with a cotton pad and then set it aside to air dry. Once the finish had dried I buffed the pipe with White Diamond and then gave it several coats of carnauba wax and buffed to a shine with a soft flannel buff. I hand waxed the stem with Paragon Wax as I find that the nylon stems are hard to buff. Without a light touch the wheel can do irreparable damage to the nylon stem. The heat generated by the buffer will actually cause the stem to melt. The final photos below show the finished pipe cleaned, polished and ready to enter into the next years of its life. I think that this one will outlive me if properly cared for by the next pipeman after me.

Working by Candle Light- Raising Tooth Dents

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Blog by Greg Wolford

Browsing my Twitter feed this morning I noticed a conversation between Steve (@rebornpipes) and Peter Jones (@edpipeclub) about raising tooth marks on a stem with different methods of heat application. The methods discussed were using a soldering iron or a heat gun; Peter had access to the former but not the latter. I tweeted him that a candle flame is also a good option and Steve suggested I post a blog about that. So, without further introduction, here we go!

I use a heat gun if the dents are very deep, or I’m bending a stem, in the shop. But since I’ve been doing more restoration work in the kitchen, upstairs, I have found a candle to be a simple and effective tool for smaller, more shallow dents. A Bic-style lighter will also work for this method but I find myself with a “hot thumb” too often for my tastes using that!

Although about any candle would likely do, I prefer to use a tea candle, such as this:
They are inexpensive and small, which makes them easy to work with. And since my wife uses them for her potpourri-type pot, I almost always have them on hand.

What I do is light the candle and hold the stem about 2″ above the flame, maybe a little more. It’s fairly important to keep the stem moving so as to not burn the stem; if the stem is acrylic or nylon keeping moving and higher above the heat is all the more important as, in my experience, ties materials will burn or catch fire with less “notice” and faster than vulcanite. Often with vulcanite you’ll smell an almost burnt-rubber smell before any damage is really done, and this is a sure sign you need to cool the stem; I keep a Tupperware type container of cold water beside me as I do any of this kind of work, no matter what me heat source.

A Video Demo of the Process

After a couple of minutes you’ll notice that the dents are raising up, the heat decompressing the material the stem is made of. Depending on the depth and size of the dent, it can take anywhere from one “pass” to three or more to get the dent as decompressed as possible. If the dent is too large/deep a fill will be required to get it completely level again.

I hope this extra “weapon” in your restoration arsenal is helpful to you; this method may not always be the best way to go but often will be more than sufficient and quick to set up and break down.

Restoring a Tracy Mincer “The Doodler”

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A pipe I picked up on a recent trip to La Conner, Washington was a billiard that has the drilled flutes from the top to the bowl of the bowl all the way around. It is stamped “The Doodler” over Imported Briar on the left side of the shank. On the right side of the bowl is a burn mark that covered two of the rings. The finish was in good shape. The outer edge of the rim had cuts and broken edges from hitting the bowl to empty it. On the back side of the bowl one of the rings have two notches out of the lower edges. The inside rings of the bowl were unstained. Usually on a Doodler there is a scoring ring around the top of the rim. On this rim that was missing on most of the rim. The bowl had a poorly developed cake and the shank was dirty. The rustication on the bottom of the bowl was rough in the grooves and smooth on the surface. The stem was original and had a stepped down tenon. There was also some oxidation on the stem and tooth chatter on both sides near the button.
I wiped down the bowl with acetone on cotton pads to remove the finish. It took some scrubbing to remove the finish and the buildup on the rim. Once the finish was removed the burn on the right side was very clear. It fortunately was not too deep in the briar and would be less problematic to minimize when I refinished the bowl. I reamed the bowl with a PipNet reamer. I used the third cutting head and took back the cake to the bare briar. I had to also use the second head to remove the cake from the bottom of the bowl. I cleaned out the shank and the bowl with isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. I used many of each and was able to remove much of the tars and oils in the shank. The pipe cleaners and cotton swabs came out very dirty so I decided to set up a retort and boil out the shank and airways with hot alcohol. The alcohol in the test tube was heated with the votive candle and the boiling sent the hot alcohol into the shank. I had plugged the bowl with a cotton pad. I repeated the process until the alcohol came out clean. Once I removed the retort I cleaned out the interior of the stem and shank with pipe cleaners and cotton swabs and more isopropyl. The remainder of the oils came out with this cleaning. I sanded the bowl with a medium and fine grit sanding sponge to smooth out the damage to the rim and the burn area. I followed that with 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads. After sanding I wiped it down with isopropyl alcohol on a cotton pad. I stained the bowl and shank with a dark brown aniline stain thinned 2:1 with isopropyl. I flamed the stain and then repeated the process until the coverage was even. I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper and then with a medium and a fine grit sanding sponge. I followed that by sanding it with micromesh sanding pads. I wet sanded with 1500-2400 grit pads and dry sanded with 3200-12,000 grit pads. Between each set of three pads I rubbed the stem down with Obsidian Oil. I buffed the bowl and stem with White Diamond and then gave the bowl and stem multiple coats of carnauba wax to shine and protect. I buffed it with soft flannel buffing pads to give it a final shine. The finished pipe is shown below. It is now joins my other Doodler and Holy Smoke Pipes in my pipe cupboard. If it is anything like the others it will smoke very well and stay cool throughout the entire smoke due to the drilling all around the bowl.

Thanks to Father Tom I have a Base for the Yello-Bole Airograte Bowls

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Blog by Steve Laug

Those of you who have followed the blog for a long time will get the irony of the title. I have written quite a few Father Tom stories over the years and have had them on the blog. I am hoping that a book of these stories will be published in the near future. Anyway on the Pipe Smokers Unlimited Forum I posted that I was looking for a base unit/stem for some Yello-Bole Airograte pipe bowls that I had been gifted. I had refurbished the bowls and written of them here on the blog: https://rebornpipes.com/2014/07/17/restoring-a-couple-of-yello-bole-airograte-bowls/ Father Tom sent me a private message saying that he had one and would be glad to send it to me. We exchanged a few messages and settled on a trade. Last evening when I got home from work I was greeted by a package from him. The pipe had arrived. He had put a Grabow Viking bowl on the stem just for traveling and when I opened the box and removed the pipe from the wrappings I was excited to get to work on it. I removed the Grabow bowl and went to work cleaning the stem. I used pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and isopropyl alcohol to remove the buildup from the bottom of the base and the dental pick to clean out the threads.
Once it was clean I used Vaseline to lubricate the threads so that the bowls would turn easily into the base. I applied it with cotton swabs to get it into the threads. In the background are some brass screens that Tom sent along that go in the base between the bottom and the bowls. The open bottom on the bowls sit against this screen. Tom has found that these brass screens work far better than the original metal plate with holes that originally formed the grate for the bottom of the bowls. He says they clog far less frequently. The Airograte base has two small airholes in the sides of the bowl just below the ledge where the grate or screen sits. These tiny holes allow air to the bottom of the tobacco when smoked. When air is drawn in the bowl, it enters through these small airways. In this particular base the airways were clogged. I used an unfolded paper clip to open them again. I pushed out the clogs from both sides of the base from both the inside and the outside. The airflow is now unrestricted in those airways. I put the brass screen in place in the base once I had the cleaning finished. The bowl will screw on top of the screen and the tobacco when loaded will sit on top of the screen. With the above statement about the bowl sitting on top of the screen I thought that it might be helpful to take a photo of the two different bowls. The one on the left is the bowl for the Airograte while the one on the right is for Grabow Viking. The Airograte is more of a tube that sits on top of the grate. The tobacco burns on the grate. The Viking bowl also fits perfectly on the nylon stemmed pipe I have written about earlier. I am pretty certain that the nylon one is also a Grabow though it is unstamped. The photo below shows the bowl from the nylon pipe and the Grabow bowl from the bottom. While I was cleaning up the bowl base I noticed the Patent and Patent pending information on the bottom of the bowl. This made me curious to see exactly what was patented/patent pending. I went to the US Patent Office on line ( http://patft.uspto.gov/ ) and searched the number on the bottom of the base. I was able to find that the patent had been applied for in 1949 by Samuel Lawrence Atkins of New York City. The patent was for the airograte that sat between the airway in the bowl and the tobacco and the two small holes in the bottom sides of the bowl. It was designed to give a dry and even burning smoke and keep bits of tobacco from entering the airway and mouthpiece. I have included a copy of the patent document with a diagram below. I find that it is always interesting to read the pitch that is made in terms of purpose for the design. The ongoing hunt for the perfect pipe continues to this day. With the bowl finished, the base cleaned and the airway opens and clean all that remained was to tidy up the stem. The nylon stem, though similar to the ones on Vikings and Falcons had a slimmer profile. The thinness made it very comfortable in the mouth. There was tooth chatter against the button on the top and the bottom of the stem as well as some deep tooth marks mid stem that had been poorly sanded out leaving dents in the flat surface of the stem midway up the stem on both sides. I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper to remove the tooth chatter and to smooth out the flow of the taper. I followed that by sanding with a medium and fine grit sanding sponge to work on the scratches. Once the dents and scratches were gone I worked on the stem with micromesh sanding pads. I wet sanded with 1500-3200 grit pads. I found it really frustrating work to try to remove the scratches and marks. Wet sanding did not seem to really do the job – so I started over with the pads and a drop of olive oil. The oil seemed to do the trick. It proved to be the right medium for the micromesh. It gave bite to the pads and really worked quite well. I continued to sand with the drop of oil through the 3200-4000 grit pads. The scratches really began to disappear and the stem was getting smoother. I did the same with the 6000-12000 grit pads and a drop of olive oil. Once I had finished sanding the stem with the micromesh I gave it a light buff with White Diamond. A light touch is essential when buffing nylon stems or you make more of a mess than you started with. I rubbed the stem down with Obsidian Oil and when dry I coated it with Paragon Wax and hand buffed it. Below are some photos of the pipe with each of the two bowls in place. I really like the looks of the finned shank on this one. The flat stem makes it very comfortable. I am looking forward to loading a bowl and trying out the patented “Airograte” screen that is on the bottom of the bowl.

Yellow Acrylic Stem Patch – Part 3 – by Joyal Taylor (aka holymolar)

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This is the third part of Joyal’s article on the yellow acrylic stem patch. His earlier parts of the article chronicle the various methods and procedures he has used in his try to get a matched patch on the acrylic stem he was working on. Please read the earlier installments to see the complete experiment. Part 1 can be found at this link: https://rebornpipes.com/2014/07/08/stem-patch-using-amber-super-glue-joyal-taylor-aka-holymolar/ Part 2 can be found here: https://rebornpipes.com/2014/07/08/yellow-acrylic-stem-patch-part-2-joyal-taylor-aka-holymolar/

This time I tried Behlen’s yellow powder w/ StewMac’s thick clear superglue.
This is the best so far. Good color and opaque. Some of the powder didn’t mix in but it all polished smoothly. I had to leave the patch thick at the edge because every time I tried to sand it smooth it to the acrylic, I would remove more of the original color from the acrylic and have to add more patch material. Oh well, this may be as good as I can do, for now.

Restored – Kaywoodie Flame Grain 13B (Author) Drinkless – Pat Russell

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It is a pleasure to present Pat’s second contribution to the blog. In it he describes his work on an old Kaywoodie in one of my favourite shapes – the 13B. Thanks for the contribution Pat. Keep ’em coming. You are doing some great work.

Greetings friends.

It’s been one heckuva week, one of those weeks where life just seems to take over. As a reward for making it through, I’ve taken a holiday today to restore a beautiful old pipe that has been sitting on my bench for a month or so. This was another $14.00 eBay win, and one I was thrilled about. I started looking for early Kaywoodies about a year ago when I fell in love with the quality of the briar. This lovely little author was in pretty good shape. The drinkless stinger, with 4 holes, and a two digit shape code with one letter dates it to between 1940 and the early 1950s. There was a sizable tooth mark in the top of the stem, a couple smaller bites out of the bottom of the bit, and a few small dings and dents in the bowl. Other than that, the pipe was in pretty good shape.
So I threw the stem in a OxyClean bath, and then took the new PipNet reamer to the cake.
I then wet a tea towel and set the bowl rim down on the towel for two minutes or so, before using the damp towel to wipe off the rim char and tars.
Once that was done, I wet sanded the stem with 600 and 800 grit sandpaper.
Then took the heat gun to the stem to work on those dents.
It took a couple attempts, but they both lifted somewhat.
Then I took 0000 steel wool to the stinger to clean it up.
Following the stinger, I elected to do a surface clean of the stummel with acetone and a cotton pad.
At this point, it was time to make some judgement calls. There was still some rim darkening, there were a couple very minor dents in the bowl, and that tooth mark was still there even after the heat treatment and there was a little bleaching around the top of the bowl. This pipe is for me. I’m a clencher. I elected to leave the tooth mark. I also elected to leave the dents, and do a light tint of the bowl to bring back the colour.

The next step was a date with about fifty pipe cleaners and the same number of bristle cleaners liberally dosed with isopropyl alcohol. After a thorough scrub out, I elected to finish the stem, shank and stummel clean with a retort.
Testament to the fact that isopropyl alcohol and pipe cleaners don’t clean out everything, here are the cotton balls from the bowl post retort.
Post retort, I added two drops of Fiebing’s Light Brown to about half an eye dropper of 99% isopropyl alcohol. I do this to create tints. I don’t always want to restain a pipe, the tint allows me to blend the stain and bring colour back to the bleached areas of the stummel.
After adding the tint, I used a cotton ball with isopropyl alcohol to wipe down the stummel and even out the tint.
Then the pipe went to the buffer. First with white diamond…
Then with Carnauba…
Then after a wipe down with a Dunhill Pipe Wipe…
I love this pipe. I’m thrilled to have it, and can’t wait to smoke it.

Right now I’m having one of these to celebrate.
As always, thanks for looking, and feel free to toss any tips my way.

Ropp Cherrywood Everest Oom Paul Restored

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Yet another one of the pipe bowls that came to me in the gift box was a Ropp Cherrywood. It is stamped on the bottom of the bowl on a polished smooth portion, Ropp over Everest over Made in France. The wood was dirty and tired looking but still solid. The bowl was caked but not burned. The rim had a carbon buildup on it but was not burned or scorched. The drilling on the pipe was perfect. At first I thought that only the bowl had been included and I was scheming about the kind of stem to put on this one. But in the bottom of the box I found the original stem. It had a vulcanite 90 degree angle portion attached to the end of a cherrywood branch that fit snug in the hole in the bowl. At the other end of the cherrywood branch/shank was the stem. It bore the Ropp emblem and was badly oxidized. There was some tooth chatter on the stem near the button on the top and the bottom. The tenon on the stem had been coated with a brown wax to ensure a snug fit in the shank.

I scrubbed the exterior of the bowl and rim with Murphy’s Oil Soap and cotton pads to remove the dirt and grime that had built up on the bark and wood. There were several places where the bark had a pitch build up on the outside that had hardened and was black. I was able to scrub away all of the carbon buildup on the rim and bring it back to the natural colour.

I scrubbed the shank carefully with oil soap on cotton pads so as not to damage the leather wrapping that was on it. There were two cords – one red and one green that were interlaced around the length of the shank. A plastic ring was glued on the shank on both ends to anchor the leather cords. On the bowl end of the shank there were two roundels of leather that acted as tassels.

I reamed the bowl with a PipNet reamer. I find that the heads of this reamer fit most of the bowls that I work on. I cleaned out the ash from the bowl and then swabbed the bowl out with cotton swabs and alcohol. I also cleaned the airway on the bowl with cotton swabs.

The 90 degree angle vulcanite connector between the bowl and shank was oxidized. It was hard to sand with micromesh pads or sanding sticks so I used a fine grit sanding sponge to break up the oxidation and then scrubbed it with Meguiar’s Scratch X2.0 – a plastic polish to remove the oxidation. It took a lot of scrubbing to get through the oxidation. I applied the polish with my finger and when it had dried scrubbed it off with cotton pads. While I worked on the connector I also applied the Scratch X2.0 to the stem and let it sit.

I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper, medium and fine grit sanding sponges and then with the usual array of micromesh sanding pads. I wet sanded with 1500-2400 grit pads and dry sanded with 3200-12000 grit pads. I buffed the stem with White Diamond. I left some of the wax buildup on the stem once I found that to remove it made the stem very loose.

I buffed the bowl and stem with White Diamond and then gave it several coats of carnauba wax and buffed it with a soft flannel buff. I hand waxed the shank with Halcyon II and then a shoe brush. The finished pipe is shown below. I am looking forward to experiencing a smoke in a Ropp Cherrywood Oom Paul.

The final two photos were taken with my cell phone to show my Ropp Threesome – a Volcano, the Oom Paul and the newest Frankenpipe that I wrote about earlier. They make an interesting subset of my pipe collection and now they occupy shelves in my study. I think in the long run at least the two larger pipes will be primarily display items (though I plan to try them all out at least once).

Maintaining Vulcanite Stems – Ric Farrah Of Briarville Pipe Repair & Restoration

Reworking a WDC Wellington – Removing a Finish and Restemming the Bowl

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The second bowl I decided to work on from the box of bowls I was gifted was an old Wellington bowl that was actually in decent shape. The bowl is 2 inches tall and 1 3/8 inches in diameter. The bowl has an internal diameter of 7/8 inches. It is quite a large bowl. The nickel ferrule was in good shape but slightly oxidized with a few small nicks and dents. There was an uneven cake in the bowl and the sump area was filled with tars and oils. The finish was varnished but peeling as can be seen in the photo below. The rim had a tar build up and the varnish was peeling under it. The inner edge and outer edge of the rim was in excellent shape. The stamping on the bowl was on the left side of the shank and included the WDC inverted triangle and letters and next to that Wellington in script over the words IMPORTED BRIAR. There was no other stamping on the bowl. The stem did not come with the bowl. I had an old Yello Bole stem from the same era as the Wellington and with the same structure at the tenon and the P-lip. It was scratched and oxidized and had some tooth marks on the top and bottom sides just ahead of the button. The stem has a bright yellow “O” on the top. The bend in the stem had straightened so it would need to be re-bent to work well with the bowl.

I have several WDC pipes and have done quite a bit of research on the brand that I have written about on the blog. I have even repaired and given away quite a few Wellington’s over the years. This one appeared to be a great piece of briar so I wanted to repair it. I also wanted a quick refresher about this line of WDC pipes and how it fit within the hierarchy of WDC lines. The following is a brief excerpt from the pipedia.org article on WDC pipes.

“William Demuth, a native of Germany, entered the United States at the age of 16 as a penniless immigrant. After a series of odd jobs he found work as a clerk in the import business of a tobacco tradesman in New York City. In 1862 William established his own company. The William Demuth Company specialized in pipes, smoker’s requisites, cigar-store figures, canes and other carved objects.
The Demuth Company is probably well known for the famous trademark, WDC in an inverted equilateral triangle. William commissioned the figurative meerschaum Presidential series, 29 precision-carved likenesses of John Adams, the second president of the United States (1797-1801) to Herbert Hoover, the 30th president (1929-1933), and “Columbus Landing in America,” a 32-inch-long centennial meerschaum masterpiece that took two years to complete and was exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

The Presidential series was the result of Demuth’s friendship with President James A. Garfield, a connoisseur of meerschaum pipes. Demuth presented two pipes to Garfield at his inauguration in 1881, one in his likeness, the other in the likeness of the President’s wife. Later, Demuth arranged for another figurative matching the others to be added to the collection as each new president acceded to the White House, terminating with President Hoover.

In 1897 Ferdinand Feuerbach joined the Demuth Company and by 1903 had become the production manager. Feuerbach is credited with developing Demuth’s popular Royal Demuth and Hesson Guard Milano pipelines. He left in 1919, when Sam Frank Sr. needed an experienced pipe man to run his pipe factory, located at 168 Southern Blvd., in the Bronx. Feuerbach and Frank had been close friends since Frank started his own business in 1900 and was closely associated with the sales staff of WDC, selling their line of pipes.

In early 1937, the City of New York notified S.M. Frank & Co. of their intent to take by eminent domain, part of the land on which the companies pipe factory was located. This was being done to widen two of the adjacent streets. As a result of this, Frank entered into negotiations to purchase the Wm. Demuth Co.’s pipe factory in the Richmond Hill section of Queens. It was agreed upon that Demuth would become a subsidiary of S.M. Frank and all pipe production of the two companies would be moved to DeMuth factory. New Corporate offices were located at 133 Fifth Avenue, NYC.

Demuth pipes continued to be made at the Richmond Hill plant till December 31, 1972. Then the Wm. Demuth Company met its official end as a subsidiary company by liquidation. Demuth’s mainstay pipe, the Wellington continued to be offered in the S.M. Frank catalog until 1976. In the mid-80’s, the Wellington even made a brief return as a direct to the consumer offer.”

The two leaflets below give some of the details on the Wellington pipe. The first one is a sales leaflet that speaks of the assets of the pipe and what it has to offer the pipe smoker. The second one is a cutaway picture of the Wellington pipe that clearly shows the details of the drilling both of the airway and the sump or well in the heel and shank of the pipe.

With the above diagram and information I was better equipped to work on the internals of the pipe and give it a thorough cleaning. I really like digging out the information and some of the diagrams of the pipes that I work on so that I can get a feel for the design and an appreciation for the work.

I fit the stem on the bowl and the overall look and feel was the same as the Wellington. The shoulder or ridge that formed the saddle was not as sharply defined as in the original stem but the look was close. The P-lip was the same and the tenon insert end was a match to the diagram above. Once the stem was re-bent the look would be even closer to the original.

I cleaned the top of the rim with a cotton pad and alcohol to remove the tars and oils. I then reamed the bowl with a PipNet Reamer – a tool that I use on virtually every pipe I work on. The interchangeable heads allow me to use various heads to careful trim back the cake. In this case I took it back to bare wood to clean it up and remove the uneven buildup.

I scrubbed down the finish with acetone on cotton pads. The varnish came off with scrubbing. Underneath the peeling varnish the stain was in good shape. The briar was very clean with no fills. The grain was quite nice with a mix of cross grain and birdseye.

I scrubbed out the sump and the internals of the pipe with cotton swabs, pipe cleaners and isopropyl alcohol. Once the cleaners came out unstained I stuffed cotton balls in the shank and the bowl and then used an ear syringe to fill both with isopropyl alcohol (99%).

I put the bowl upright in an ice cube tray that I use for a stand when sweetening the pipes I clean. It works very well in wicking out tars and oils. I let it sit overnight. The first photo below shows the bowl after filling. The second photo below shows the bowl after 12 hours of soaking. Once I remove the cotton and re-clean the bowl and shank the smell of the pipe is fresh and clean.

Over the weekend I picked up a few new tools to make the clean up simpler. One set of tools was the sanding sticks shown in the photo below. The various grits are clearly on the sticks. These work exceptionally well in the crease next to the button and on the shelf on the underside of the P-lip stem. I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper and with medium and fine grit sanding sponges.

After the initial sanding was finished I used a heat gun to heat the stem and bent it over a rolling pin covered with a thick cardboard tube to give the stem a clean bend and avoid kinking the airway. I have been using this for quite a few years now and have not experienced trouble with damaging the airways in the bending process.

I sanded the stem once again with a fine grit sanding sponge. I generally do this before moving on to the micromesh sanding pads.

I wiped down the bowl with a damp cloth to remove any dust and to get an idea of whether I would give it a coat of stain. Once it was clean it looked good to me. No stain would be necessary on this old timer. The colouring once it was buffed would be perfect.

The rim needed a bit more sanding with the micromesh to clean up the top and then a folded piece of sandpaper on the inner edge to smooth things out.

I worked on the stem with the micromesh sanding pads. I wet sanded with 1500-2400 grit pads. Afterwards I noticed the oxidation that still remain at the saddle so I sanded it again with the medium and fine grit sanding sponges and repeated the micromesh wet sanding.

I sanded it with the 3200-4000 grit pads and still saw some oxidation in that area. I repeated the process above with the sanding sponges and the six grits of micromesh to clean it more deeply. I then buffed it with Tripoli and then finished the final three grits of micromesh from 6000-12,000 grit. I buffed it with White Diamond.

I polished the nickel ferrule with silver polish and a polishing cloth and then buffed the bowl and stem a final time with Whtie Diamond. I gave the entire pipe multiple coats of carnauba wax, buffing in between coats with a soft flannel buff. The finished pipe is shown below. I am quite pleased with the new look. The old Yello Bole stem works well with the pipe.