Tag Archives: replacing fills

Reworking a Dr. Grabow Riviera

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Blog by Steve Laug

I am finally down to the last five pipes in my refurbishing box. I have a bunch more on their way here but I would like to finish up this lot before they arrive as they have been sitting here for a long time always getting passed over and laid aside for more favorable looking options. Last evening I decided to rework this old Dr. Grabow Riviera. It was a pleasant shape but an ugly piece of briar. I removed the stem and was amazed that it was a push stem with a well made tenon. The drilling was spot on and the internals were really well done. The draught on the pipe was excellent. The bowl was clean and the drilling in the bowl was nicely done as well with the airway perfectly centered on the back bottom edge of the bowl. The externals however left much to be desired. The first series of four pictures below show the bowl with the many fills that are on the outside of the bowl. These were not tiny fills by any means; in fact the majority of them are quite large. I had to make a decision on whether to refill them or to rusticate the pipe. Last evening I just was not in the mood to rusticate the pipe. Sometimes I just feel like working over a bowl but this was not the night for doing that. So I decided to pick out the fills and rework them with briar dust and superglue and restain the pipe. The stem was in pretty decent shape also – no bite marks or tooth chatter, very clean with a minimum of oxidation.

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The next series of four photos show the bowl after I have picked out the fills with my dental pick. I actually have a good time picking out the ugly pink putty or as in this case bright white putty. The holes that were filled were not deep but they were on the larger side. Once I picked out the putty I wiped down the bowl with acetone to clean up the mess. I always try to scrunch the cotton pad down into the hole to draw out the last of the putty dust. The worst fill to work with was the one on the back side rim. It was like a saw cut in the rim. It was quite deep and intrusive going from the outside to the inside of the bowl.

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With each of the cleaned out holes I used my dental pick to tamp in briar dust. I try to tamp in the dust until the hole is packed and the dust forms a bit of a bulge on the hole. I find that once I drip in the superglue the dust settles in and the new fill is closes to the surface of the bowl. I also purposely overfill so that I can work to smooth out the fill with sandpaper and blend it into the surface of the bowl. The next three pictures show the patches on the bowl. You will notice the overflow of superglue on the surface of the bowl in the pictures below. This is fairly easily removed as it dries quickly and does not permeate the surface of the bowl.

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The next series of thirteen photos show the progress of sanding the patches back to the surface of the bowl. In this case I was planning on refinishing the bowl anyway so I sanded the whole bowl back to bare briar. I began by sanding the patches with 240 grit sandpaper and then 320 grit sandpaper. Once the overfill of briar dust and glue was sanded fairly smooth I sanded itwith a medium grit sanding sponge and then a fine grit sanding sponge. I wanted to get rid of the excess fill and also to remove all the scratches in the surface of the bowl. I wet sanded the bowl after this with 1500 and 1800 grit micromesh to ready it for staining. I wiped it down with acetone on a cotton pad. The final pictures show the pipe as it is ready for restaining. You can see that the white putty fills are now dark patches on the bowl. I find that those these dark patches still show up they are easier to blend into the stain and somehow do not seem as intrusive to my eyes as the white patches.

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I decided to stain the pipe with an oxblood aniline stain. I applied it with a cotton swab, flamed it, restained and reflamed it. Once it was dry I hand buffed it with a soft cotton cloth before taking it to the buffer. The next four photos show the pipe after the staining and initial hand buff.

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After staining the bowl I worked on the stem. I sanded it with a fine grit sanding sponge and then worked through the micromesh sanding pads from 1500-12,000 grit. I wet sanded with the first three grits (1500, 1800 and 2400 grit) and then dry sanded with the remaining grits. I took it to the buffer and buffed the stem and bowl with White Diamond before applying several coats of carnauba wax and then buffing with a soft flannel buff. The next series of four photos show the finished pipe. In my opinion the fills look far better than when I first started on the pipe. They now are tolerable in my sight and I believe this will make a fine yard pipe or rotation extender for some new pipe smoker. It is cleaned and ready to smoke.

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Using Super Glue to Repair or Replace Putty Fills

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Blog by Steve Laug

On one of the forums another member and I were chatting bemoaning the red putty fills that so often are a part of old time pipes. I have no idea why they choose to use the red putty but as the pipe ages and the stain mellows with age the putty sticks out in all of its awfulness! I really do not like the look of red putty fills. They have a look like pink/reddish bubble gum. On smaller ones I used to pick them out and refill them with briar dust and wood glue. I always over filled them a bit as the glue shrunk as it dried and I found that the wood glue did not take the colour of the stain well. I left that discussion behind and went to work the next day with other things on my mind. I came home that evening and a PM was waiting for me. Another member remembered that an old pipe repairman friend of his used to use superglue and briar dust to repair fills. He asserted that once the glue was dry it was invisible and the stains would cover it as well.

I had this old bulldog in my pipes to be repaired box. There were two large fills on it that had more or less fallen out over time. What remained were two rather large holes or divots in the right side of this old pipe. The top arrow points to the one on the shank about mid way between the bowl and the band. The lower arrow points to the on the lower portion of the bowl.

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I used a dental pick to clean out the remaining red putty from the pits. I wanted the holes to be clean of any remnant of the putty. I also used cotton swabs and Isopropyl alcohol to wash out the areas where there was any putty left. Between the pick and the swabs the holes were cleaned out and open as they appear in the picture above.

I then took a tin of briar dust I have saved from pipes I have worked on over the past months. I keep some on hand for patches like these. I wet the end of the dental pick and dipped it into the briar dust and move it around to form a ball of the dust on the end of the pick. I used my finger to move the dust ball into the hole on the shank and the bowl. I patted the dust into the hole with the tip of a knife blade as I wanted a good tight fill. I then squeezed a few drops of super glue into the dust in the hole. As I did this the dust would shrink a bit and I added more dust and more super glue. When I was done the holes were filled and both had a small bump over where they used to be. I always over fill the holes so that when I sand them down they are smooth and I can feather in the fills with the rest of the briar. I was fortunate in this case that the holes were lined up with the grain marking around them. Once the glue dried (very quickly by the way) I sanded and checked to see if I had missed any spots. I wanted the entire surface smooth to the touch and under a jewelers loop. I sanded the spots down and blended them into the bowl surface. Once that was done I wiped the bowl down with a cotton cloth dampened with Isopropyl alcohol to remove any remaining dust.

I then set up my stain area and stained the pipe with an oxblood aniline stain. In this case I did not let it dry but wiped it on and wiped it off. I wanted to make sure that I was getting good coverage on the fills. I repeated the staining until the colour was what I was aiming for. The picture below is of the same pipe after staining and buffing with White Diamond. It was finished with several coats of carnauba wax. Can you see the fills that were evident above? I assure you that in person it is just as hard to see them.

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