Tag Archives: Savinelli 320KS pipes

New Life for a Savinelli 320KS stamped Knudsen’s Pipe Dream

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Blog by Steve Laug

Recently I was traveling in Alberta with my brother Jeff and his wife, Sherry. In between work appointments and presentations we took some time to visit local antique shops and malls. We found quite a few pipes. In a small Antique Shop in Nanton we found a few interesting pipes. The fourth of the pipes that I have chosen to work on from that find is a beautifully grained Savinelli Shaped Author. The taper stem has a K.P.D. stamped logo on the left side. The pipe was dirty and caked when we picked it up. The rim top had a little lava and some small scratches in the edges of the bowl. The bowl had a thick cake in it that was hard and dense. The exterior of the bowl and shank are very dirty with grime and oils from prolonged use. It was also dull and lifeless. The stamping on the left side of the shank was readable and read Knudsen’s over Pipe Dream. On the right side of the shank it is stamped 320 KS over Italy. The vulcanite stem was had tooth chatter and tooth marks on the top and the underside near the button. I took photos of the pipe before I started the cleanup. I took close up photos of the bowl and rim to capture the condition of the pipe before I started my cleanup work. The rim top had some lava build up on the edge and there were some small nicks on the inner edge. There was a thick cake in the bowl. Other than being so dirty it appeared to be in great condition. The stem was dirty and there was tooth chatter and marks on the top and underside near the button and on the button surface itself. The stem was lightly oxidized.I took a photo to capture the stamping on the left side of the shank. The photo shows the stamping Knudsen’s Pipe Dream. The stamping on the right side says 320KS Italy. The first photo also shows the K.P.D. stamp on the left side of the stem. The shape number tells me this is a Savinelli made pipe and the shape is the 320KS.While we were traveling I decided to do a bit of work on some of the pipes that we had found. This was the fourth one that I worked on. I scraped the inside of the bowl with a sharp knife. I scraped the tars and lava off the top of the rim with the same knife.I scrubbed the exterior of the bowl with warm water and Dawn Dish Soap to remove the buildup of tars and grime around the bowl and on the rim top. I rinsed it well and wiped the bowl down with a clean paper towel to polish the finish on the bowl. The pictures that follow show the condition of the pipe after it had been scrubbed. When I got it home I would scrub the exterior and the interior some more. I did some digging to see if I could find anything out about the brand stamped on the left side of the shank. I found that there was a Knudsen’s Pipe Dream Pipe Shop in Regina, Saskatchewan. It was originally located at 4621 Rae St, Regina SK S4S 6K6. The company was originally incorporated on 7 February 1974 in Canada and was dissolved as a company on 2 May 2002. I worked on a previous Knudsen’s pipe that had been made by Charatan and was stamped London, England as opposed to having been made by Savinelli and stamped Italy. Here is the link to the previous blog on the English made pipe: https://rebornpipes.com/2016/09/09/charatan-made-knudsens-pipe-dream-oval-shank-banker-brought-back-to-life/

When I returned from my trip I turned my attention to cleaning up the pipes that we had found. I did a deeper and more thorough cleaning of the bowl and shank. I reamed the bowl with a PipNet Reamer using the largest cutting head to take the cake back to bare walls. I followed up with a Savinelli Fitsall pipe knife to remove the remnants of the cake in the bowl. I sanded the bowl with 220 grit sandpaper wrapped around a piece of dowel to smooth out the inside walls of the bowl. I scraped the inside of the mortise with a dental spatula to remove the buildup of tars and oils on the walls. I scrubbed out the mortise and the airway in the shank, the metal mortise and the stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. I cleaned up the scratching and darkening on the rim top with a medium and a fine grit sanding sponge. I steamed out the deeper scratches with a damp cloth and an iron. I polished the briar with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding the bowl walls and rim top with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped the bowl down after each sanding pad with a damp cloth to wipe of the dust. I scrubbed the bowl down with Mark Hoover’s Before & After Briar Cleaner. I rubbed it into the surface of the briar, and as Mark wrote me it lifted the grime and dirt out of the briar. I rinsed the cleaner off the bowl with warm running water and dried it with a soft cloth. The photos below show the cleaned briar… Look at the grain on that pipe! I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the surface of the briar with my fingertips to clean, enliven and protect it. I let the balm sit for a little while and then buffed with a cotton cloth to raise the shine. The photos show the bowl at this point in the restoration process. I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. I painted the vulcanite stem with lighter to lift the tooth dents in the stem surface. I was able to lift them almost to the surface which allowed me to sand out the remnants of the tooth marks and chatter.I sanded out the remnants of the tooth marks with 220 grit sand paper and started to polish it with a folded piece of 400 wet dry sandpaper. I carefully worked my way around the KPD stamp on the left side of the stem. Once it was finished it began to shine.I polished the stem with some Denicare Mouthpiece Polish. It is a coarse red paste that works to remove oxidation. I rubbed it into the surface of the stem and buffed it off with the same cotton pad. It did a good job of further removing the oxidation.I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped it down after each sanding pad with a damp cloth. I polished it with Before & After Pipe Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine and buffed it off with a cotton cloth. This is a chubby shanked and nicely grained Savinelli made pipe with a black tapered vulcanite stem. It has a great look and feel. The shape is a handful and feels comfortable and substantial in my hand. I polished stem and the bowl with Blue Diamond polish on the buffing wheel. I gave the bowl and the 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 pipe polished up pretty nicely. The grain on the bowl came alive with the buffing. The rich contrasting browns works well with the polished vulcanite stem. The finished pipe has a rich look that is quite catching. Have a look at it with the photos below. The shape, finish and flow of the pipe and stem are very well done. The dimensions are Length: 5 ½ inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¾ inches, Chamber diameter: 7/8 of an inch. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked over the next of the finds of Jeff and my Alberta pipe hunt. It is a beautiful straight grain Savinelli 320KS that bears the stamping of a now defunct Regina, Saskatchewan based pipe and tobacco shop. I will be adding it to the rebornpipes store soon so if you are interested in adding it to your collection let me know. 

Silver Linings: Restoring a Savinelli Silver 320KS

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Blog by Anthony Cook

A friend from the Pipe Smoker Unlimited forum recently gifted me a batch of pipes that need a little TLC. In exchange, I offered to do some repair and restoration work on a couple of their own pipes. Believe me when I say that I received the better end of that deal. So, I wanted to go the extra mile on these if I could.

The first of my friend’s pipes that I chose to work on was this Savinelli Silver 320KS. I love the shape of the 320. When I hear “Savinelli,” this is the shape that I think of. Unfortunately, somebody had gotten to this one before me and it wasn’t better for it.

The initial request was just to repair the deep scratches that ran all the way around the rim. However, as I looked the pipe over, I could see that it had a few additional issues. The bowl rim was uneven and looked like it had been heavily buffed. The pipe should have had a deep, cherry red stain from the factory, but this one appeared to have been partially stripped and the stain was uneven and closer to the color of red clay. The silver shank band was loose and it had a couple of small dents on the right side. Finally, the shoulders of the stem face had been rounded with a buffer, which created a thin trench all the way around the stem where it met the band.

Oh, there was one more thing, but for reasons that I can’t explain, I hadn’t noticed it yet. I’m sure that you’ll see it in these photos of the pipe as it was on arrival.Astrid1

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Astrid3 Nomenclature and logo details (notice the “trench” on the stem next to the band):Astrid4 This 320 appeared to be pretty clean, but there’s no such thing as a pipe that’s too clean. So, I gave the internals of the stem and stummel a bit of a scrub with isopropyl alcohol, pipe cleaners, cotton swabs, a shank brush, and a percolator cleaner (the fat brush in the upper right). I’m glad that I did. As you can see below, there was still grime to be removed. After that, I gave the surface of the stummel a scrub with acetone on cotton pads to remove the old, spotty finish.Astrid5 I took a few photos of the rim damage, and after seeing them enlarged a few hundred times on the big screen, I noticed that the edges of the marks were rounded. That seemed to indicate that they were more like dents than scratches.Astrid6 So, I decided to see what a little bit of steam would do for them. I used a tea candle to heat the end of a flat-head screwdriver. Then, I placed a wet cloth over the dents and pressed it into the cloth. The steam worked well on the marks, although I had to repeat the process several times to lift the deeper ones. After I had worked my way all the way around the bowl, the rim was in much better shape. It would still need some sanding, but not nearly as much as it would have taken before to get it smooth.Astrid7 I sanded out the remaining dents with 220-grit paper before addressing a couple of small pits that were possibly missing fills on the bottom front of the stummel. I refilled them with a mixture of briar dust and CA, and then sanded them out with 220-grit as well. Three more fills were present on the front of the bowl, but they looked like they were in good shape and I had confidence that they would blend in with the final stain.
Next, I topped the bowl to level it out and chamfered the inner rim to match the original, factory shape with 220-grit paper. Then, I started cleaning up some of the light scratches and blemishes on the stummel with 320-grit.Astrid8 I then heated the stummel to open the grain and prep it for the first stain. I applied a mahogany stain thinned 3:1 with isopropyl alcohol. Mahogany is a nice dark color that gives contrast to the grain and it would play well with the red tones that would come later. After flaming the stain, I hand-buffed it with a soft cloth to remove the excess, and then wet sanded the stummel with 400-grit to remove most of the stain except for what had set into the soft grain.

To start bringing in those red tones I mentioned, I applied a 50/50 oxblood and medium brown stain thinned to the same ratio as the previous application. I again flamed and hand-buffed before lightly wet sanding with 600-grit and 1200-grit paper, and then polishing with Micro-Mesh pads 1500-2400.

I applied a third stain, red this time, and hand-buffed before giving the pipe a Tripoli buff on the buffing wheel. Then, I polished with Micro-Mesh pads 3200-4000. At that point, I didn’t like how bright the red was. So, I decided to darken it up with a thin stain wash. I can’t tell you the exact mix, because I just eyeballed it until it was what I wanted. I can say that it was at least 50% red mixed with a small amount of oxblood for richness and an even smaller amount of dark brown to darken it. I thinned it until it was about the same color density as Kool-Aid and applied it with cotton swab. After that, I hand-buffed the excess off and continued polishing with the remaining grits of Micro-Mesh pads.Astrid9 That finished up the work on the stummel. So, I thought I’d try to do something about those rounded shoulders on the stem face. In a scrap piece of wood, I drilled a hole large enough to easily accommodate the tenon. Then, I clamped a strip of sandpaper over the block and cut a matching hole with an X-Acto knife. I inserted the tenon into the hole and rotated it while applying firm but gentle pressure to keep the plane level. I started removing material with 220-grit and worked up to 600-grit. All in all, I probably removed 1/16 of an inch or less from the end of the stem. It wasn’t enough to completely correct the problem, but it did make it a great deal less obvious. The shoulders were nice and sharp again and I didn’t compromise the flow of the joint by creating a “step” down to a smaller diameter stem. You can see for yourself in the photos below.Astrid10 To be honest, I thought I was done at that point. It wasn’t until the pipe was reassembled and I was preparing to give it the final buff and wax that I noticed the glaring damage that I’m sure you’ve already seen. For the life of me I can’t figure out how it had escaped my attention, especially since I had just done work on the stem, but the button had been severely worn away by overbuffing. There was barely a button left at all. Of course, that wouldn’t do at all. So, after getting permission from the pipe’s owner to do some extra work, I began to create a new button.

I used 220-grit paper to rough up the surface of the damaged button and also a bit of the surrounding area. Next, I applied thin layers of black CA glue to the button to build it up. I lightly sanded between each layer with 220-grit to roughen them and ensure that the next layer had a good surface to cling to. Once the mound of CA was slightly higher than I wanted the button to be, I used 220-grit paper to start shaping the button, needle files and sanding files to carve a sharp edge at the back, and 320-grit paper to refine the shape.Astrid11 I continued to refine the shape and smooth the surface through 400, 600, and 1200-grit paper. Then I polished the button and the rest of the stem with the full range of Micro-Mesh pads and applied a drop of Obsidian oil to wrap up the stem work.

Before reassembling the pipe, I tried to lift the dents in the silver band by placing it over a wooden dowel, pressing firmly, and rotating it from side to side. My attempt was mostly in vain though. I was able to lift them slightly, mostly the one at the edge, but stopped when I began to worry about raising the stamping or tearing the band. I polished the band with Semichrome polish and placed it back on the shank with a small drop of CA to fix the looseness.

Finally, I put the pipe back together and buffed it with White Diamond on the buffing wheel. After buffing again with a clean wheel to remove any excess compound, I gave the pipe several coats of carnauba wax to complete the work on the pipe. The end results can be seen in the photos below.Astrid12

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Astrid15 I think the lines of a 320 are iconic and it is a fine example of the author shape. I’m glad that I was able to restore this one to at least a bit of its former glory and get it back into rotation. Thanks for looking!