Tag Archives: restemming

Back for a New Stem – Big Ben Nautic 252 Take Two

Restoring and Restemming Mark’s Uncle’s 5th pipe – a Tally Ho 33 Pot

Blog by Steve Laug

I have two more of Mark’s uncle’s pipes left after this one. Both of them are Kaywoodies. I am really enjoying working on these and I think it is because of the known history behind these old pipes. To me one of the fun parts of this hobby is the history or backstory on the pipes. If I can find out about that it gives another dimension to the pipe repair or restoration work. I have finished four of the seven pipes that Mark sent me. The Ropp Cherrywood De Luxe (https://rebornpipes.com/2018/01/17/cleaning-and-restoring-a-ropp-cherrywood-de-luxe-805/), The Doodler (https://rebornpipes.com/2018/01/19/restoring-a-beautiful-the-doodler-bullmoose/), newer three hole stinger Kaywoodie Super Grain Billiard S-L (https://rebornpipes.com/2018/01/21/restoring-marks-uncles-third-pipe-a-kaywoodie-super-grain-s-l-billiard/) and a Savinelli Churchwarden (https://rebornpipes.com/2018/01/22/restoring-marks-uncles-savinelli-churchwarden-aged-briar-2002/) are completed and I have posted them on the blog. As I mentioned in a previous blog I often think about the pipeman who used these pipes as a daily part of his life while I am working on it. Here are some pictures of the pipes.The pipe I am working on now is the fifth pipe down in the above photo and the fifth from the left in the photo below. It is a delicate pot shaped pipe with a major piece missing from the button on the stem.I am including a part of that history to give you a sense of the information that fed the desire to clean up and restore this set of old pipes. Mark wrote…

…My Uncle John, raised in an Appalachian Mountain family (think Hatfield and McCoy), was a large man with an affable personality – although this had limits and he could be quite formidable.

During WWII he left home and enlisted in the US Army where he was assigned to Patton’s 3rd Army as an ambulance driver. After Germany surrendered, he was transported back to the US on a converted ocean liner troop ship (I believe it was the Queen Mary). Upon reaching the US, his unit was immediately sequestered on a troop train for transport to the West Coast to be shipped to the Pacific for the invasion of Japan. About half way across the country (possibly somewhere in Texas), the train stopped and the troops informed that Japan had capitulated – WWII was over.

Before the Korean War began, my uncle re-enlisted in the US Air Force. He as assigned to a Photo Mapping unit as an Aircraft Mechanic. He worked his way up to Crew Chief and served in Photo Mapping until he medically retired in the mid 60’s due to heart problems.

Being part of an Air Force family, I did not get to spend much time with my uncle while growing up. However, I was able to stay a couple of summers with him at his West Palm Beach home while in my teens. On a desk in his Florida Room sat collection of old used pipes in a walnut pipe rack / humidor combo (very similar the Decatur Industries 6 pipe Rack and humidor combination shown in the rebornpipes store). There were a couple of packages of old dried up commercial brand tobacco in the humidor – one was cherry, I think. I never saw my uncle smoke and never discussed the pipes with him, but I was intrigued by the pipe collection. They were old, dirty, and well used – some with chewed through stems. Obviously, the pipes had been smoked by a devoted pipe enthusiast. As a young boy, I loved the smell of pipe tobacco, which you could occasionally smell in public way back then. I started smoking an occasional pipe in college. When my uncle passed away a few years later, I asked for his pipe collection and have stored it away since then. The pipes are just as I received them some thirty years ago.

While I will never know for sure, I believe my uncle purchased the pipes in various PX’s and smoked them while an Air Crew Member. The PX’s would have sold common commercially available pipe brands at a good price, nothing too expensive or exotic – consistent with the pipes in my uncle’s collection. As a Photo Mapping Air Crew Member / Chief my uncle traveled the world extensively, and was stationed at many bases – including “permanent” stations in West Palm Beach, Warner Robins, and Goose Bay Labrador, to name a few. Smoking a pipe would have been a relaxing way to spend a few monotonous hours on the flight line or in the air. After his heart problems, he must have given up pipe smoking and the pipes sat unused thereafter. If the bowls look like they were recently scraped, it would have been over fifty years ago, most likely with a Case hardware store folding knife. If dirty, it is due to sitting for many years in the back room. If well used and chewed it is due to many hours of smoking enjoyment.

I’m looking forward to seeing my Uncle John’s pipes in restored condition. I know they are not “collectors” items, but they bring back priceless memories of my uncle and the times we spent together sharing “war stories”…

With that reminder of the old pipeman, I turned my attention to the fifth of Mark’s uncle’s pipes – a Tally Ho pot shaped pipe. The pipe was stamped on the left side of the shank with the words Tally Ho wrapped with a swirled line almost like ribbon around the words. On the right side of the shank is stamped Made in London England and next to the shank/bowl junction is the shape number 33. The exterior of the pipe was dirty and grimy with a few small dents in the sides of the bowl. The rim top was dirty and had some light buildup on the top edge. The bevel on the inner edge was darkened and dirty. The bowl itself looked recently reamed and was clean. Overall the finish was in good condition but it was dirty and dusty. The stem was oxidized and there was a large chunk of the vulcanite missing on the top end of the stem where it had been chewed through or broken off. I knew that on this one the stem would need to be replaced. I took photos of the pipe before I started restoring it. I took a close up photo of the rim top to show the lack of cake in the bowl and the light buildup on the rim top. It appeared that the pipe may have been reamed or cleaned at some point very recently. The inner and outer edges of the rim were in good condition. There was some darkening and tar on the inner beveled rim. I took some close up photos of the stem to show the size of the missing vulcanite chunk near the button on the top side.I went through my collection of stems and found an estate stem that was very close in length and diameter to the original stem. The button was different to some degree but it would work well. I would need to sand down the tenon to make it fit properly but it would not take too much work to get a decent fit on it.Once the tenon was resized to fit I put the stem in place and sanded the stem diameter with 220 grit sandpaper to fit it to the shank. The new stem was going to look really good once it was polished and the fit perfected.

At this point I took a bit of time to have a look and see what I could find out about the brand. I checked on Pipedia and did not find anything. I went on to look on the Pipephil Logos and Stampings site and there I found what I needed. The brand was listed and linked to Hardcastle Pipes. It was an English made pipe as the stamping clearly showed. It was evidently a sub-brand of the Hardcastle line. http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-t2.html

I took some photos of the stamping on the left, right and underside of the shank. The stamping is quite readable. The Tally Ho stamping in the above photo is identical to the stamping on the left side of the shank. The Made In London over England and the placement of the shape number 33 stamp also is a match. The placement of the Patent number on the underside of the shank is the same and the number Pat. No.227665 is also the same. I am not sure what the patent refers to but my guess would be some inner tube or stinger apparatus designed to remove moisture from the smoke as it is drawn into the mouth. I used a small blade pen knife to scrape out the tars and oils on the inside of the mortise. Once it was removed I cleaned out the mortise and the airway in the shank and the stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners until they came out clean.I used a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to work on the inner bevel of the rim. I removed the tars and oils that had built up in that place. I used 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads to clean up the top of the rim and smooth out the debris that was stuck on top.I used a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to work on the inner bevel of the rim. I removed the tars and oils that had built up in that place. I used 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads to clean up the top of the rim and smooth out the debris that was stuck on top.I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the surface of the briar with my finger tips to deep clean the finish, enliven and protect the wood. I worked the balm into the rim top and inner bevel of the rim to polish the cleaned up area. I let it sit for a few minutes and then buffed it with a cotton cloth. The grain in the wood came alive and there was a rich shine to the briar. I took some photos of the bowl at this point to mark the progress in the restoration. I adjusted the fit of the stem to the shank with a bit more sanding. I put the stem in the shank and sanded with the stem in place to make the transition smooth to touch. Once the transition was smooth I worked it over the stem with micromesh sanding pads. I polished out the sanding scratches and marks in the vulcanite – wet sanding it with 1500-2400 grit pads and dry sanding it with 3200-12000 grit pads and wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each one. When I finished with the 12000 grit pad I gave it a final coat of oil and let it dry. I used micromesh sanding pads (1500-12000 grit) to polish the sanding end of the shank to remove the scratches left behind by the sandpaper. I stained it with a dark brown stain pen to blend it into the colour of the rest of the bowl and shank. Once it dried I rubbed it down with some Conservator’s Wax and buffed it with a soft cloth to polish it. I took the following photos to show the bowl at this time. I put the stem back on the bowl and took the pipe to the buffing wheel to work it over. I buffed the bowl and stem with Blue Diamond to polish them. I gave the bowl and stem multiple coats of carnauba wax. I buffed the entire pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. I hand buffed it with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. The briar really shines and the dark stain looks beautiful. The vulcanite stem came out quite nice with a deep shine. The pipe and new stem look very good. Just two more of the uncle’s pipes to finish up and then these will be heading back to the US. Thanks for looking.

A Refurb and a Replacement Stem for a Lorenzetti Galatea Apple

3 Replies

Blog by Steve Laug

Not long ago I received a phone call from an interesting woman who had been given my phone number by a local pipe and cigar shop. She had a couple of pipes that needed some stem repair. In our conversation it turned out that they belonged to her husband and he had a total of two pipes. Both of them needed work and she was determined to get them repaired for him. In our talking we spoke of the options – either repairing the stem or making a new stem. She spoke with him and they decided to repair them. A few days later her husband stopped by the house to show me the two pipes. We talked and he decided to work on one pipe at a time so that he would have one to smoke while I repaired the other one. I finished the repair on the stem of his Big Ben Nautic 252 bent apple kind of quasi brandy shaped pipe. Here is the link to the stem repair on that pipe. https://rebornpipes.com/2017/12/22/restoring-repairing-a-damaged-stem-on-a-big-ben-nautic-252/ I returned it to him and he dropped off his second pipe for a repair as well. Two days later he called and said he had already chomped through the repair on the one he took with him. Even with a rubber softee bit he had demolished the repair. So we decided on this one to replace the stem.

The second pipe is a Lorenzetti Galatea Bent apple shape. It is stamped on the left side of the shank Lorenzetti over Italy. On the right side it is stamped Galatea. There is no shape number on the bowl or shank. The end of the shank has a decorative ferrule that is silver with two silver rings and a Lucite ring. The original stem also had a silver band between the shank and the rest of the stem. Lots of bling on this Italian beauty. The stem was black acrylic. From the side view photos below the pipe looked pretty good. The finish was dirty but the pipe appeared to be in decent condition. The top view photos show what the bowl and stem looked like from the top and underside views. Like the other pipe the bowl on this one had never been reamed and there was a thick cake that was composed of aromatic tobacco. It was soft and sticky. The lava overflow on the rim top was also sticky to touch. The smell of the pipe was a sickly sweet and sour smell of a pipe that had never seen a pipe cleaner and never had been cleaned. Once again he had gnawed the stem and had broken the top edge and a bit of the stem in front of the button. It was a mess. The underside had deep tooth marks and was also damaged. The poor pipe was a mess but he obviously smoked it as much as he did the first one. Now I had a task – clean and replace the stem on this one so that I could put a new stem on the first one. I had a mission. I took photos of the pipe before I cleaned it up. I took a close up photo of the bowl and rim to show the thickness and composition of the cake and the thick overflow of lava on the rim top. It looked to me that there was some damage to the inner edge and bevel of the rim on the right side of the bowl toward the back. I would know more once I reamed the cake back and could see what was underneath. It was not in nearly the condition of the Big Ben that finished for him early. I also took some photos of the stem damage so that you could see what I was up against. The sad thing to me was that this second pipe had exactly the same damage to the stem and the bowl looked identical as well.I reamed the bowl back to bare briar with a PipNet pipe reamer. I started reaming it with the smallest cutting head and worked my way up to the second cutting head which matched the diameter of the bowl. I touched up the reaming with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe knife.The rim was in rough condition. There was gouging around the inner edge of the bowl cause by a knife and there was some charring in that area as well. The rest of the rim was in rough condition and appeared to have been knocked about a bit. It would need to be topped and reworked.I topped the bowl on a hard board with a piece of 220 grit sandpaper. I was able to remove much of the surface damage to the rim top. The second photo below shows the top of the rim after the topping. You can see the charred area in that photo as well.I used a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to re-bevel the inner edge of the rim and smooth out the damaged areas on the right inner edge. I blended that area into the rest of the beveled rim. Once it was shaped correctly I wiped it down and polished the briar with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-2400 grit pads and dry sanding with 3200-6000 grit pads. I restained the top and inner edge of the rim with a dark brown stain pen. The colour blended well with the rest of the bowl.I had enough of the smell of the pipe permeating the workspace so I decided to rid it of the smell filled my work area. I used pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and alcohol to clean out the interior of mortise and the airway in the shank. I used a dental spatula to scrape the walls of the mortise area. It took a lot of pipe cleaners to remove all of the buildup but once it was clean the pipe smelled better and it would be more pleasant for me to work on.With internals clean I turned my attention to the outside of the briar. I rubbed the bowl and shank down with Before & After Restoration Balm to deep clean the smooth finish, enliven and protect the briar. I hand rubbed it with my fingers and wiped it off with a soft cloth. I buffed the bowl with a soft cotton cloth to polish it. It really began to have a rich shine in the briar. I took some photos of the bowl at this point to mark the progress in the restoration. With the bowl finished I set it aside and went through my can of stems to find one that would work well with the pipe. I had two that could work – one was a vulcanite stem that had promise and looked good on the shank. It was the same length but slightly smaller in diameter than the original stem. The other stem was Lucite/acrylic. It was the same diameter as the previous stem and about 1/8 inch shorter. It also looked good with the pipe. Neither stem had the metal adornment on the end. I had nothing like that in my available stems. I chose the acrylic stem as it as harder than the vulcanite and I believe it will outlast the vulcanite stem with this particular pipe man. The tenon was slightly shorter but the shank was wide open with a deep mortise that was designed for a filter. I figured the length of the tenon did not matter in this case. I bent the stem over a heat gun to match the original stem. I sanded out the nicks and marks on the stem surface. The second and third photos below show the stem after the bend. I continued to sand out the nicks and scratches with 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the stem surface. There were a lot of rough places on the stem and the tenon that needed to be smoothed out and blended into the surface.I polished out the sanding scratches and marks in the acrylic on both sides of the stem and the button surface itself with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding it with 1500-2400 grit pads and dry sanding it with 3200-12000 grit pads. I wiped down the stem after each pad with a damp cloth to remove the sanding dust. I used a series of needle files to open the stem and funnel the airflow. After that I buffed the stem on the buffing wheel with Blue Diamond to polish out the final scratches in the acrylic. I put the stem on the bowl and worked the pipe bowl over on the buffing wheel using Blue Diamond to polish the bowl and stem. I hand buffed the stem to raise the gloss on the stem and polished the metal stem adornment with a silver polishing cloth. I gave the bowl and stem multiple coats of carnauba wax and buffed it with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. I buffed the entire pipe with a clean microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. The medium brown stains on the smooth finish of the apple shaped bowl works well with the rich black of the Lucite stem. The new stem and the polishing revealed a beautiful piece of briar and a well-shaped pipe. Thanks for looking.

A Few Firsts on a GBD Garland II Calabash 9552

6 Replies

Blog by Aaron Henson

Before you get into this write up, I need to confess that despite my best efforts, I did a poor job of photo documenting this repair and restoration. I had good intentions, but the project was spread out over two months, working on it as I had time. Because of this, some of the pictures were taken out of sequence and others were chosen that best show a repair but also show repairs that have not yet been covered in the write up.

I realized a while back, that I had not restored a pipe recently that I was really excited about. There have been a number pipes that have crossed my work table and some have even posed some new challenges but the pipes themselves were hardly memorable. With the pickings at the second hand store in my area being slim – I turned to eBay to see if I could find a project pipe that would peak my interest. After a few hours of browsing I, found just what I was after: a stemless, GBD Garland II stummel – shape 9552. I submitted my bid and picked it up for a price that I thought was reasonable.

I don’t typically like to buy pipes on eBay. I prefer to be able to see them first hand so I know what I am getting myself into. But in this case the seller was forthcoming in the auction description, revealing that the pipe had a major crack in the bowl and another in the shank and of course, it lacked a stem. But what really fascinated me was the shape of the stummel and what promised to be some beautiful grain patterns.

The following pictures were from the seller auction page: Wanting an idea of what kind of stem was originally on the pipe, I headed on-line to see what I could find. My first stop was here at Reborn Pipes. In a 2016 article, our host, Steve, restored a GBD Colossus Fantasy 9552. I found additional examples of the 9552 shape in the GBD’s Prehistoric, Prestige and Virgin lines. In all cases the 9552 originally came with a bent saddle bit – some fancier than others.

These next two pictures are of a Garland II I found online. I was not going to try to duplicate the band in the stem, but knew I was going to need a band on the shank and that wouldn’t look too bad. Then I ended up at a Pipedia article for GBD Models where I learned that the Garland is a seconds line from GBD. I found this surprising because the Garland that I have and the ones I have seen online are excellent specimens of briar. Admittedly, my eye is not that experienced, but just from the quality of the briar and the lack of fills and pitting I would guess that the Garland line is GBD’s higher end seconds consisting more of fabrication errors rather than materials flaws. Can anyone confirm my guess?

Another interesting fact that I note is that the 9552 shape is often stamped with “Colossus”. The term Colossus was used by GBD as plus sized pipe designation. This size designation is used on all the GBD lines of pipes, but is lacking on this particular Garland II stummel. When the stummel arrived, I eagerly open the package and began to inspect the damage up close, fearing that some of the worst damage may not have been disclosed. But the seller’s pictures and description were accurate and I didn’t find hidden issues. The pipe was indeed big; the bowl height is 2.4 inches and the outside diameter is 1.75 inches. The chamber is 0.96 of an inch in diameter and 1.9 inches deep.

The left side of the shank is stamped GBD in an oval over Garland II. The left side has the COM (Country of Manufacture) stamp: MADE IN LONDON in a circle over ENGLAND and the shape number to the right: 9552. There was a heavy amount of the lava on the rim and the bevel at the edge of the chamber was a little distorted. The chamber too seemed to be drilled a little off center. Perhaps this was the why it was a second? The chamber had been reamed but not back to briar. The horizontal crack in the bowl was located on the left side and was a little over an inch long. I suspected that it went all the way through bowl wall but I could not be certain until I finished reaming the chamber. The crack in the stem was about half an inch long from the end of the shank right through the COM stamp but missing the shape number. Looking the pipe over closely, I noted quite a few dents in the heel of the stummel and handling scratches on the sides of bowl and the rim. I guessed that this piece of briar had been rattling around in a drawer for some time.Now that I had the stummel in hand I could measure the shank diameter (.610” at the end) and estimate the length that I wanted the new stem to be; about 3-1/4 inches. I took these measurements to the Vermont Freehand website and selected a stem that best fit. I chose the vulcanite stem blank number 722, a round saddle bit 21/32” diameter and 3-1/16” inches long. I always order two in case I ruin the first one. I also ordered four nickel plated shank rings, two 15.5 mm and two 16 mm not being sure which would be the better fit. With the parts on order, I started cleaning up the interior of the stummel. I reamed the chamber back to bare wood with my Castleford reamer and Decatur pipe knife. I also cleaned the shank alternating with bristled and soft pipe cleaners dipped in 91% isopropyl alcohol. The last person who tried reaming the chamber must have also ran a pipe cleaner or two through it because it only took five or six pipe cleaners before they started coming out as clean as they went in. The mortise I cleaned with cotton swabs. In all, the stummel was relatively clean. I wiped down the outside of the stummel with alcohol and acetone to remove the grime. Underneath the dirt and oils was some beautiful straight grain with a birds-eye heel. I looked closely and could not find any fills. Next, I addressed the thin crust of dried tars on the rim. I wetted down a green pad (mine was actually blue and did not work as well as the original green ones) with a mixture of tap water and granulated Oxy-clean. Placing the pad in a shallow dish, I pressed the rim of the pipe down on the pad and scrubbed in a circular motion. A little elbow grease and the moist Oxy-clean solution did its job. I dried the stummel with a paper towel and set it aside to dry for a bit.Next, I wanted to remove the ghosts of the previous tobacco that I could still smell in the chamber with an alcohol soak. I use the cotton ball method because it seems to do the job and is easier to clean up than the salt method. This chamber needed three cotton balls and I used 98% grain alcohol for the soak. I placed a cap over the top of the bowl for the first couple of hours to keep the alcohol from evaporating too fast then I removed the cap so the evaporative action can draw out the tars from the briar.When I got back to it the next day I was disappointed (though not surprised) that the crack in the bowl was wet where alcohol had been seeping through. At lease now I knew for sure that the crack went all the way through the bowl wall. The good news was I could easily see the ends of the hairline crack. I used a dental pick to mark the ends so I could find them later, then I removed the cotton balls and wiped out the chamber with a dry paper towel. I began the crack repair by using a small drill bit (0.5 mm) and hand drilled the stopper holes at the location I marked with the dental pick. Since the crack went completely trough the chamber wall I also drilled the hole all the way through the wall. I have not dealt with a crack that was this deep before so I was on unfamiliar ground. I packed the hole the half full with briar dust using a tooth pick then placed a drop of clear CA glue into the hole – coaxing it in with the tooth pick. I filled the holes up the rest of the way and dripped more glue. I used a magnifying glass to locate the end of the shank crack and gave it the same treatment.

I unsuccessfully tried working some CA glue into the bowl crack. The glue just seemed to set too fast and did not penetrate the crack. The shank crack on the other hand I could work open and get the glue to flow into it. I put a clamp on the shank while the glue set. Then when dry, I sanded the glued repairs smooth with 220 grit paper, careful not to over sand and change the shape of the pipe or damage the stamping on the shank. I resolved to repair the bowl crack by applying coat of heat resistant epoxy to the inside of the chamber. In this case I used the two part JB Weld – not the Quick Weld, which is useful for other pipe repairs. For pipe chamber repairs, I like the original JB Weld epoxy, it is easy to use and when cured it has a 550 degree (F) heat resistance. It is also easy to sand smooth. I apply it with my finger because it is much easier to get an even coat. I highly recommend wearing a pair of powder free Nitrile blue gloves for this operation! By this time the parts from Vermont Freehand arrived and wanted to band the shank. I have fixed a few banded pipes before but never put a band on an unbanded pipe. I tried dry fitting the two different sized bands I had bought. The smaller band would only just slip on the first fraction of an inch so I was glad I had ordered the next size up. The bands were a bit wider than I wanted because I did not want it to cover up too much of the stamping. Not sure what to do about the band width, I kept focusing on the seating of the band. I used a heat gun to heat up the band and get it to expand. Then with the band resting on a wood block, I pressed the shank down into the ring. The first attempt didn’t go well. The band was a bit cocked and only seated about a quarter of an inch. I realized that the shank’s taper was going to prevent the band from going on much farther and that was going to resolve the width issue; I was going to have to trim the band.

I removed the band and heated it up again. I smeared a little CA glue around the end of the shank and was able to seat the band squarely. This time about 3/8” onto the shank. Once cool, I used a skinny wheel on a rotary tool to trim of the excess band material and flush it up to the end of the shank. Although the band covered up the COM stamp and ‘AND II’ of ‘GARLAND II’ it was necessary and it gives the stummel a touch of class. I was pleased that the replacement stem I had chosen seemed to be a good fit although it was going to need some work. I started by using a fine tooth file to square up the face of the stem so it sits flush to the shank and removing the casting burrs.The tenon on the blank was way oversized as was the body of the stem. I don’t have a tenon turning tool, so I use my drill press to turn the stem. Wedging a bamboo skewer into the air hole at the tenon end, I leave about an inch of skewer exposed that I can secure into the chuck of the drill. Setting the drill to about 1300 RPM I use small pieces of 60 grit sand paper to slowly reduce the diameter of the tenon and the stem until it the correct size. The drill press method works well in theory. Once in a while the stem slips loose from its friction fit with the skewer and I have to reseat it. I work the vulcanite with 60, 120 and 220 grit sand paper, leaving the polishing to be done by hand with micromesh pads.

I kept a caliper nearby set at the correct tenon diameter to check my progress. As I got closer to the correct size, I switched to 120 and 220 grit paper. But I didn’t switch soon enough! By the time I got some of the deep scratches of the 60 grit out I had overturned the tenon and it was a hair too small. I finished turning the body of the stem before addressing the tenon issue.I thought at first that a little bee’s wax on the tenon would be enough to tighten the fit but in the end I had enlarge the tenon. To do this, I heated the tenon and inserted a drill bit into the air hole to enlarge the tenon. Letting the tenon cool with the bit in it I checked the fit: A little too big. I didn’t want to take anymore material off the tenon because if the tenon gets hot during a smoke it will return to its original size, vulcanite has a memory. I looked around my tool box and found a small punch that had a slightly smaller diameter than the drill bit and repeated the heating process. This time the fit was much better.

With the stem fitted it was time to bend the stem. I have jig for holding round stock and I used this to hold the assembled pipe steady with the bit resting on a 1-1/4” round dowel. Using my heat gun, I heated the bit until it draped over the dowel. I dipped the bent stem in water to cool the vulcanite and set the shape. Then I checked the angle of the bend and had to repeat the process a couple of times until I had what I thought was the original stem shape just right.Stem polishing started with 220 grit to remove the remainder of the casting burrs. Then I wet sand with micromesh pads 1500 – 4000.I removed the plastic guard after the 2400 pad. I used the 3200 and higher micromesh pads to also polish the band.After the 4000 pad I coated the stem with mineral oil and let it sit for a few hours. Then I finish polishing with pads 6000 to 12000. I started finishing the stummel by giving it a steam treatment to raise the dents and handling damage. Holding a wet terry cloth rag on the briar I press a hot iron on to it. This method works very well but I have two points of caution: 1) don’t burn your fingers in the steam; and 2) do not press the iron near the stamping, it will ruin stamping very quickly. I only apply the iron around the bowl body and the heel where the dents are the worst anyway.

I sanded the stummel with micromesh pads 1500 through 3200, with special attention paid to the rim to make sure it was smooth. I selected Fiebing’s dark brown aniline dye to better hide the repairs and applied the stain, without dilution, using a cotton swab straight from the bottle. I used a flame to heat and set the stain. I wiped down the stummel with isopropyl alcohol on a cotton pad to remove the excess stain. I kept wiping it down until the level of color was what I thought it should be. After staining the stummel I like to refresh the briar with a light coat of mineral oil and let the oil soak in overnight. All of the alcohol in the stain and the wiping down tends to dry out the stummel and I find the mineral oil helps to bring some of the life back to the briar. It also seems to give the finished pipe a healthy look.After the oil soaked in, I polished the briar with the 3200 – 6000 micromesh pads. Wiping it down with a clean cloth when finished.I took the assembled pipe back to my drill press/buffing station and ran over the entire pipe with red diamond polishing compound. Two or three passes of the pipe seems to prepare the pipe well for the final finish. I wiped the pipe down with a microfiber cloth to remove the buffing compound and then changed the buffing wheel for the waxing wheel. Three coats of carnauba wax put a nice shine on the pipe.

The last step in this restoration was the bowl coat. I had earlier sanded the epoxy chamber repair and wiped out the bowl with alcohol so the inside was relatively smooth. I mixed up a small batch of bowl coat using 2 teaspoons of sour cream and about three activated charcoal capsules. This made a thick, black, creamy paste that I spooned into the chamber with a wood spatula made from a popsicle stick. Donning the Nitrile gloves again, I used my finger to evenly spread the coating around the inside of the chamber. Wiping the excess coating off the rim with a cotton pad I set the pipe aside to dry for a few days.

Now am I looking forward to the weather warming up so I can break in this pipe. I think it might become one in my regular rotation. Thank you for sharing in my adventure. If you like the tamper in the picture above, it is one that I made and is for sale. Please see the Reborn Pipes Store page for it and other tampers. All proceeds go to charity.

Repairing a Broken Tenon on a Birks Savinelli “Lollo”

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Blog by Steve Laug

I received a call from a local pipeman who said he had broken the stem off of his favourite pocket pipe. He had been given my name by a local pipe shop. He stopped by and dropped off a small bag with the parts of his pipe in it. He had dropped the pipe down the stairs and it had bounced down to the bottom in two pieces. He was able to remove the broken tenon but the damage was done. The pipe was stamped Birks and next to that it was stamped “Lollo” over Savinelli over Italy. The pipe was actually in really good shape. The bowl was clean and the briar had some nice grain all around the sides, top and bottom. The rim was clean and there was a very light cake inside. The broken tenon had a stinger in the tenon that he wanted to preserve. The stem was oxidized and showed some tooth chatter on both sides near the button. I told him I would have a look at the pipe and decide whether to replace the tenon or the stem. He was fine either way as long as the pipe was the same when he picked it up. I put the parts of the pipe on my work table and took photos of the pipe before I started working on it. I went through my box of tenons and found one that was the proper size for the mortise. I use threaded replacement tenons on stems like this. I used a Dremel and sanding drum to smooth out the rough edges of the broken tenon left on the stem. I used a sharp knife to bevel the edge of the airway in the end of the stem. Beveling it keeps the drill bit centred when I drill out the airway for the threaded end of the tenon.I chucked a drill bit the same diameter as the threaded end of the replacement tenon. The photo below shows the tenon on the end of the drill bit. I lined it up before drilling it so that the stem was straight and the airway would not be curved. I drilled the airway to the same depth as the threaded end of the tenon. Once the airway was straight I used tap to cut threads in the airway in the stem so that I could turn the new tenon in place. I put a drop of glue on the threads of the tenon and quickly turned it into the stem until it sat flush against the face of the stem. I pushed the stinger into the tenon end and aligned it so that the slot in it was facing the top of the stem. I checked the alignment on the new tenon and all was straight and ready.The oxidation on the stem really showed up under the bright light of the flash. I polished the vulcanite stem with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding it with 1500-2400 grit pads and dry sanding it with 3200-4000 grit pads. I wiped the stem down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. I buffed the stem with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel. I brought it back to the table and sanded it with the final three 6000-12000 grit pads. After the final pad I gave it a final coat of oil and set it aside to dry. I put the stem back on the bowl and gently worked the pipe over on the buffing wheel using Blue Diamond to polish the bowl and shank. I used a gentle touch on the pipe when I was buffing to polish the bowl. I buffed the stem with a harder touch to raise the gloss on the rubber. I gave the bowl and stem multiple coats of carnauba wax. I buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. I hand buffed it with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. It looks better than it did in the beginning. It is the first little Savinelli “Lollo” I have worked on. It is well made and a beautiful piece of briar. The dimensions of the pipe are: Length: 4 inches, Height: 1 1/2 inches, Diameter of the bowl: 1 1/4 inches, Diameter of the bowl: 3/4 inches. I will be calling the pipeman who dropped it off for repair. I think he will enjoy his pipe!

Restemming a A Unique Randy Wiley Freehand 99

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Blog by Steve Laug

Earlier this week I received a call from a fellow who had been referred to me by a local pipe and cigar shop. He had a pipe that he had broken the stem on and wanted to know if I would replace the stem for him. He was visiting Vancouver and thought he could get a stem while he was here. I told him to drop it by my office and I would have a look and see what I could do with it. I was not clear at this point if the stem had broken at the tenon or somewhere else. I also wondered if the tenon was still in the shank. I wanted to see for myself before I committed to repairing it. He brought it by the office and he showed it to me and I was hooked. It was a beautiful Randy Wiley Pipe stamped Wiley over an R. Wiley signature. Under that it was stamped Handmade USA over 99. Andy C. posted a comment below that the number 99 is a grade number and that this is one of Randy’s higher grade pipes. Thanks Andy for the information. He told me that pipe was a gift from a partner and he really wanted it repaired. The briar was beautiful grained on the smooth part and faded into a swirled and dotted rustication pattern. The rim top was plateau briar and had been left natural. There was a shank extension that was marbled green, golds, yellows and blacks and really worked well with the patterns on the briar. I looked down the shank of the pipe and could see a lot of debris that was built up in the mortise and airway. It appeared to be tars and pieces of debris from the broken stem. The bowl still had some remnants of tobacco inside. It had a rich tobacco smell that was intriguing. I asked him what tobacco he smoked and he said that he primarily smoked a dark natural tobacco from the Amazon called Mapacho.

I knew nothing of Mapacho so I looked it up on the internet. I found that Mapacho was Nicotiana rustica and is a rainforest plant in the Solanaceae family. It is a very potent variety of tobacco. It contains up to nine times more nicotine than common species of Nicotiana such as Nicotiana tabacum (common tobacco). I have included a picture because it is an intriguing looking tobacco.I asked him if he wanted me to clean up the bowl, ream and polish the pipe while I made a stem. He did not think it was necessary as it did not have a thick cake and he had taken good care of it. So I brought it home to fit a new stem. I checked out the inside of the mortise and shank with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and alcohol to make sure that I could get a snug fit with the new stem. I pushed a pipe cleaner through the airway and cleaned out the debris. I waxed the bowl with Conservator’s Wax and buffed it with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. I took pictures of the polished pipe. It really is a beauty and the contrast of finishes with the marbled shank extension of the really work well together. The next photo shows the stamping on the underside of the shank. The stamping is very clear and readable.With the bowl finished I used a preformed stem that I had in my stem can that I thought would work well with the style of this pipe. It was in excellent condition – unused and undamaged. It had slight oxidation that would be quite easy to deal with on the buffer. I turned the stem end on my PIMO tenon turning tool to reduce the end to fit in the shank. I cut it back to slightly larger than I needed and then sanded and filed it by hand until it fit in the mortise.I funneled the end of the tenon to facilitate the flow of air from the bowl to the end of the button. I used a sharp pen knife to shape the funnel and sanded the inside to remove all sharp edges.I sanded the stem surfaces with 220 grit sandpaper to remove the light oxidation and scratches on both sides of the stem. I sanded the end of the button and the sides of the stem to remove the casting marks on the stem. I worked on it until it was black and there was no remnant of oxidation or the casting marks left on it. I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding it with 1500-2400 grit pads and buffed it with red Tripoli to remove the oxidation that showed up in the first photo below. I dry sanded it with 3200-12000 grit pads. I rubbed the stem down with Obsidian Oil after each pad to give traction to the next pad and also bring a little life to the vulcanite stem. After the final pad I gave it a last coat of the oil and set it aside to dry. I buffed the stem with Blue Diamond and gave it multiple coats of carnauba wax. I buffed it with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. The next series of photos show the development of the shine on the rubber stem. I gave the pipe multiple coats of carnauba wax and buffed it with a clean buffing pad to raise a shine. I hand buffed it with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The new black stem of polished vulcanite and the polished briar work well together to present a beautiful pipe. The pipe looks fresh and new. Tomorrow it will go out in the afternoon post to its original owner. I think he will enjoy the look and feel of his new stem. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. Thanks for walking with me through this restemming job and through a bit of education for me on Mapacho tobacco. Thanks for looking.

Replacing a Stem on a Stanwell Antique 156 Bulldog

A Humpty Dumpty Cross Canada Project – Could this Poor Richards Select Square Shank Billiard 9489 ever be whole again?

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Blog by Steve Laug and Charles Lemon

My brother sent me a box of pipes and bowls that he had picked up. In it was an old square shank billiard that had seen far better days. The bowl sported a thick cake and was cracked 2/3rds of the way down the bowl on the front and another crack on the back of the bowl that went across the bowl to the left side. The finish was rough but there was some nice grain. Its stem was chewed up and was broken and smelly. I threw the unredeemable stem away. The bowl went into the parts box to be cannibalized for repairs. It was interesting that the pipe was stamped Poor Richard’s over Select over Bozeman, Montana on the left side of the shank. I grew up in Idaho and spent a lot of time in my early years in Bozeman. My youngest brother went to school there and my second brother was married there. Lots of family ties. It was stamped London England over 9489 on the right side. The 9489 stamp told me that it was a GBD product. Something about it intrigued me. I wondered if it might not be a candidate for a second collaboration with Charles Lemon of Dadspipes. It would be another test to our theory that just about any pipe can be restored and reused. I wrote to him and sent him some photos to see if he was game for taking it on. This project would provide some unique challenges to us both or it may end up as kindling. I took a photo of the bowl from the top looking into it. The cake is unbelievable even to me with all the pipes I have worked on. This stuff was as hard as concrete and seemed impervious to the reamers in my kit. No wonder the bowl was cracked on the front and the back sides. I dropped the bowl in an alcohol bath to soak and while it soaked I decided to see what I could find out about the connection of the pipe to Bozeman. I did a Google search for Poor Richard’s and found that the pipe shop is still open. It is located in downtown Bozeman. I read through their website and gleaned the following photo and history. http://poorrichardsbozeman.com/about-poor-richards/From its beginnings in 1962 as the Ellen News at 17 West Main Street, owners Dick Wike and Hal McDowell wanted to achieve a modern-looking newsstand in the building which had formerly been home to Cuttings Newsstand, Lawton’s News and the Stag Pipe Shop. After the partnership dissolved the following year, Wike went on to expand the line of pipes and tobaccos offered, as well as the variety of paperback books, magazines and newspapers offered. A theatre expansion project in 1968 necessitated a move a few doors down, and a name change in the process. On September 9, 1968, Poor Richard’s opened at its current location at 33 West Main Street. Successive owners Richard Fish, sisters Nicole and Glenn Close, Sarah and Dan Cole, and Kate Wiggins added their personal stamp to the offerings.

Today, Poor Richard’s offers its customers a wide variety of merchandise:
• Local Montana and regional books, including Falcon Guides
• Local, regional and national newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal and the Sunday New York Times
• Over 500 magazines and periodicals
• A large selection of fine cigars, including Padron, Arturo Fuente, Partagas, Macanudo, Punch, Romeo y Julieta, Oliva, and more…
• Pipes, including Peterson, Savinelli, Federico Rovera and more…
• Fine tobaccos and accessories

Knowing the background to a pipe is always interesting to me and adds another dimension to the restoration. It was time to stop reading however, and address the issues of the cake and a new stem. I soaked the bowl in an alcohol bath for over three days hoping to soften it. It did not work. It was impervious to the cutting blades on the PipNet and the KleenReem reamers. They would not even dent the hard carbon. I chipped at it with a pen knife and was able to clean off the rim and scrape a bit of the cake around the bowl edge. I tried the reamer again with no success. Knowing that Charles would work on the bowl and that was the hardest part, I did not want to send him the bowl with the cake intact. I put the sanding drum on the Dremel and attacked the bowl. It was slow going but after working at it for over 30 minutes I was able to get about half way down the bowl. I used a sharp knife to open the bottom half of the bowl more and then the Dremel once more to take it to the bottom. I have never fought a cake this hard before. I wrapped the cutting head on the PipNet reamer with sandpaper and worked on the inside of the bowl. I used a folded piece of sandpaper to clean up the inner edge of the bowl. There is still a lot to be done but at least Charles has a bit of a “clean” slate to begin with. You can see the crack from the top of the bowl on both the front and the back. The one on the front goes down over half way on the front side. The one on the back descends half way down and turns toward the left for about a half an inch.With the bowl cleaned I want to rough fit the stem before I sent it to Charles. I turned the tenon and made a snug fit of the square shank replacement stem. Fitting a new stem to these old timers is always a pain because none of the angles are actually square and the sides are of different sizes. Thus the stem has to be custom fit. I used the Dremel and sanding drum to take down a lot of the excess vulcanite and then followed up with a flat file to make the transition from the shank to the stem smooth and even.Once the fit was close I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper to bring the angles in line with the shank and to smooth out the file marks. It took a lot of sanding and it is still not finished at this point. I would finish sanding and fitting it after Charles had repaired the bowl. The bowl and shank had a white scum on the briar and in the stamping. It was hard to remove. I lightly sanded it and then scrubbed the bowl down with acetone on cotton pads to remove it and the remaining finish on the bowl. The pipe has some nice grain and once it cleaned up and repaired it will be interesting to see. With the bowl cleaned up I was ready to send the reamed and cleaned stummel to Charles for the bowl repair work on the pipe this time. Once Charles had it in hand he would carry on with the repairs….

Time passed slowly for me as the pipe travelled from British Columbia to Ontario. Charles sent me a message on Skype saying that the pipe had arrived and he was ready to start the work on it. I turn over this part of the narrative to him.

(Charles picks up the narrative now.)

The cracked stummel arrived from Steve today. I was keen to get my first close-up look at it – Steve had sent me pictures of course, but nothing beats a hands-on examination. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of clean-up work Steve had already done. I knew he had reamed it (at great effort), but he’d also done a nice job removing the dirt and grime on the outside of the bowl. Apart from a small amount of rim tar, I could concentrate immediately on the major issue of the crack repairs. I shot these pics to show the state of the stummel when I received it. There were two major cracked areas at the front and back of the bowl. Both cut all the way through the chamber walls, all but slicing the bowl in half lengthwise. The front crack looked like a clean break running from the rim down the face of the bowl to the bottom of the tobacco chamber. The rear crack wasn’t as straightforward. Instead of a single linear crack, the damage at the rear started at the rim, dropped down to roughly the centre of the bowl, and took a sharp left as it sought out an old fill – a natural weak spot in the briar. From the fill the crack had “spidered”, with thinner cracks running up, down and across the bowl. Yikes! Its times like this that I marvel at the sheer power of neglected cake to inexorably break a pipe bowl into pieces. Pipers take heed – ream your bowls!

I’ve worked on cracked bowls before, but the majority that have come across my work table have been tight cracks that don’t penetrate the chamber walls. These cracks, by contrast, could be visibly moved by squeezing and releasing the bowl in my hand. Without some way to lock the briar in position, this bowl would have to be retired.

While I worked on a plan to knit Humpty Dumpty back together again, I took steps to ensure that the existing spider cracks did not run further into the briar. I fitted a micro drill bit to my electric hand drill and popped a tiny hole at the end of each fissure in the wood, careful not to drill through to the tobacco chamber. These “end cap” holes would stop the cracks in their tracks, though there were quite a few of them around the back of the bowl. Glue alone would not provide sufficient holding power to keep the cracks tight and immobile. I would need to add physical reinforcement of some kind to ensure that the bowl stayed in one piece after being placed back in service. I had never used the procedure before, but I decided that I’d have to try to pin the cracks. I dug about in my supplies and found a length of 1.2mm brass rod I thought would do the trick, and matched it up to a micro drill bit from my tool kit. I would have to drill pin shafts across the crack, through the curved walls of the bowl, without drilling into the chamber. I muttered a short prayer to the Pipe Gods, and then sank the first shaft just below the rim across the rear crack.

This close-up pic shows the flat angle at which I drilled, and the brass rod in position. I marked the rod length and then cut it a bit shorter so that when fully seated in the shaft, the outer end of the rod would be below the outer surface of the briar. I roughed up the brass pin with 220-grit sandpaper to give the glue more gripping surface, and then ran a drop of CA glue into the shaft before pushing the pin home.Sharp-eyed readers will also have noticed that the second shaft had been drilled when I took the pic above. Note the angle of this shaft relative to the first one – it’s not even close to parallel. This is deliberate. Each pin was drilled at an opposing angle to its neighbours. This way any movement of the briar as it heats and cools will be blocked by one or more pins. If the pins were parallel, pressure in the wrong direction could push the crack open again.

In all I installed ten brass pins – four in front and six in back – and sank seven end cap holes (all but one of these in the back). I had expected the pinning to be both nerve wracking and time consuming, but after the first couple of pins I caught my stride and set the stummel aside to let the glue cure a short 30 minutes later. The Pipe Gods must have approved of the work as I didn’t drill through the chamber wall once. Whew! I snapped these pictures of the bowl after the pinning. The red lines show the direction of the pin shafts. You can see how the pins work to stitch the crack shut. The front repair doesn’t look too bad, but the rear of the bowl looks like it was attacked by termites! The proof of any repair is in the pudding, so to speak. I won’t be on hand to witness the first firing of this pipe after the work is done, but I can happily report that I can no longer make the cracks move no matter how hard I squeeze the bowl. That’s a very good sign, as it shows that the bowl is acting as a single piece of briar instead of several bits of loosely connected wood.

With the bowl structurally sound again, it was time to sort out the damage inflicted on the stummel by some maniac with a drill. I patched over all 17 (!!) holes with CA and briar dust and let the CA cure before filing and sanding the fills flush with the surface of the briar. This is a process I’ve done many times on many different pipes, so I figured this would be the easy part of the repair. Ironically, the fills took up more of my time, energy and patience than the pinning as I had to revisit several of the fills more than once to ensure a smooth finish. I also realized that a few of the pins were left slightly too long – the brass kept shining through two of the fills – which necessitated extra work to get everything in order before staining. Eventually, though, perseverance paid off. I topped the bowl gently at this point to remove the excess CA glue and remove a few tiny dings. I then prepped the stummel for stain by sanding with 1500 – 2400 grit Micromesh sanding pads. With the crazy number of fills in the briar, I knew I’d have to go with a darker finish than I’d usually select. I started with a coat of Fiebing’s Black water-based leather dye to bring out the grain as much as I could. I let the colour dry and then wiped off the excess with 0000 steel wool and a bit of fresh water. This left the grain stained black while the rest of the wood remained lighter. I then made a wash of Fiebing’s Dark Brown dye diluted about 50%. I washed the colour over the briar repeatedly until I got close to the amount of coverage I was looking for. I let the dye dry so I could assess how well the fills were hidden. Still fairly prominent. A few scribbles with a medium stain marker helped push the fills to the background without obliterating the grain altogether.I left the stummel overnight at this point. I wasn’t sure that I was done with the stain, but I was getting tired and didn’t want to mess up the work with a bad decision or a shaky hand. The next morning, however, the stain seemed to have settled into its intended depth and coverage. The fills were reasonably subdued by the stain, so I took the stummel to the bench and gave it a light buffing with White Diamond compound followed by Carnauba wax. I’ve got to buy a lotto ticket this week – if the Lotto Gods smile on me even half as much as the Pipe Gods did here, I’ll be retiring early. The fills and cracks have disappeared almost completely, though the stain is translucent enough to allow the grain to shine through. Even the cracks across the rim are hard to find. What a relief after the hours of filling and sanding! The repairs are still visible under strong light, but the stummel certainly passes the casual inspection test. Before sending the stummel back to Steve, I filled and further stabilized the repair from the interior of the bowl by pressing JB Weld into the cracks. There was also a spot on the front chamber wall that looked suspiciously like the beginnings of a burnout that I filled in the same way. I let the JB cure and then sanded out the excess epoxy. This produced nice smooth chamber walls with JB Weld left only in the repaired areas. JB doesn’t “breathe” like wood as it heats and cools, so I wanted only the required amount of it left in the bowl. I finished off the repair with a bowl coating of activated charcoal powder and maple syrup. This coating is largely cosmetic in this case, used to hide the JB, but it will provide an extra layer of protection for the repairs as well as a consistent surface upon which to build a new (and hopefully well-trimmed) layer of cake. (Steve picks up the narrative again.)

Charles had sent the package Express Post and it did not take long to get it back. When I got home from a short business trip I went to the post office to pick it up. I carried the box home excited to see what Charles had done with the mess that I had sent him. It is one thing to see the photos and follow the process but truly a different story when you hold it in hand.

When I opened the box I was not prepared for the beautifully restored bowl that was carefully wrapped inside. Charles had done a masterful job on the bowl repair. The cracks were virtually invisible. The measles of the end caps were basically small specks and hardly visible at all. It was amazing! Charles had accomplished a bit of a miracle in my book. This one was a pipe I wondered if we would be burning rather than loading up. But the bowl was perfect.

Now it was back in my hands to finish the stem that I had previously roughly fit to the shank before sending the bowl off to him. I also needed to address the small dent that went all around the end of the shank. It looked like there had been a band of some sort on the shank for adornment as the shank was the one thing on the pipe that was not cracked. I would have to address that later in the process.

First I worked on the stem. I sanded it with 220 grit sandpaper to bring the surface of each side of the square stem to the same height as the shank. The fit was good and once the band was in place would look even. I wet sanded the stem with 1500-2400 grit micromesh sanding pads and rubbed the stem down with Obsidian Oil. I dry sanded with 3200-4000 grit pads and then gave it another coat of oil. I finished sanding it with 6000-12000 grit pads and gave it a final coat of Obsidian Oil. I let the oil dry. I buffed the stem with Blue Diamond on the wheel and then inserted it in the shank. Things lined up nicely but there was an indentation around the top, bottom and sides of the shank where it appeared there had been a band of some sort. The photo below shows the worst of the indentations.I went through my box of bands which are almost all round. That is not a problem as it is easy to square up a round band. But as Charles said above, the Pipe Gods were smiling on me and I found that I had one square band and it was exactly the size and depth I needed to fit the shank, cover the indentations and cover the stamping on the sides. I pressed the band in place. The band is worn and battered but it adds a bit of flair to the pipe. To clean up the dents and wear on the band I used a tiny upholstery hammer to tap out many of the dents and wrinkles on it. I also used it to flatten the end of the shank and smooth it out. I heated the band with a lighter to warm the metal and then tapped it until it was as smooth as I could get it. The photos below show the pipe at this point in the process. The new stem fits well and the band sets of the pipe very nicely in my opinion. It smooths out the transition between the shank and the stem. However, I was not happy with the still battered appearance and some of the rounded edges on the corners of the band. I took the band off the shank and used a flat blade screw driver to square up the angles and to flatten the band from the inside. I was able to remove more of the dents and wrinkles. I put some all purpose glue on the shank and pressed the band back in place. I took the following photos. Thanks for looking. Charles, this was a fun project to work on together. I look forward to firing up this old timer. The proof is indeed in the pudding as you said above. That will be the real test of the new life of this pipe repair. I am also thinking of contacting the Poor Richard’s Pipe Shop in Bozeman, Montana with a bit of a story of the resurrection of this pipe and its cross Canada journey from Vancouver to Kitchener and back again. Let’s keep our eyes open for another joint project… there still may be another pipe out there that stymies us… until then keep up the good work my friend. IT is always a pleasure to work together. I think you said it best in one of our back and forth interchanges – if we lived closer together we would be in trouble. Take care.

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

7 Replies

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.

Trash to Treasure – Restoring a KBB Yello-Bole Billiard

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Blog by Aaron Henson

Last evening I received an email from Aaron to which he attached this writeup on his restemming of an older KBB Yello-Bole. It is great to have the various readers of the blog submit articles to the blog to share with others. The dream of rebornpipes when I started it was just that – to provide a platform where those of us engaged in refurbishing tobacco pipes could share our methods, successes and failures. This community would provide ongoing education for anyone who wanted to try their hand at restoring estate pipes. With that background here is Aaron’s restoration and the explanation of his process. Welcome to rebornpipes Aaron.

By way of introduction, let me begin by saying that I am relatively new to pipe restoration. This write up details my third restoration and I thought I would submit it for two reasons; 1) I have gotten so much help from the regulars posting here at rebornpipes and from forums elsewhere I felt that I would like to share my experience for others to glean from, and 2) although it is not very different from some of the other restorations that Steve has catalog for us here, some of my tools and techniques may be a little different. I also hope to get some feedback on ways to improve my process.

I was at local second-hand shop with my family around Thanksgiving and was looking for pipes when my son found a stemless KBB Yello-Bole stummel. After looking it over for cracks in the bowl and stem I realized that the briar was in relatively good condition. I noted a few chips on the edge of the rim and some blackening of the rim but no fills and not much cake in the bowl. The stem was clearly stamped with the KBB logo in a clover leaf just to the left of:

I did not know much about the Yello-Bole brand but I thought I should be able to find a stem easily enough (aren’t they somewhat universal in size?). Besides, with a $4 price tag I figured I would not be out anything if it didn’t work out.

I jumped on my computer as soon as I got home and found some interesting history on the Yello-Bole brand. I won’t go into it here because Steve has done a nice job summarizing it in one of his posts: Narrowing Down a Date for Kaufman Brothers & Bondy’s KBB and KB&B Pipes. From the data available I had to guess that this pipe was form the late 1950’s or 60’s.

After reading up on the history of the pipe I began looking online for a new stem. I quickly learned that not all pipe stems are created equal, nor are they interchangeable. For a while, I considered sending the stummel to someone to have a stem made but that kind of defeated the whole spirit of restoring the pipe myself.

It took a while to find a stem that I thought would look right on the pipe. I settled on a stem from Vermont Freehand (ebay vt_freehand), a 2½” tapered stem – No. 547. I ordered 3 of them, figuring that I would need at least one for practice.

While I waited for the stems to arrive I began working on the stummel. There was not a lot of cake in the bowl so I started there – low hanging fruit. Now, I don’t own a reamer, but I have found that a ½” dowel wrapped with 60 grit sandpaper answers very well. What cake there was came out cleanly.

Besides the chip there was some charring on the rim. The chip was not very deep so I thought I would take care of both issues by taking the top of the bowl down to clean briar. Using 120 grit sand paper mounted on a flat surface, I carefully worked the bowl in a circular motion trying to keep it level. I didn’t want to take off too much of the top so I gave the outside lip of the bowl a slight chamfer to remove the bottom part of the chip. I then gave the stummel a soak in a 91% isopropyl alcohol bath. This was for the dual purpose of removing the existing finish and loosening the crud in the shank. I removed the stummel after about 24 hours and wiped off the existing stain. I then cleaned the shank with a bristled brush, bristled cleaners and cotton swabs. I wanted to make sure the mortise was thoroughly cleaned before I began to size the tenon on the new stem. When the stems arrived, I realized that I probably could have been a little more attentive to the size I purchased. I was going to have to remove a lot of material to get the tenon to fit the mortise as well as flushing the stem to the shank. The best way to shape a stem is on a lathe, but not having a lathe I turned to my drill press. I found that a bamboo skewer fit very snugly into the air hole of the stem. Leaving about 1 inch of the skewer protruding out of the air hole, I chucked the stem into my drill press. I started out a little timidly, removing material with 120 grit sand paper but the vulcanite is so soft that it gums up the paper very quickly. I switched to 60 grit and still was not seeing much progress. I tried a metal file next and when that did not answer I rummaged around the tool box and found a rasp. A bit aggressive I admit, and I would not recommend it unless you are removing a lot of material, and I was.

The drill press method worked great but was not without its problems. Pressing too hard with the file or rasp would cause the stem to slip on the skewer. The stem would then have to be reseated before I could resume. The other problem happened about half way through the rough shaping; the skewer broke off flush with the end of the tenon. I admit I panicked a little when I could not get a hold of the skewer with my needle nose pliers. But using a small drill bit I was able to carefully drill out the wedged skewer.

Back on track I, stopped often to check the fit. As I neared the correct size I switched back to the file then to the sand paper again. I finished the tenon with 320 grit sand paper. I thought fitting the tenon to the mortise was going to be the hard part but shaping the stem to get that perfect flush fit with the shank turned out to be the big challenge. You can see in the picture above that I have a ways to go to get the taper from the shank to the button. I have also started to get a bit of a wave about a quarter of the way from the tenon.

To fix this I stapled a piece of 240 grit paper to a 3” sanding block and went to town. The sanding block kept the contact surface flat and helped to eliminate the wave. It took about an hour of work stopping often for fit checks. In the end I was rewarded with nice taper. Somehow I had rounded over the shoulder of the stem ever so slightly. This formed a little groove at the stem/shank connection. It was not terrible and I felt could live with it for now.

I finished the stem with 600, 1000, 2000, 4000, 6000 grit sand paper. Then set it aside to buff with the stummel once it was complete. I stained the stummel using one part Fiebing’s light brown diluted with 2 parts isopropyl alcohol. I applied two coats, flaming each coat. Once dry, I wiped it down with a clean cloth and attached with stem. I set my drill press up with an inexpensive Sears buffing system and started with the white buffing compound. I found on previous projects that gearing down the drill speed to 1200 rpms was important to maintain control of the pipe and not overheat the pipe. I finished with two coats of carnauba wax and buff with a soft cloth.

I needed a tooth pick to remove some of the wax from the sand blasted areas. And that little groove between the stem and shank collected some wax too. Overall I am very happy with the outcome of this restoration. I am looking forward to smoking my first bowl in it.

Looking back, I am glad that I tried shaping my own stem. It was not without its challenges but the result was very rewarding. I now have two spare stems in my tool box, so I will be keeping an eye out for another stemless billiard.

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