Tag Archives: stem dents

Peterson Kildare Marathon Restoration

This year has been a roller coaster ride for me; between added responsibilities of watching our new grandson, health issues, and a flair up of my spinal stenosis that put me down for almost two months, I have been unable to do any of my hobbies. Unfortunately this has put a couple of friends that I have pipes to work on in a state of limbo waiting on me. They are not easy clean-ups and they knew going in I am slow – but still I feel badly about it.

This Peterson Kildare 106 billiard had been in my possession for ages it seems to me at least. I have worked on it off and on, loosing track if my progress (and many of my notes and photos) of the process. It went out in the mail today I am happy to say (and the owner is probably happier to hear!).

I knew the pipe needed stem work mostly but when it arrived at my home it was in worse condition than I had anticipated. The stem was really badly gnawed on, with an extra hole bitten through on the bottom. The pipe was very dirty and there was a fill that had partly fallen out; that didn’t really bother the owner, as I recall, but it made me nuts! Here is a look at what the pipe looked like when I got it.

I began cleaning the internals which weren’t bad as it turns out. I cleaned the stummel with alcohol and cotton pads, removing the grime, exposing the missing fill even worse; I knew I had to deal with that as I went along. But first I began to ream the bowl while the stem soaked in an OxiClean bath.

The OxiClean bath and a scrubbing in clean, warm water with a green Scotch pad left the stem clean and free of oxidation. The amount of work the stem needed was even more apparent now; not only did the bit need a lot of work, there were some very large dents in the stem. I tried to raise the dents with heat but that really made no difference. So I decided to start the process of building the bit up (P-lip, a new for me repair) and filling in the dents with black CA glue and charcoal powder. This took many layers over many days (which turned into months); I had to raise, shape, repeat, over and over to get the P-lip back and to fill the extra hole in the bottom of the stem and the deep divots.

During the interim times I worked on the fill that was partly gone and one other dent that stream wouldn’t raise. I used coarse briar dust from filing not sanding (which I think takes dye better and is less apt to just be a black spot) and CA glue to fill the two spots (the worst one is visible in the very first photo in this post). I accidentally over did the fill, costing myself a lot of extra time. However the patch ended up blending in great in the end. After a lot of working the patch to blend I stained the pipe with a diluted Brown Fiebing’s leather dye, two coats, flamed on, if I remember right. After buffing with brown-Tripoli the stummel looked nice but too dark to see the really nice grain (birds eye and flame) so I wiped it down with alcohol on a cotton pad until it let the gain show through and re-buffed with brown-Tripoli. Now the stummel looked good to me. Back to the stem…

This P-lip drove me to the brink of insanity! Not having a P-lip on hand to compare it to made it more difficult. Filling the bottom hole (that wasn’t supposed to be there) was easy but shaping that top and bottom lip/ridge was a chore. The deep divot just did not want to be filled; the patch shrunk over and over. The huge, dented draft hole on the top of the stem was a bother, too; I can’t tell you how many times I glued it shut trying to get that button rebuilt! In the end it came out pretty good; there are some tiny scratches visible if you look real close. But all things given, the owner was happy with that, especially since with the holidays and even more babysitting duties for me on the horizon, who knows when I would be able to finish it (again).

After finally getting the work done I finished the pipe off with a few coats of carnauba wax. I want to mention that I followed the instructions, more or less, for Dremel buffing for the stem and the waxing of the stummel. I currently can’t use my buffer so I wanted to give this option a try and am very pleased with the results. Mine is a variable speed Dremel and I used 5,000 RPM for the compounds and 10,000 RPM for the wax.

Hopefully with the new Dremel techniques I’ve learned (thanks again, Dal and Steve) and with some luck (and no small amount of “okay” from my wife) I will find a way to down size my work-needs to be able to work from my kitchen instead of my basement workshop, allowing me to work more when my mobility issues keep me from the stairs.

A Kaywoodie Handmade Brought Back to Life – Greg Wolford

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Blog by Greg Wolford

Greg is one of the blog’s readers and comments often on various posts. He contacted me about writing an article for the blog. He sent me the following article. I want to thank Greg for documenting his work on this old Kaywoodie Handmade. It is great to be able to read and see what others are doing as they work on restoring old pipes to their former glory. Here is a brief biography of Greg that he has written. (I invite others who have been reading the blog to do the same. Send us pictures and documentation of the work you have done and are doing.)

In June of last year I saw a bunch of old pipes, filthy and dirty, wasting away in an antique store. Thoughts of my former hobby of working with wood flooded my brain, as did the romantic idea of bringing new life to these old relics. I purchased the whole lot of 25-30 pipes and pieces and began to research how one goes about restoring these wonderful pipes to at least enjoyable and useable condition, if not to their total and complete former glory. Much help and advice has been shared with me in this short period of time; I have learned a tremendous amount from this blog, its founder and contributors. I am honored to have the opportunity to share some of my work here and to, hopefully, repay some of the kindness shown to me when I began and as I continue to learn this restoration-side of our pipe hobby.

I picked up this old Kaywoodie last month at an antique mall. It was in poor, filthy shape when I found it but I knew her potential. The stamping is not very strong but identifies it as a Kaywoodie Handmade, which I’ve seen and owned before. But this is one of the oversize models, a style that I’ve not yet had.

I began with an overnight alcohol soak and allowed a few hours dry time before I began working in the briar. She had a few scratches and a bit of whitish “mold” that I wanted to get rid of.

The previous owner must have had the dreadful habit of knocking the rim of the bowl to empty the pipe on a hard surface; the front was beaten down by probably 1/8th of inch, give or take a bit, giving it a terrible “frontal slope” (visible in the photos above and below). This seemed like the best place to start working on the briar. Before starting, I put the stem in a warm OxyClean soak so it would be ready when I was.

It took a lot of steaming and some topping to get the bowl back to even. I alternated steaming and topping until I was happy with the shape. The only thing I was unhappy with was finding a sand pit in the new top of the rim; I filled it with briar dust and dropped a little Super Glue into it to make a fill. The fill is somewhat visible but should fade with use as patina develops (I hope).

For the scratches and left over “mold”, I lightly sanded with 400 grit wet dry paper. It didn’t take too long on the scratches since they weren’t deep. The carved areas where the whitish substance was took more time but came off fairly easily. I then stained it with Fiebing’s Dark Brown leather dye, cut about 50/50 with 91% isopropyl alcohol. I applied, flamed, buffed with an old t-shirt by hand and repeated. Then I took the pipe to the buffer for a treatment with Tripoli, white diamond, and finally a few coats of carnauba wax. For the final buffing I used my cordless drill with a “mushroom” buffer attachment. I find the shape of the mushroom allows me to get into every crevice with relative ease. Lastly, I cleaned with stinger by buffing it with blue rouge several times, bringing it back up to a nice, new shine. I then set the bowl aside to work on the stem.

When I took stem out of its bath I rinsed it well and used a Miracle Eraser to remove some of the loosened oxidation. To my surprise I found that the bit was cracked under all the crud, something I had not dealt with before. I then took a fluffy pipe cleaner and dipped the first 1.5 inches or so into Vaseline and then inserted it into the stem. I dripped some Super Glue into the crack and let it sit a while until it had hardened through. (This was my first time fixing a crack with super glue and was happy with the outcome and learning curve.) The stem was really deeply marked dents and scratches and took a lot of time and work. I began with some heat from a candle to raise what I could of the dents. Then I used various needle files, wet/dry sand paper in grits from 220-800, micro mesh 1500-4000, plastic polish and carnauba wax on it. I actually started over twice, at different points, to get it as nice as possible.

Here are photos of the finished pipe.