Tag Archives: restaining

Repairing and Restemming a York (KBB) Diamond Shank Bent Billiard

Blog by Steve Laug

When I was traveling in Idaho my brother and I took the family for a trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. On the way we stopped in a little town called Victor, Idaho. There was an antique shop there in the town and I found four more old pipes. The first of these reminded me of an old WDC Diamond shank billiard that I have. This one was stamped YORK on the left side of the shank and from research it may have been made by KBB. It was in rough shape. The shank had been cracked and repaired with glue and a piece of twisted wire. The stem obviously had a broken tenon and the previous owner had carved it down to fit in the shank anyway. The bowl had a thick cake and the finish was gone. The rim was damaged on the front outer edge and there was some tar on the rim.

On the right side of the bowl near the shank junction there was a pink putty fill that was coming out. Most of the putty had fallen out of the briar. This would need to be repaired. When I got back home I took the pipe out of the bag to have a look. The silver end cap had some hallmarks but they were the faux hallmarks that I have found on older American made pipes to give them a touch of class. All four edges of the band were split. I removed the stem and looked inside the mortise and could see that a major part of the briar was missing on the right side of the shank under the cap. With little effort I removed the cap and sure enough a huge chunk was missing out of the briar. In fact the whole right side under the cap was gone. There was a small crack that had been repaired earlier. There was a small hole in the shank to stop the crack and the crack was glued and clamped with the wire. This was going to take a bit of work to bring it back from the brink of destruction. I clipped the wire with a pair of wire cutters so that I could work on repairing the broken portion of the shank. This repair would take some careful and time consuming work to rebuild the missing portion of briar. I reamed the bowl to clean out the thick cake. It was crumbling so I wanted it removed so that the repair of the shank would be less dirty. I use a PipNet reamer to take the cake back to the bare briar.

The first step in rebuilding the broken area was to clean up the damaged ends of the remaining briar. Once it was clean I put clear super glue on the raw edge of the broken spot and tamped the end into some briar dust. I repeated the process until the edge was repaired as much as possible with this method.

During the process I also picked out the broken putty fill and replaced it with briar dust and super glue. I sanded the flat surface of each of the four sides of the diamond shank smooth with 220 grit sandpaper until the cap slid easily over the shank. I also faced the end of the shank on the topping board.

The next step in the process of rebuilding the shank and the mortise was a little more difficult than the briar dust and super glue rebuild. It involved working on the internals of the shank. I glued the end cap in place with wood glue and clamped it in place to take care of small splits in the edges of the metal cap. Once that dried and set, I mixed white wood glue with briar dust to make putty. I tamped the mixture into the remaining areas of the shank with a dental pick and dental spatula until the area was filled solid looking once again. The next two photos show the rough repair on the inside of the mortise and shank. The broken area is gone! The holes are filled in and the repair is complete. Once the glue set I would have to clean up the mortise and make the walls smooth. The edges of the metal cap, looking at it from the end are damaged and I will not be able to repair them.

While the shank repair cured I worked on the rim. There was a thick tar build up that was like rock on the back edge and the front edge of the rim had been knocked against something hard and was rough. I decided to top the bowl to remove the rock hard tar and also minimize the damage to the front of the bowl. I used a topping board with 220 grit sandpaper and worked the rim against the sandpaper until the damage was minimized. Once I had it smoothed out I put some briar dust and super glue on the remaining divot on the front edge of the bowl as a fill. When it dried I sanded it smooth and lightly topped the rim once more to even out the repair with the rest of the rim. (That picture will be shown shortly.) The stem that came with the bowl was damaged beyond repair. It had been repeatedly been cut off by the previous owner and hacked at until it fit in the damaged tenon. It was not a stem I would use again on this pipe. I went through my can of stems and found a faux p-lip stem – the airway came out the end of the button rather than on the top. It was old enough to work on this pipe and with some modification I thought it would look just right. The problem was that it did not have a tenon. When I found it the tenon was missing and the end of the stem had been drilled out to receive a replacement tenon. I am currently out of Delrin tenons so I used a thin vulcanite stem as the sacrificial tenon. I glued the tenon on the donor stem in place in the diamond shaped stem with super glue and then cut off the stem with a hacksaw. I left a piece of vulcanite that was longer than necessary so that I could work it to a proper fit in the repaired shank.

The next photo shows the repaired stem and tenon and the topped bowl before I put the two parts together. I used a Dremel to remove the excess material on the new tenon and shortened it to the depth of the mortise in the shank. The next photo shows the repaired fill on the bowl side with another photo of the new stem. Once the shank repair was dry I used a needle file to clean up the rough areas and smooth out the inside of the mortise. I gave it several more coats of glue and briar dust to buildup the areas that had shrunk as the glue dried. I continued to work it with the files and sandpaper until the fit was correct. I cleaned out the airway to the bowl and the inside of the mortise with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners in preparation for putting the new stem in place. The next two photos show the newly fit stem. There was still work to do to fine tune the flow of the diamond stem sides to match the flow of the diamond shank but the look is clear at this point in the process.

I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper and with a medium and a fine grit sanding sponge to fine tune the fit. When I had it the way I wanted, it was time to bend the stem. I used my heat gun to do the work. In this case I quickly set it up on the dryer in our laundry room (shh don’t tell my wife I did this) and heated the stem. I bent it over an old rolling pin that I use for this purpose until the bend in the stem matched the curve of the bottom of the bowl. I set the bend by holding the stem under cool running water.

The next two photos show the newly bent stem and give an idea of how it will look with the pipe once it is finished.

With the easiest part of fitting a stem completed I went on to do the laborious and tedious part of sanding and more sanding to get the fit just right. To do this without rounding the edges of the stem at the shank stem junction I use a plastic washer placed between the two areas. I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the transition and make the angles square (or at least as square as possible on these old pipes where every side has a different angle and width). When I had the fit of the stem correct it was time to polish it. I wet sanded with 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads and rubbed the stem down with Obsidian Oil. I needed a break from the stem work so I turned my attention to the bowl. I rubbed it down with a light coat of olive oil to highlight the grain. I took a few photos to show what it looked like at this point. It is certainly looking far different than it did when I started working on it. There is a deep richness in the red tones of the briar.

I decided to highlight those tones with a dark brown aniline stain thinned by 50% with some isopropyl alcohol. I applied it and flamed it to set it in the grain. I hand buffed it with a cotton cloth to get an idea of the coverage. It was still too dark to my liking so I would need to address that.

I wiped the bowl down with some acetone on a cotton pad to remove some of the stain and make the grain show through better.

I buffed the bowl with White Diamond and then gave it the first of many coats of carnauba. I don’t know about you but by this point in a long refurbishment I get a bit anxious to see what I have accomplished. It always seems that it is going to go on forever so I rewarded myself by putting the stem in place and taking a few photos to see what I had achieved.

For comparison purposes I took the next two photos of the pipe with the old stem next to the new one. You can see how badly hacked the vulcanite was from the previous owners salvage work on his broken pipe. The pipe is beginning to look like a very different pipe than when I started. That always encourages me!

Now it was time to finish up with this long project and get the stem done. I dry sanded it with 3200-4000 grit micromesh sanding pads and then rubbed it down with Obsidian Oil once again. I then dry sanded it with 6000-12000 grit pads and gave it a final coat of oil and let it soak into the vulcanite.

I buffed the stem and bowl with Blue Diamond and then gave them both multiple coats of carnauba wax. I buffed them with a clean soft flannel buff to raise the shine and then hand buffed the pipe with a microfibre cloth to finish. The completed pipe is shown below. It has come a long way from the pipe I started on this morning. I had a quiet day at home and between reading and napping finished the work on this old timer. From what I can find out in my research and from Who Made That Pipe, the pipe may well be from the old KBB pipe works. Thanks for looking.

A Restored LHS Certified Purex #95 Squashed Tomato

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Blog by Dave Gossett

A pipe shape this elegant deserves a better name than squashed tomato. I received this pipe looking more like a bruised tomato. It was beat up and chewed up. An LHS this shape doesn’t pop up very often so I was happy to accept the pipe in any condition.

I started off with the routine internal cleaning of the pipe with alcohol, pipe cleaners, and shank brush.

Next I began to work out the dents by heating a butter knife with a propane torch and pressing it firmly to the dented areas with a damp rag between the two. This generates steam and lifts the dents out of the briar. This may have to be done several times to the same area depending how bad the dents are.

After steaming, I sanded the scratches from the rest of the briar, smoothed out the bowl chamber, prepping it for the carbon coating, gave it a light alcohol scrub with 0000 steel wool to remove the leftover patchy original finish, and finally, masked off the shank and polished the aluminum.

Next up is the stem rebuild. A tight fitting plug/form for the air way and bit is made from cardboard wrapped in clear tape.

Here is a picture of all the materials used for the stem rebuild.

Cyanoacrylate glue (medium viscosity), activated charcoal. I use disposable things for mixing and application process. 25% charcoal/75% glue mixed thoroughly is the recipe. I mix it in bottle caps, and use a q-tip stem with a small scoop/spoon cut into the end to apply to the repair site.

The repair site needs to be scored and cleaned before the mix is applied. Once the material has cured, the tape covered cardboard plug is easily removed. Using a needle file I reshaped the button and then wet sanded the stem.

Back to briar.
Now that it has been steamed, sanded, and had the old stain removed, I applied a custom color mix of Fiebings, consisting of dark brown, a hint of orange, and a bit of oxblood, thinned a bit with alcohol.

I always like seeing the color transformation from the dry stained tint to the very different shade it becomes after the carnauba wax is applied.

The final step in the restoration after waxing is the carbon bowl coating. It’s a very simple detail to make an old estate pipe look fresh again. Maple syrup and activated charcoal. After the bowl chamber is clean and smooth, lightly coat the bowl chamber with maple syrup, then fill the bowl to the top with the charcoal. Leave it for one hour or more then dump the bowl and blow through the shank to remove the excess. Next is the hard part. Don’t touch it for 5 days. It takes 3-5 days for it to harden and cure. I usually give it a week just to be sure. Once it has set up, it’s as tough as a Savinelli carbon coating and looks just as good. The pipe will have the familiar slightly bitter taste of a brand new pipe, but it doesn’t last nearly as long. After you smoke a bowl or two it goes away.

Restoring a No-Name Bent Rhodesian

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Blog by Aaron Henson

Still being relatively new to the pipe collecting/restoration hobby I have been a bit selective when it comes to the pipe I purchase. I typically look for shapes that have visual or tactile appeal and pay little attention to the name on the stem. And in that line of thought, ever since seeing the GBD 4292 for the first time I have wanted a pipe of this shape. So when I came across this no-name bent Rhodesian on eBay, I quickly placed a bid. It’s not that there were no markings on this pipe. The left side was stamped with STANDARD on the shank and a white 5-point star on the stem. The right side of the shank was stamped with Bruyère in script over Garantie.

A week later the package arrived in the mail and happily, the pipe was just as described and there were no surprise chips or cracks that the seller forgot to mention in the advertisement.

Stummel Inspection
The grain was very nice with some birds eye on the right side and a kind of flame grain on the left. There was some minor denting on the heel but the only real wood flaw was a large fill on the left side The color of the fill did not blend well with the grain and it detracted from look of the pipe. Around the rim there was some chipping and charring; damage not uncommon in a used pipe. The only other major issue that I found was the that the twin groves around the bowl were not very deep and had been worn completely away on the right side.

Stem Inspection
The stem was in very good shape. There were some tooth marks on the bottom side of the stem with moderate oxidation overall. The singer was removable and had a modest build up of tar. The biggest issue with the stem was the loose fit to the stummel – which didn’t become apparent until after the shank was cleaned.

During the inspection I decided to change the stain and finish of the pipe in order to highlight the grain and camouflage the large patch. So I began by setting the stummel to soak in 95% isopropyl alcohol to remove finish and loosen the tars and cake. I set the stem to soak in the same solution in a different container for the same reasons. After an overnight soak, I began cleaning the stem with pipe cleaners, running them through until they came out clean. To address the oxidation, I placed a small dab of petroleum jelly over the star and set the stem to soak in a solution of 50/50 chlorine bleach and water. After 20 minutes – when the bubbles had subsided – I rolled the stem over in the solution and let it go another 20 minutes. Then I removed from the bath, rinsed with fresh water and set the stem aside to dry. I didn’t get back to the work bench right away, so after a 36 hour soak, I removed the stummel from its alcohol bath and wiped it dry. I then reamed the bowl with 40 grit sand paper wrapped around a ½” diameter dowel (although this method works well, I did finally order a Castelford pipe reamer from Amazon). Once the cake was removed and the chamber cleaned, I went to work on the shank. Pipe cleaners and cotton swabs removed the remaining gunk inside the shank.

The chips and charring around the rim could only be cleaned up by topping the bowl. I use a sheet of 220 grit sandpaper laid on a flat surface and worked the stummel around in the circular motion. Even pressure and constant checking ensured that the rim was flat and level. I didn’t get the deepest chips because I was concerned that anymore material off the top would change the look of the pipe. Looking back now, I could have filled these chips with a briar dust patch. Maybe I will go back and do that this fall.

I sanded the remainder of the bowl with 320 – particularly around the large filled area and decided that the fill was in good shape and not worth removing. The fill proved to be of a darker color and that went along with my finishing plans.

The parallel grooves around the bowl were next on the list. On the right side they had worn away until they were barely visible. I went to my local hardware store and searched through the saw blades until I found what I was after: a thin fine toothed mini-hacksaw blade that just fit the width of the existing grooves. I trimmed the end of the blade with shears so I would have more clearance around the shank. Using the existing groves as a guide, I carefully worked my way around the bowl deepening and redefining the grooves. As usual, I found that not rushing yielded the bet results.

Returning to the stem, I tried applying heat to raise the tooth mark but that did not answer. So I roughened the tooth marks with 320 grit paper and fill of the divot with black superglue in multiple thin layers, letting the glue dry completely (12 hours) between layers. Once the final layer of superglue was dry, I feathered out the patch with 320 grit paper. Then I began the sanding/polishing process by wet sanding with 400 – 4000 grit paper stopping every few grits to dry the stem and apply a light coat of mineral oil. I didn’t touch the star on the stem until I got to the 2000 grit paper not wanting to damage the logo. Once I finished polishing the stem with 6000 – 12000 grit paper I oiled the stem and set it aside.

I wanted to provide some contract to the grain of the pipe and to make the grooves really stand out. The original grooves did not have a contrasting color. I began with a coat of Black Fiebing’s leather dye. In retrospect, I should have thinned it down some. After the stain dried, I had a difficult time removing it. Acetone wipes and eventually light sanding removed most of the dye but left enough to highlighting the grain. I wanted a little more color so I applied a 3:1 diluted coat of Fiebing’s Ox Blood dye. This had the result of giving the pipe a pink hue that had me more than a little concerned. Happily, it all came together with multiple thin coats of olive oil. I left the oil on the stummel until it soaked in and then applied the second and third coats. The third coat did not soak in, so I wiped in clean and set it aside to rest for a couple of days. Before taking the pipe to the buffing wheel and thought I would address the loose stem. I tried bee’s wax, which has worked in the past, but the stem remained too loose. After a little research I heated the tenon over the heat gun and then inserted a nail set into the air hole and let the tenon cool. This technique only enlarges the end of the tenon rather than the full length of the tenon, which is a better repair. I went through the heating/cooling process several times until I got a snug but not tight fit. Another thing to be aware of when heating the tenon is that the softened tenon may ‘sag’ a little. If this happens, then you may be left with a little gap between the stem and shank.

From here, I assembled the pipe and took it to the buffing wheel. I use an inexpensive Sears buffing system that fits into the chuck of my drill press. I found on previous projects that gearing down the drill speed to 1200 rpms was important to maintain control and not overheat the pipe. I finished with three coats of carnauba wax and buffed to a shine.

Restoring an LHS Certified Purex Bullmoose Rhodesian

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Blog by Dave Gossett
LHS Certified Purex shape #99.

This pipe was in better shape than most estates I start with. It had some dents and dings and some tooth chatter, but overall it was a solid pipe.

I started off this restoration with the usual internal cleaning, giving the stem, mortise, and airway an alcohol scrub with pipe cleaners and a shank brush. Next up was the bowl chamber. After removing what little cake build up that was in the bowl, I sanded the bowl chamber smooth with 400 grit.

Next, I tackled the dents and dings – first with steam followed by 2000 grit. Heating the flat side of a butter knife and pressing it firmly to the dented areas with a damp rag between the two will generate steam, lifting the dents from the briar. Don’t try this around any stampings, as it will lift the stampings just as it does with dents. This may need to be done more than once or twice for stubborn dents.

After I had worked the dents, I gave the briar a very light scrub with alcohol and 0000 steel wool to remove the stain and even out the finish where I had steamed and sanded.

After prepping the briar, I started on the stem. The button was a little worn down but not bad enough to reform, so I left it as is. I used a needle file to remove the tooth chatter. Feathering out and away from the button past the damaged area will prevent the stem from having a warped look or divot around the repaired area.

The next step after removing the tooth chatter was wet sanding the stem to remove the oxidation and file marks. The way this particular stem was made with a metal inserted logo and metal ring and stinger attached, made this clean up much easier than most others. No worrying about working around a fragile stem stamping or rounding the crisp edge of the stem/shank connection, I was able to just mow through the whole stem while wet sanding until I unearthed fresh black vulcanite.

Now that the grunt work is over, it’s almost time for the fun stuff…

Oh, one more thing. Let’s try our hand in some metal alchemy by making the aluminum look more like sterling silver.

I prepped the briar with tape for two reasons. First, the compound will raise the grain if you run it on a buffing wheel and secondly, the tarnish/compound mix on the buffer wheel with stain the briar black. Notice how dark the tape is afterwards. The natural briar looked pretty nice and I thought about leaving it in a natural finish, but I decided to put it back to its original color, or as close as I could get. I blended a color close to the LHS burgundy by mixing two full droppers of alcohol, one full dropper of oxblood, and one half dropper of dark brown.

Pay no mind to the workbench of disarray. Sometimes I lose the pipe I’m working on in all the clutter.

After the stain had dried, I lightly sanded the briar with a worn piece of 2000 grit to highlight the grain a bit, and then proceeded with laying on the carnauba wax. Two coats followed by a hand buff with a microfiber rag.

I forgot to wipe out the buffer fuzz before taking photos. Last but least, I finished up the pipe by adding a fresh carbon bowl coating. This is a simple and effective way to give a tired looking bowl chamber a great new look. I’ve seen many crazy recipes for a homemade bowl coating but after trial and error, I have found this to be the most effective and easiest way to do it. Once the bowl chamber is clean and smooth, apply a thin coat of maple syrup to the chamber. Next fill the entire bowl to the top with activated charcoal. Leave it for one hour, then dump it out and blow through the shank to remove excess. Don’t touch it for five days. After the five day curing process, it is as tough as a Savinelli factory coating and looks just as nice.

Bringing a Dunhill Bruyere Bent Rhodesian 08 Back From the Brink

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Blog by Steve Laug

This Dunhill Bruyere was part of the gift lot for sale for Nepal. It was in very rough shape and one that would never be fit enough to grace a collection. The Dunhill stamping is only visible under bright light with a lens. The stamping on the left side of the shank is Dunhill over Bruyere. On the right side it is stamped with 4 in a circle and an A. The rest of the stamping is very faint and reads Made in London England (At least that is what it looks like). The shape number 08 is gone except for the 0. The finish was gone. The double ring around the bowl was virtually ruined and the bowl itself was in very rough shape. The rim was beat up and out of round. There were burn marks on the rim, the left side and bottom of the bowl and on the left side of the shank. To me it looks like the pipe was laid in an ashtray and the cigarette burned the bowl. It was in very rough shape. The stem was badly oxidized and upon examination there was a small split in the button on the underside and the stem was thin and the edges of the button were rounded down.

I took some close up photos of the bowl to give a better picture of what I had to work with on this one. You can see from the photos the issues that I pointed out above. The ring was badly damaged and rough. The bowl was out of round and the rim was damaged. The finish was spotty and grimy.

I have one newer Bruyere in my rack so I kind of knew the colour this pipe should have been and it was not even close any more. I did a bit of searching on the web to see if I could find a finish chart and also one that would confirm the shape number that I was “speculating” on. I have included the next two charts for the information that I gleaned from them. The Bruyere was more dark/reddish coloured than this one was and the faint number was indeed 08 which was called a Bent Rhodesian.

The next two photos show the stem in some closeup photos. I wanted to show the oxidation and the split in the button on the bottom side of the stem. The fit in the shank was also worn. The tenon was sloppy fitting and could be wobbled side to side and up and down.

I put off working on this one for a long time, choosing rather to work on pipes that I had some sense of what the finished product would look like. I had no idea if I could restore this one to any semblance of its original state let alone bringing back to “BEST QUALITY” which the Dunhill catalogue above said that Bruyere pipes stamped with the large “A” were supposed to be. This one was a challenge and I really drug my feet and postponed the test as long as possible. After looking at the photos above I hope that I have communicated the state of the pipe I was going to deal with. I have made no mention at all of the state of the inside of the shank and the stem. It was a mess as well – a thick black crud covered the inside of the airway in the stem and the shank and the mortise was almost clogged with the almost petrified tars of years of neglect.

So, yesterday I decided was the day to tackle this pipe. I had mowed the yard and done my weekend chores and needed some down time to relax. I suppose many of you would not call this relaxing but I still am under the illusion that it is restful…. Shhh don’t change my illusion please. I began with cleaning out the rings around the bowl. They were rough but they were also clogged with all kinds of debris. I used a sharp, thin blade pen knife that I have and use for this kind of thing. It works wonders and within a short time I had cleaned out the grime and the original red stain was showing in the bottom of the grooves.

I scrubbed the bowl with cotton pads and acetone to remove the grime and the damaged finish. I also wanted to see the extent of the burn marks on the bowl, rim and shank. I wanted to see if they went deeper than the surface. Knowing that would help me decided what to do to address them.

With the grime cleaned off the rim I could see what I had to work with. The bowl was in rough shape. It was out of round but the inner edges did not have any char or burn. The rim had lots of dents and dings from someone using it as a hammer. I decided to top the bowl to flatten out the rim and clean up as much of the damage as possible. I would then have to work on sanding the inner edge of the rim to smooth it out. I used the topping board with 220 grit sandpaper.

With the rim flattened out once more and the outer edge more evenly set on the bowl top it was time to address the inner edge of the rim. I used a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to clean up the edge. I was able to greatly improve the “roundness” of the inner edge. While it was not perfect it was far better than when I started. I cleaned out the shank and the airways with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. I scrubbed and scoured and scraped the airways clean of the “fossilized” tars until the pipe cleaners and cotton swabs came back white. Since I was probably going to smoke this one myself I decided to not use the retort at this point. If it smoked rough I could always set up the retort and let it do its magic. I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper, repaired the small split in the button on the bottom side and then sanded the stem with a medium and a fine grit sanding sponge. I rubbed it down with some Obsidian Oil and put the pipe back together. I took a few photos of the cleaned up look. If you are getting the idea that I was postponing working on the double ring and the heavy damage there you are correct in your assumption. I was not sure I would be able to work any redemption on that area of the bowl. Time would tell.

I could not postpone dealing with the ring damage any longer if I was going to finish the pipe. I had read with interest Mark Domingues write up on restoring the rings on the Peterson 80 that he posted here recently. I spent time looking at how he rebuilt the centre briar ring between the two lines. I was ready to start. I cut a piece of note card the width of the back of the bowl and decided to address that damage first. I pressed briar dust into the damaged area of the ring and tamped it in with dental pick. When it was full I put some drops of clear super glue onto the briar dust. I did the same all around the bowl until I had a real mess on my hands. I was careful not to put the glue or dust on the places where the rings were in good shape. I would use these as guides to recut the lines later.

I used a flat, thin blade knife edge needle file to recut the grooves in the bowl. It took a lot of work to slowly and carefully recut them but it worked as the photos below show.

After the initial cutting of the grooves with the needle file I continued to use it to smooth out the grooves and the edges on the top and bottom. They took a lot of work to smooth things out. I also folded 220 grit sandpaper and ran it through the grooves on the bowl. Once they were smooth and cleaner looking than before it was time to clean off the bowl and then restain it with the first coat of stain. I wiped the bowl down with alcohol on cotton pads to remove the excess briar dust and any remaining glue. I sanded the burn marks on the bowl and rim with a medium and a fine grit sanding sponge to minimize them. I sanded them again with 1500-2400 grit micromesh pads to smooth out the scratches. I then gave it a coat of oxblood aniline stain, flamed it and set it aside to dry.

The burn marks still showed with this first coat of stain and it was a little too red to my liking. I buffed it with White Diamond and then brought it back to the table to do some more work. I took some photos of the pipe after the buffing. I find that a couple pics help me focus on what needs some more work. In this case I could see that a little dark brown stain would work to tone down the red and also blend the dark spots in a bit more.

I used a dark brown stain pen to give it a top coat of stain. In the photos it looks streaky but I don’t worry too much about that as a buff once it is dry will take care of that. I buffed the bowl with White Diamond and a light touch. It is looking better. The rings on the left side are better but are still a little rough. The rest of the way around the bowl they are looking really good. The dark brown stain did a better job of blending in the dark spots and toning down the red. I liked the colour and it seemed to match the chart photos of the Bruyere that I had found.

At this point it was time for a break. I put the stem on the bowl and loaded a bowl of Boswell’s North Woods and went to church with my daughters. I smoked a bowl as I walked with them and loaded another bowl on the way home. I sat on the porch and fired up a third bowl filled with Malthouse Reserve 12. This pipe really sang with English tobaccos. Even if it was still a bit ugly it smoked well!

When I finally went back to the shop I worked on polishing the stem. I put the plastic spacer/washer between the shank and the stem and worked on it with micromesh sanding pads. I wet sanded with 1500-2400 grit pads and then rubbed the stem down with Obsidian Oil. I dry sanded with 3200-4000 grit pads and rubbed it down again with the oil. I dry sanded with 6000-12,000 grit pads and then gave it a final coat of Obsidian Oil. I set it aside to dry.

The stem was looking really good. There was a rich glow to the vulcanite. These older Dunhill pipe stems really shine like glass when they are polished. I set the stem aside and did a bit more work on the bowl. I used a very small oval needle file to work on the rings on the left side and front of the bowl. I wanted to clean up the edges and sharpen the overall look of the rings.

I followed the oval file with a flat rectangular blade needle file and cleaned up the edges of the rings some more. When I had finished with the flat file the rings looked far better than they were when I started.

I gave the bowl another coat of stain with the dark brown stain pen and then buffed the bowl and stem with Blue Diamond Plastic polish. I gave them both multiple coats of carnauba wax. Then I buffed the pipe with a clean flannel buff and polished it. The finished pipe is shown below. I think this one will stay with me as the nomenclature is almost illegible and the dark marks all over the bowl still show. The pipe smokes well so it will be a work horse pipe for me. It was well worth the time to clean up and I learned much in the process of reworking the rings.

Thanks for looking.

Doing an interior shank repair and restemming a KBB Yello Bole Lovat

9 Replies

Blog by Troy Wilburn

I got this pipe from a member of Dr. Grabows Collector Forum, John McP. He hails from across the pond in Scotland. He had contacted me about a old KBB Yello Bole pipe that he had picked up that did not have a stem and wanted to know a little about it and what kind of stem it originally had. He also informed me it had an old repair of a cracked shank.

It is stamped 2079 and had the “Honey Cured Briar” under the KBB Yello Bole, which made it a pre 1936 model. I then checked my Kaywoodie charts. It’s a large bowl, long shank Lovat saddle bit. Even though the KW shape charts call it a Canadian I don’t think so because of its round shank. I’ll never consider a round shank as a Canadian. I informed him that it was a nice pipe and should be a good smoker once cleaned up and a replacement stem found. Unfortunately for John the old repair was not a good one and it had made the shank weak. When John tried to fit some stems to it, a piece broke out of the shank. He asked me if I wanted it free of charge as he did not want to tackle repairing the pipe.

The pipe as John showed me before he sent it. I agreed that I would see what I could do with it. Well after over a month in the mail it finally arrived and I got a good look at it and found a donor saddle bit from another Yello Bole.

The bowl had some black scorch marks from smoking hot. I was going to get this pipe blasted after repairs to help hide them and cover some dark burn marks on the bowl. After much thought I decided to restore it close as factory as I could. The possible history of this pipe was just too good to alter it. In the short time of my possession of this pipe it had already been half way around the globe. That’s just a fraction of the long life that this pipe has had over it’s at least 80-year-old life. Maybe it was taken over by an allied soldier and left behind as a gift of friendship? Maybe it was carried by an OSS agent behind German lines during the war? Maybe not but its fun to think of the possibilities.

So all the sand pits and small fills were left as is and not covered or filled. After all it’s a Yello Bole if it did not have these imperfections it would have been a Kaywoodie. The old war horse has some scars from repairs and wear. The stamping’s are quite worn but it’s a pipe someone had thought enough of to repair it once before. Hopefully it has many more years left in it.

I decided to do an inner band like Steve did on a YB I sent him for repair. I found an old metal tenon from a Grabow filter stem I had. I filed out the inner shank and broken shank piece to clean up and to give the glue something to grab too. After grinding the metal tenon to fit inside the shank. I cleaned up the shank and broken piece with some 91% alcohol and marked the best way it fit with a black sharpie so I know where to place it when glued. I mixed up some two part epoxy and then set the inner band in the shank. After it set up I got ready for the broken piece and cleaned off the Sharpie from the metal band to ensure a good bond. I put two part epoxy on the metal band then super glue on the briar edges and set the broken piece. Then I applied briar dust before the glue set. I had to work fast so no pics during this process, only before and after.

I then sanded the repairs; the old repair had a bad high spot and took some filing. I had to build up the bottom from making the old repair flush again. It was a bit lower than the stem. I then filed the stem to match the shank. After cleaning out the shank and bowl I noticed that all the old YB coating was gone from wear or scraped out over time. I decided to remove all the cake and address this later. I then stripped off the old finish with warm water and Oxy Clean bath. I did some light scrubbing with a toothbrush and a Scotch Brite pad used on the stubborn spots. I then wet sanded repairs and bowl with various grits of wet dry paper from 600 – 2500. After this I wiped the pipe several times with household bleach to lighten the dark spots and repairs so it would be harder to spot with the dye. After bleach bath the pipe is ready for dye. I then mixed up some dye close to original stain but slightly darker to help cover the repairs and black marks. I applied three coats. Pipe dry and ready for some base wax. After applying three coats of wax to lock in the dye I mixed up some homemade Yello Bole bowl coating. I applied the bowl coating and found a Yello Bole paper cover from a NOS pipe I have. The cover is from an Imperial but I thought it would look nice for the pictures.

After several more coats of wax the pipe is done. First off the repairs are not perfect and I wish I could have gotten a tighter fit with the stem. This was my first inner banding so I didn’t get the band quite as square as I should have making the stem fitting a bit difficult .The more I tried to get a tight fit the more gap I would get on one side, so I settled for a uniform gap. I’ll know better next time and should get a better fit. Here are some pics of the finished repairs.

As Steve pointed out to me on the Dr. Grabow Collectors Forum, if you flare the tube it will make it fit more squarely. I think showing your mistakes is as important as showing your successes for the next person trying to do a similar repair. So if you are doing an inner band repair soon I suggest you flare the end before you set it with epoxy.

I did manage to save what little of the stamping’s were left.

Pictures of whole completed pipe

Even though this was a tough and time consuming refurbish it was quite fun and wish to thank John for sending me this old soldier to be used and enjoyed again.

A Unique Piece of Pipe History – A Zeus System Filter Pipe

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Blog by Steve Laug

The morning of May 9th started as any other one does for me – a coffee and a plan. I got up early and roused the troops. We loaded the car and headed to the US to get to the border crossing before the long lines began. We were at our destination in Bellingham, Washington by a little after 8:00 AM. We had breakfast with the ladies in my family, dropped them off for a few hours of shopping and then did a few errands before heading to the “Junque” shops when they opened at 10:00 AM. I walked through the first shop and found a small no name pipe that was in very rough shape and decided to leave it behind. I went to the second shop and went through all of the cabinets and finally came to the one belonging to a seller that usually had something interesting in her cabinet. That is where I saw the oddly shaped rusticated briar pipe that was stamped ZEUS on the stem. The seller unlocked the cabinet and I took the pipe in hand and examined it. The stem came out easily and I could see the odd spikes at the end of the metal shank. It was an oddity that I had not seen before so I had to have it. I know it sound lame, but this find made my morning. I had found an unknown to me, odd-shaped system pipe and the pipe hunt had been successful.

The pipe is not large. The bowl is about a group 3 size and has a very wide shank. It extends for about an inch before it is joined by a metal oval tube. The tube was in great shape with no scratches and only minimal dents. An oddly shaped stem fit in the end of the metal tube. The stem bore a star with the words ZEUS stamped under it on top of the stem. On the underside it was stamped Made in U.S.A. There is a patent stamp on the short briar shank in a smooth patch on the left side. It reads U.S. Patent over 2,158,897. When I returned home I took it to the work table and took these photos.

The pipe appears to be in great shape. There is minor oxidation on the stem but no tooth marks. The metal tube had sticky glue areas that seemed to come from a label that had been stuck to the metal. I sure wish that they would not use these labels to mark pipes. The briar bowl exterior is very dirty with dust and grime pressed deeply into the rustication. There was a thick build up of tars and oils in the rustication of the rim. There was a crumbling thick cake in the bowl with the cake on the bottom portion of the bowl being much thicker. The airway was dirty as well and I had trouble getting a pipe cleaner through from the stem. It would be interesting to take this old timer apart.

I removed the stem from the shank and took the following photo. It was a twin bore stem that moved toward a single airway in the thinner portion. It formed a Y. The twin bores were quite large as can be seen in the photo. It made me wonder what I was dealing with. The metal tube portion of the shank was also removable and only took a little finagling to get it to come free. It was pressed into place and formed a fairly tight seal. Once it was free the end of the briar shank was visible. It had two imposing metal spikes and an airway entering from the bowl in the middle between them.

I took another photo of the three parts standing on end. You can see that the metal tube forms a chamber for the smoke and serves as the mortise area for the twin bore stem. The mystery to me at this point was the purpose of the spikes. It seemed likely to me that some sort of filter system was spiked on the points and extended from them into the twin holes in the stem. They would lie parallel to each other in the metal shank and the smoke would swirl around them in the chamber. I began to wonder if I was missing some key parts of this pipe. Were those parts lost somewhere along the way and what must they have looked like? Those were some of the questions that went through my mind at this point. I knew that the patent number on the shank would give me some help with this. I could search the US Patent site and possibly find the drawings and original proposal for the pipe that the inventor submitted for patent. But before I did that I did a quick search on Google for the ZEUS pipe. Of course the PipePhil site came up and there I found the following information. There were two photos of the pipe – one disassembled and one assembled. The stamping was identical to the one I had as was the patent number on both shanks. There was also a short line to the right of the photo that gave me the quick answer to what I had assumed about the pipe. The spikes and the chamber as well as the twin bore had a clear purpose and I was not missing any parts. The ZEUS pipe was designed to hold 2 halves of a cigarette to act as filters. The spike held them in place and the twin cigarettes extended into the mouth piece. The smoke would swirl around them and the tars and moisture would be absorbed in the cigarettes.

There was also a link to MODERN MECHANIX Magazine dated November, 1939 that was an advertisement for the pipe and gave a simple diagram of the interior of the pipe with the cigarettes in place. The advertisement text is interesting in spelling out the pipe designer’s intention for the design of the pipe. It claims that 80% of the nicotine is removed by this new pipe design. The ad says that smoke drawn from the pipe passes through the two cigarettes which act as filters to absorb the nicotine.
I love finding these old inventive pipes that were designed to deliver what at the time was a smoother, cooler, healthier smoke. This was one of the most unique designs that I have seen. From there I turned to the patent number on the side of the shank. I went to the US Patent website and did a numerical search for the patent number. Here is the link to the number search portion of the patent website: http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm I entered the patent number 2,158,897 and was immediately given a three page scan of the documents on the site for that number. I have included all three pages below. The first page is a series of conceptual drawings of the device. The second and third pages are the details linked to the Figure numbers in the drawings. It was filed May 21, 1937 by a G. Cippico in the category of Smoking Device. G. Cippico is later shown to be Giuseppe Cippico, Inventor from Rome, Italy. The patent was granted on May 16, 1939 almost two years later. These old Patent details are always an interesting read to me. The theory of how the pipe would work is spelled out and the rationale for it being a new and better pipe is detailed.

I put this information on two of the pipe forums that I frequent to see if I could garner any further information. I was particularly looking for the US manufacturer of the pipe. On Smokers Forum I received a response from Chris Chopin (flatticus). He included another advertisement from Life Magazine that he found. The advertisement is for a ZEUS Cigarrete holder that claims to absorb over 70% of the nicotine and tars. It also says in small print at the bottom of the ad under the $1 Ladies Zeus with choice of amberlike colored bits that there are also ZEUS pipes. The ad says that ZEUS is made by L. & H. Stern, Inc., 57 Pearl Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. With that it appears that the pipes were made in the US by LH Stern Inc.

Chris also writes; “There are ads from Stern for the Zeus filter in 1938 in Life Magazine (several times that year), Collier’s Illustrated Weekly, and Time. They start in March and April of 1938 with the filter noted as “A New Way to Smoke”. Then nothing for 8 full years. Not a single ad or mention of any kind I can find past December of 1938 except for a mention in the Rocky Mountain Medical Journal that may not be an ad.”

“Then, in 1946, ads show up in Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, The Rotarian, Newsweek, all over the place, advertising that the Zeus Filter Holder is back, now in aluminum. All but one of the 1938 ads say “Also Zeus Pipes” and not a single one of the 1946 ads does.”

“It’s an assumption, of course, but this makes me think that for some reason the Zeus pipes had a very short life, and you may have one of very few they made.”

Thanks for the advertisement and information Chris. Your post gave me some needed information on the brand and confirmed what I had already found from my own digging. It appears I found a bit of a rarity in this old pipe.

Armed with these details and a bit of historical background it was time to clean up the pipe and bring it back to pristine condition.

I took the pipe apart and put the bowl into an alcohol bath to soak and soften the cake before I ream and clean it. I put the stem and barrel in an Oxyclean bath to soak and raise the oxidation and start the sanitizing process.

When I took the stummel out of the alcohol bath after it has soaked for three hours I scrubbed it with a soft bristle brass tire brush to clean out the debris from the rustication. I scrubbed the top of the rim to remove the tarry buildup from that surface. I wiped the surface down with isopropyl alcohol on a cotton pad to remove the dust on the finish.

I reamed the bowl with a PipNet Reamer using the smallest cutting head. It was still slightly too big to get to the bottom of the bowl. I used a small sharp pen knife to work on the cake on the bowl bottom and sides. I wiped out the bowl with isopropyl alcohol on cotton swabs to remove the carbon that the knife and reamer let behind. The reamed bowl is shown in the photo below. I used the cotton swabs and alcohol to clean out the airway in the shank and to clean up the two points of metal on each side. I scrubbed down the briar surface that the metal tube slid over. I also scrubbed the metal tube out on the inside with alcohol. I used the sharp pen knife to scrape the inside of the tube and then rinsed it with alcohol. I inserted the dental pick in the airway to use as a handle and restained the stummel with a dark brown aniline stain. I flamed it and repeated the process until the coverage was even.

I set the bowl aside to dry and worked on the stem. I had dried it off when I removed it and the tube from the Oxyclean bath but still needed to do some work to clean out the airways. I used pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and isopropyl alcohol to clean out the stem airways.

I hand buffed the bowl with a shoe brush to smooth out the stain and to raise a shine on the briar.

The Oxyclean had removed some of the white in the stamping on both sides of the stem so I cleaned off the surface of the stem and then used a correction pen to reapply the white to the stamping on both sides of the stem.

When it was dry I sanded it with a fine grit sanding sponge to remove the excess white material and to polish the stem.

With the stamping repaired I worked on the stem with micromesh sanding pads. I wet sanded with 1500-2400 grit pads and dry sanded with 3200-12,000 grit pads. I buffed the stem after the wet sanding with red Tripoli and then rubbed it down with Obsidian Oil before going on to the higher grit pads.

When I had finished with the micromesh pads I buffed the stem with Blue Diamond Plastic polish on the buffing wheel and then gave the stem several coats of carnauba wax. I buffed the stem and bowl with a clean flannel buff to give a clean shine and finish the pipe. The completed pipe is shown in the photos below. It turned out really well and it will go in my display cupboard. I think one day I will have to light it up and see how it smokes but to do that I will need to find a couple of cigarettes to use as filters.

Thanks for looking at this unusual piece of tobacciana. It will join other odd pipes that I have found over the years that bear witness to the ongoing and ever-present search for the perfect smoke.

A Dodgy Rogers: Restoring and Modifying a Rogers Standard

4 Replies

Blog by Anthony Cook

I was recently engaged in a conversation with another member of an online pipe tobacco forum and I learned that he had been smoking a pipe for six months and had only one pipe. I’ve been there, man. From what I’ve seen, six months seems to be the sweet spot for new pipe smokers. They’re likely to stick with it if they’ve made it that far, but everything is still new enough that even simple things can be a challenge. I’m sure that most of you will agree that smoking a pipe isn’t rocket science, but the initial learning curve can be fairly steep all the same. So, I offered to send him a pipe to give his faithful companion a break, reward his perseverance, and encourage him to hang in there.

I sent him a photo of a few pipes that I had on hand. I told him to pick one and I’d send it along. I half expected him to balk after seeing the photos. None of the pipes had been restored at all. If you’re not used to dealing with estate pipes, it can be difficult to see one as anything other than what it is; grime, tar, fills, and all. So, to ease any concerns that he may have I sent him a few before/after photos of some of my work and promised that I would make sure that his pipe was clean and pretty. He responded quickly with his choice, and to my surprise, it was probably the grungiest in appearance of the lot. Here it is… The pipe is a Rogers Standard. I think the unique shaping is what attracted him and I can understand why. The slightly longer shank paired with the short saddle on the stem give it a quirky look that’s still classy. Here are a few more photos to give you an idea of what I was working with.

The stem was stuck tight on this one, but a couple of hours in the freezer took care of that. Once the stem was removed, I found a grimy, spiral stinger in the tenon. It too was stuck. So, I dripped alcohol into and around the tenon to soften the tar that was gluing it in. After a few minutes, I wrapped it in several layers of soft cloth to protect it and pulled it out with a pair of pliers. I dropped it into a container of alcohol for about an hour, and then scrubbed it with a pipe cleaner until it was as good as new. I gave the stummel an alcohol bath to remove the old, lacquer finish. Several hours later, I removed it and wiped it down. Only about the top two-thirds of the bowl was caked to any degree, but what was there was thick, uneven, and harder than chicken lips. In the end, it took a group effort to ream the bowl back to bare wood the way I like it, but a T-handle reamer, a pipe knife, 400-grit paper wrapped around a Sharpie pen, and a little elbow grease got the job done.

I’ve added a retort to my tool chest since I last posted here, but I still like to scrub out the solid debris and lumpy build-ups by hand before using it. The Rogers took a whole handful of pipe cleaners, cotton swabs, and a couple of shank brushes before I was satisfied enough to move on. I set up the retort and flushed the stem and shank several times before setting it aside to cool for about 15 minutes. Then, I refilled with clean alcohol and flushed several more times. After the second retort, the alcohol was nearly clear. So, I considered the retort to have done its job and gave the stummel and stem one last quick scrub to remove any remaining tar. While I had been retorting the stummel, the stem had been soaking in an Oxyclean bath. I removed it and scrubbed it down with a couple of 1” cubes cut from a Magic Eraser pad to remove the oxidation. There is one thing to note though. I noticed that the paint had come out of the stem stamping during the bath despite my attempt to protect it with a dab of petroleum jelly. I’ve never really trusted this method of protection and I think I’m going to explore some others ideas in the future.You may have noticed from the photos that this pipe had a few fills. Okay… It had a lot of fills and the ones that concerned me the most were a few that were right inside the stamping on the shank. I was considering what to do about them when the thought occurred to me that it might be best to leave it up to the guy that was going to smoke the pipe. I contacted the future owner and presented him with a few option: (1) I could patch the fills with briar dust and CA that would blend well into the final finish, but some of the stamping would be sacrificed, (2) I could leave the stamping intact, but there would be some obvious fills on the shank of the finished pipe, or (3) I could rusticate the pipe, which would completely obliterate the stamping but the pipe would be unique. He chose to go with rustication.

So, once I knew the direction in which I was heading, I set up my topping surface to remove the scratches and charring on the rim. I sanded with a progression of 220-grit, then 320-grit, then 400-grit paper until I was satisfied that all of the scratches were gone. I also softened the inside and outside edge of the rim by light sanding with 400 grit paper (not pictured).

My rustication plan called for a round, smooth button on the right side of the bowl where there were few fills and some fairly decent bird’s eye. There were also a few dents in the area. So, I clamped the stummel in a vice and tried to steam them out by pressing a heated screwdriver into a wet cloth placed over the dents. Most of them were removed successfully, but one large dent with sharp edges still remained. You win some. You lose some. Nobody wants a pipe that looks like it has the measles and those pink putty fills will show through and ruin even a rusticated finish. So, I picked them all out. I also discovered that the wood inside the mortise directly beneath the shank crack was weak and spongy. I scraped it out easily with a pick, but left behind a disconcertingly large gouge in the mortise. I had been experimenting with pre-staining briar dust for patches and fills, but I hadn’t had the opportunity to put it into practice until this pipe. I dripped a couple of drops each of Fiebing’s black and oxblood into a bit of briar dust, and then added a few drops of isopropyl alcohol to spread it evenly. After mixing it up and sitting it under a warm lamp for about 30 minutes, I had a batch of stained briar dust. The stained dust and a bit of CA glue were used to patch the dent and a large fill on the right side of the bowl. I also used unstained dust and CA to fill in the area of missing wood in the mortise. The bowl patches were sanded out with 220-grit, then 320-grit, sandpaper. In the mortise, I used 240 and 320-grit sanding needles. When I inserted the stem to test the fit, I heard a sharp “snap”. Uh-oh.
When I flipped the pipe over I saw that the shank had cracked again. This one began about 1mm below the patched crack and was also longer than that one. I used a 1/32” drill bit to make a small hole at the end of the crack to stop the run. I didn’t drill all the way through, only a hair’s width below the crack. Then, I inserted the stem (after smearing petroleum jelly on the tenon) to widen the crack and filled the crack and drill hole with stained dust and CA. Once the patch had set up, I removed the stem, wiped the petroleum jelly from the mortise, and added more briar dust and CA there to add the strength that it obviously needed. The new patches were sanded out once dry and I used a strip of 400-grit paper to reduce the diameter of the tenon before trying to insert is again. The fit was snug but not overly tight, and best of all, there were no new cracks. Since the shank crack had been opened up and then filled, the overall diameter of the shank had increased slightly. So, I used 220-grit, then 320-grit, sandpaper to bring it back into register with the stem.

Then it was time to strike up the band. I selected a band from my box that was large enough to fit over the end of the shank, but not so large that I could slide it all of the way up by hand. With the band partially in place over the shank, I heated it with a heat gun to expand the metal, and then pressed it into place on a hard, cushioned surface. The mortise had been constricted by the placement of the band. So, again, I had to do a bit of sanding with 220-grit, 320-grit, and 400-grit paper to turn the tenon down enough to make a good, snug fit.

The heat gun was already set up. So, I used it to heat the stem to see if I could raise some of the tooth dents. It did a fair job, but a few still remained after the heat treatment. I also took the opportunity to add a few more degrees of bend in the stem to give it a more elegant flow (at least to my eyes). The stem button had a couple of chunks bitten out of it that needed to be repaired. I borrowed Andrew Selking’s idea of wrapping the area below the button with tape to keep a crisp edge before applying black CA glue to the gouges. The middle picture in the image below shows the button just after removing the tape. There was a bit of overhang at the lip that would have to be taken off, but the area where the button meets the stem is crisp and clean. That would save a lot of work. Thanks, Andrew!

I sanded out the lighter dents on the stem with 220-grit paper. For the deeper dents, I patched them with a bit of black CA glue applied with a toothpick. When the stem patches where dry I sanded them down with 220-grit paper, and used 320-grit and 400-grit to blend them into the rest of the surface and to shape the button. Then, I lightly sanded the entire stem with 600-grit paper to remove any scratches and pits in the vulcanite. I also used a grout pen to paint in the stamped logo. Some of the logo area had been worn smooth over time. So, the resulting logo didn’t look as good as the example over at PipePhil.eu, but I think it looks better than it did originally. For comparison, here’s the logo example from PipePhil.eu (first image), the original logo (second image), and the repainted logo (third image): The stem was polished with micro-mesh pads 1500-grit to 12000-grit. I applied a drop of Obsidian Oil to the stem, let it sit for a couple of minutes, and then wiped off the excess to finish up the work on the stem. I decided to go for three levels of texture in the partial rustication and hoped that would give the pipe a unique appearance. I used a felt pen to mark an oval-shaped guideline on each side of the bowl. I started carving with a Dremel and a 3/32” engraving burr. Basically, I just scribbled around the stummel avoided the areas that I wanted to leave smooth to create the base for the medium texture. Then, I used a variety of hand-cut bits and tools to really get in there and remove some wood to create the craggy texture around the ovals that I had marked. To finish up the rustication, I used a 1/32” engraving burr to touch up a few of the places where the rustication met the smooth areas. It turned out to be a rather lengthy process to get the final color and finish the way that I wanted it. So, I won’t go into a lot of detail, but here’s the gist of it:
1) Applied black stain, sanded smooth areas and rustication high spots with 400-grit, and buffed with Tripoli
2) Applied mahogany stain, lightly sanded smooth areas and brushed the rustication high spots with 600-grit, and buffed with a clean wheel.
3) Applied ox blood stain to the rusticated areas only, hand buffed, sanded smooth areas with 1200-grit (Not pictured below. Oops).
4) Polished with micro-mesh 1500-grit to 2400-grit, applied red stain to smooth areas only, buffed with a clean wheel, continued polishing smooth areas with micro-mesh 3200-12000. After the final micro-mesh polish, I reattached the stem and buffed the entire pipe with White Diamond. I then applied Halcyon II wax to the stummel and carnauba wax to the stem and buffed the pipe with a clean wheel. Lastly, I painted the walls of the chamber with a sour cream and activated charcoal bowl coating to add some temporary insulation until a good cake could form.

The finished pipe is very different from what it was when I started. It has lost its pedigree, but it has gained a unique, one-of-a-kind appearance. I’m quite pleased with the way that it turned out and I’m hoping that the new owner will be too. It’s in the mail, Dustin. Smoke it well, brother!

Conjuring a Makeover for a Carey Magic Inch

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

“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.”
― Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), French Impressionist painter

INTRODUCTION
I suspect there is some aspect of my basic personality that is incapable, to a degree, of not admiring the tenacity alone required to survive 67-years – and still going – in the admirable pursuit of providing affordable smoking pipes. Remember, this is an industry that has seen all manner of fly-by-night systems for dissipating the high heat of the all-important tobacco that has an inherent tendency to become moist and therefore brackish in the process of flowing through the basic designs of all pipes.

Notwithstanding the relative quality of pipes that evolve based on the periodic new patents from the ever-pioneering designers at E.A. Carey, which also owns the Duncan Hill Aerosphere brand, the system’s section that comprises the so-called “Magic Inch” has changed little since 1948, when the first billiard version was created and marketed. The system involves five elements: 1-2) the first two in the double-pronged tenon, the thin, hollow end of which attaches to the plastic bit and the typical part that slides into the shank; 3) the thin bit insert with six small drilled holes, two each on the top and bottom (when properly inserted) and one each on either side; 4) the newer Papyrate II sleeve (two-ply) – made of very thin, wet slices, from the roots of an aquatic plant, that are pressed together and dried – that fits snugly over the holes of the bit insert, and 5) six horizontal slits in the shank end of the bit, three on the top and three on the bottom. The photos of the bit show the used, brownish papyrate sleeve that came with the original pipe.

Back some months when I was snatching up pipe lots online, I bought one with 10 sundry examples of the craft, including a few nice finds such as a Kaywoodie Filter Plus metal pipe from the late 1950s, a Jobey Extra, a nice glazed clay pipe and others, with this Magic Inch among them. I put all of these in a small box “for later,” except for the beautiful unknown clay billiard that I cleaned up and added new cork in the shank with a hole drilled to fit the screw-in tenon attached to the acrylic stem, for my own collection.

By the way, not everyone knows that Carey does not only make Magic Inch pipes. Here are a few of the company’s representative standard briar pipes. But this blog concerns the vintage Magic Inch billiard, U.S. Patent №. 3,267,941 granted in 1966, shown in the lot above three rows down on the right. A few years ago, I owned, and for a while enjoyed, another Magic Inch, and it wasn’t – well, bad. But first, I have a few comments regarding Carey’s rather imaginative advertising.

Numerical data and the manifold methods of collection, arrangement and interpretation of them for publication as fact by the complex use of statistics in almost every facet of society – including but by no means limited to governmental and other political concerns, businesses and the news media – can be misleading at best and downright manipulative at worst.

Take, for example, the E.A. Carey Smokeshop claim [http://www.eacarey.com/ pipes.html] that it has sold more than one million of its Magic Inch pipes since 1948. That sounds impressive, and suggests that Carey’s pipes are superior to others. But that total averages to 15,152 pipes (rounded up, through 2014) per year. Then again, Carey changes the number of Magic Inch pipes sold in the same period to a vague “hundreds of thousands” [http://www.eacarey .com/magicinchinfo.html]. Allowing for hundreds of thousands to be a maximum of 200,000 pipes, which quite likely is stretching it, the average drops to 3,030. Somehow, I doubt that either annual sales figure engenders any impulse among the world’s other pipe makers to compete with the folks at the venerable Carey Smokeshop online, both in the U.K. [http://www.eacarey. co.uk/] and U.S.

Now, to return to the real subject matter, the purpose of this particular blog is to show how a pipe with a singular lack of attractive qualities can be transformed into something nicer.

RESTORATION
After removing and separating the bit and two-sided tenon, throwing away the old brown papyrate sleeve, on an impulse, I decided to give the old rusticated briar girl an Everclear soak. For some reason, this process took quite a while – say six hours. At any rate, when the old finish was stripped and the wood dried, I began a hand-buff with super fine steel wool followed by a progression of micromesh pads from 1500-3600.

I turned a reamer a few times in the chamber, followed by sanding with 200-grit and 320, and the chamber was almost good to go. Then I attached a suitable stem and retorted the shank and chamber.

Thinking the pipe, which was dreary in the beginning, deserved something more distinctive and in keeping with its natural reddish color, I chose maroon boot stain. After the quick application and flaming, I rubbed the wood gently with 3200 micromesh.

To clean the hollow plastic bit and tenon, I diluted – and I mean heavily – a little Everclear with a lot of water. I like to think of this as the Reverse Julia Childs Approach. The popular cook once said, “I like to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.” From what I recall of watching Julia in the studio kitchen on TV, I am not surprised that she seemed to have forgotten the apparent equal measures of wine expended in the food and down the hatch. Anyway, I bent a soft pipe cleaner in half and dipped it in the comparatively wimpy solution, which is like comparing wine to Moonshine, and inserted the folded end in the stem, turning it several times and finding it needed replacing. And so I repeated the action, but giving the inner bit the old in-and-out, scrubbing its sides. Only the slightest amount of grime came out on the second run, and I used the same cleaner to work through the slits on the top and bottom. I used a third, dry cleaner to finish.

The outer bit required very little work with one micromesh pad, although I forget the grade, to make it shine. Using a white china marker, I filled in the small, long-empty square with a three-sided C in the middle, forming all but one line of a second square. Thanks to a generous gift of a handful of papyrate sleeves from my good friend and mentor, Chuck Richards, I was able to complete the tenon for ultimate placement into the shank.

All that was left to do was buff the wood on the electric wheels, using white Tripoli and White Diamond, with quick runs on the clean wheel after each. At last, with a finger, I applied a thin, even coat of Halcyon II, and after letting the briar sit for 10-15 minutes, buffed it with the clean wheel.

CONCLUSION
Love ’em, hate ’em or really don’t give a hoot either way, the Carey Magic Inch has secured its place in tobacco pipe history, as well as giving many a smoker a start in the pleasures derived from fine tobaccos. And as far as I’m concerned, the Carey system works better than most far more complicated attempts.

Imagine, if you will, a special place in the Twilight Zone – an area so horrific only the most heinous attempts at pipe cooling ever make it there. Take, for example, the following specimen, a Jenkins, which, with its screw designed to hang while smoking like a broken appendage from the underbelly of the shank at a point just before the bowl, may never find its way back.

A Bit of an Experiment – Restoring a Broken Bowl on a Hardcastles Jack o’ London Billiard

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Blog by Steve Laug

Having had a long week at work with nary a break in the busyness I needed a bit of a diversion on the weekend. I had an old Hardcastle’s Jack o’ London billiard in the cupboard that I probably should have thrown away but did not. I picked up the nice little billiard on one of my pipe hunts months ago. When I reamed it after I brought it home the bowl cracked and a large piece fell out of the right back side of the bowl. Up on examination it was on its way to being a burn out as the interior wall on the crack was charred and damaged. I took pictures of the bowl to show the damage at that time. For some reason I did not throw it away but rather put it in the cupboard and figured I could use the briar for other repairs.

But this weekend I took it out and decided to experiment with it and see what I could do with the damaged bowl. I debated whether to cannibalize it and save the parts or to rework it. I had already scavenged the stem and reused it on another Hardcastle’s pipe bowl that I restored so I only had the bowl. If the repair worked I would have to fit a new stem on the pipe before I could smoke it.

Here are some photos I took when the bowl cracked during the initial reaming. I took quite a few because I had not had that happen before in my experience. Looking at the photos you can clearly see the damage to both the remaining bowl and the chunk of briar that fell out. It was seriously damaged and one that I seriously considered throwing away that day. The rim was a mess as well besides being cracked and broken and the inner edge was out of round and the top beaten around the outer edge. The bowl was heavily caked and it looked to have been a good smoking pipe for the previous pipeman. There were even some fragments of unsmoked tobacco in the bottom of the bowl.

Out of boredom and the need for something to keep my hands busy while my dog was being groomed I decided to experiment with repairs on the bowl. I cleaned up the broken pieces of the briar both the edges on the bowl and broken pieces with alcohol and cotton swabs and picked out any remaining loose pieces of briar or charred pieces of briar. I knew that I could easily patch the external side of the bowl and make it look acceptable but I was not sure what I would do with the internal side. I used a pen knife to scrape out the remaining cake in the bowl and to make sure there was no loose carbon that would get in the way of the repair before gluing in the piece. I applied clear super glue to both the bowl and the chunk of briar being careful to keep it out of the interior of the bowl and pressed the piece in place. In the photos below you can see how the glue ran down the exterior of the back side of the bowl but not on the inside.

I applied some more glue to the cracks on the outside of the bowl so that I could push briar dust into any spaces or chips in the briar between the pieces.

With the chunk of briar glued in place and the external cracks patched it was time to look at the damage on the inside of the bowl and determine what to do. I know that in the past I have used J.B. Weld and Greg and others have used fireplace cement to repair the inside surfaces of the bowl but I had in mind a different experiment. Both the J.B. Weld and the fireplace cement dry and are neutral after curing. They are both impervious to heat or moisture but I wanted to see if I could use all natural substances and work a repair that would hold up. I knew that only time would tell if it actually worked but I figured that I had nothing to lose with this old pipe. If it did not work it would go back to the scrap yard and come back to life in repairs on other pipes. But if it did work I would have a useable yard pipe that I could smoke while working with little concern of damaging or ruining it in the process. Too me it was worth a try.

The next series of two photos show the inside of the bowl. The cracks and damage to the inside of the bowl was quite extensive. But it was still worth trying a repair.

I fit a stem on the shank from my can of stems with minimal sanding of the tenon for a good fit in the shank. The diameter of the stem would need to be adjusted but that would not be too much of a problem.

The next two photos show the variation in diameter of the shank and the stem.

I use a Dremel and sanding drum to take down the excess material as close to the shank as possible without damaging the shank. I also decided to use the Dremel and sanding drum on the overflow of super glue and briar dust on the outside of the bowl as I planned on sanding the bowl anyway.

Once I had the fit of the stem close and the majority of the glue and briar dust patch smoothed out I took it back to the work table and sanded both the bowl and the stem with 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the scratches in the briar and the vulcanite.

The rim needed to be topped to smooth out the damage to the top and the outer edges. I set up the topping board with 220 grit sandpaper and pressed the bowl flat against the sandpaper. I sanded it in a circular motion until I had removed the damaged rim surface and the damaged out edge.

I forgot to take a photo of the rim at this point but you can see in the photos of the staining that it is sharp and clean on the outer edge. I sanded the briar with a medium and a fine grit sanding sponge to minimize the scratches even more and then heated the bowl before I applied a dark brown aniline stain. I applied the stain, flamed it and repeated the process until I had good even coverage on the bowl.

The dark brown stain was quite opaque so I wiped down the bowl with isopropyl alcohol on cotton pads to remove and thin down the stain coat.

The top of the rim can be seen in the next photo. The damage to the rim top has been minimized and the surface is smooth. There is still some damage on the inner edge but that will be addressed when I do the internal repairs to the bowl walls. I buffed the bowl with Red Tripoli and then wiped it down again with alcohol. The colour was just what I was looking for at this point in the process. It was a rich brown stain that allowed the grain – birdseye and mixed to show through the finish. It also did a decent job covering the repair to the other side of the bowl.

I buffed it again with White Diamond to raise the shine. The stem still needed some fine tuning for a better fit against the shank and some sanding to remove the oxidation and scratches but the pipe was beginning to look good.

I took the next close up photos to show the work that still needed to be done on the rim and the look of the repairs on the right side of the bowl. The bowl surface and rim surface was very smooth but still needed to be sanded with micromesh pads to take out the scratches and polish the briar to a deep shine.

With exterior at a good place to take a break it was time to address the inside of the bowl. I mixed a batch of pipe mud using cigar ash and water. I mixed it to a thicker than usual consistency so that I could press it into the damaged area of the bowl wall. I did not want it runny or soupy but I still wanted it wet enough that the mud was well mixed and would stick. I painted it on the wall in the damaged area with a folded pipe cleaner and pressed it into the cracks with the spoon end of a pipe nail. I also pressed it in with the end of my finger. I repeated the application of the mud until the surface of the wall was smooth and showed no pits or divots. I set the bowl aside to dry over night as I wanted the mud to harden and also wanted to see if it was solidly stuck in the damaged areas.

In the morning, after curing over night I inspected the patch on the inside of the bowl. I used my dental pick to make sure that the patch was well set in the divots in the wall of the bowl and then smooth out the surface with a pen knife.

I let it dry for about four more hours while I did other things and then decided to mix a batch of bowl coating to paint the bowl interior. I mix a batch of bowl coating using sour cream and activated charcoal powder. I use a finely ground powder that comes in capsules.

I take apart the capsules and dump the charcoal powder into the sour cream. I use a dental spatula to mix the charcoal and sour cream into a black paste. I work the paste until all the sour cream and charcoal are combined.

I used the spatula to apply the paste to the walls of the pipe and then smoothed it out using a folded pipe cleaner. The entire bowl is coated with the paste and after smoothing it out with the pipe cleaner looks like a dark grey almost black coating around the sides and bottom of the bowl. I put a pipe cleaner in the airway so that I would not get the paste in the airway when smoothing it out.

I wiped down the top of the rim with a bit of saliva on a cotton pad and then set the bowl aside to let the coating cure. Once the coating cured it would provide a protective layer over the bowl interior and facilitate the buildup of a new cake.

While the bowl coating was drying I worked on the stem. I sanded it with 220 grit sandpaper with a plastic washer between the shank and stem to smooth out the transition between the two. When I had finished sanding the stem with the 220 grit sandpaper I sanded it with a medium and a fine grit sanding sponge.

I wet sanded the stem with 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads to minimize the scratches. I dry sanded the stem with 3200-4000 grit micromesh sanding pads and then buffed the stem with Red Tripoli to further polish the stem. I brought it back to the work table and dry sanded it with 6000-12,000 grit sanding pads. I buffed the stem with Blue Diamond on the wheel and then rubbed it down with Obsidian Oil and let it soak in. I sanded the bowl and shank with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding 1500-2400 grit pads and dry sanding with 3200-12,000 grit pads. I buffed the bowl with Blue Diamond to polish the briar. There are some fine scratches that seem to be around the junction of the shank and stem. I buffed it with Red Tripoli again and with White Diamond and then with Blue Diamond. I polished the stem and bowl with carnauba wax and buffed it to a shine with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below.

The next photos are close up pictures of the repair. They also that the carbon/sour cream bowl coating has dried and is a dark grey colour. The cracks on the exterior are smooth to touch and do not feel like cracks. The repairs to the top of the rim still show as a red coloured spot at the back of the rim. The stain took to the patch a little lighter than the rest of the bowl. It is smooth to the touch but still shows. The internal bowl coating has dried to the touch and gives a nice coat that is cover the repairs on the bowl wall. The carbon bowl coating has small particles of carbon in the finish. These will provide something for the new cake to bind to when it is smoked. All that remains is to let the coating cure for a few days and then load a bowl and smoke it.

rebornpipes

reclaiming old and worn estate pipes

Tag Archives: restaining

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A Bit of an Experiment – Restoring a Broken Bowl on a Hardcastles Jack o’ London Billiard

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