Tag Archives: Stem repairs

Replacing a Broken Tenon & Doing a Simple Restoration on a Unique Bjarne Danish Handmade Egg

Blog by Steve Laug

I found this interestingly shape pipe in an antique mall in Idaho Falls. I was attracted to the egg shape, the hanging bottom and the rectangular shank and saddle stem before I even knew who had made it. I was pretty sure that it was a Danish made pipe but did not know who had made it. When the clerk took it out of the display case I saw that it was priced at $15 US – not a bad price these days for estate pipes. I turned it over in my hands and could see that it was well made and barely smoked. The bottom of the bowl still showed unseasoned briar. The stem was oxidized but free of tooth marks and tooth damage. The finish was in decent shape other than some sticky spots where the person selling it had put price tags. On the bottom of the shank it is stamped BJARNE over Handmade in Denmark. That is the only stamping on the shank. It is the pipe circled in the photos below.

I was excited by this find. I liked the shape and the cleanup would be simple. I purchased it and took it back to my mom and dad’s place. But then the something happened that I have come to dread. I was carrying the bag across their parlour when the bottom fell out of the bag and the pipe bounced off the tile floor. There was a sharp crack and the stem had disappeared. I found it hidden in the pattern of the carpet about three feet from the bowl. I was sick to my stomach. The tenon had snapped off evenly in the shank. The stem and the bowl were undamaged otherwise. This meant that what was originally a simple restoration would now be a bit more complicated. I would need to replace either the tenon or the stem. I took some photos of the bowl when I brought it to my work table. The briar was beautiful and not a flaw in the grain on the bowl itself. There was one small sand pit on the bottom side of the shank but it had only darkened from handling and was not that big a deal. The rim had some darkening and burn marks on the top near the back, the right side and the right front. These would have to be dealt with.

I used my tried and true method for pulling broken tenons. I twisted a drywall screw with wide threads by hand into the airway on the tenon. When it bit, I wiggled the tenon free of the shank. It did not take much to pull it out. If it had I would have put the bowl in the freezer for a half hour and repeated the process. I faced the stem on my topping board to knock off the remnants of the broken tenon and then twisted the stem onto a drill bit slightly larger than the airway in the stem. I don’t use the power feature on the drill as I would rather turn the stem onto the bit by hand. This is critical when working on short saddle stems where it is very easy to over drill the airway and ruin the stem. When I had the airway open for a new tenon I improvised by using a junk stem I had in my can of stems. I pressed the tenon on the thin stem into the freshly drilled airway on the stem. The fit was snug and the once I cut back the donor stem I would have a new vulcanite tenon. I glued the new tenon in place with super glue and pressed it until it set. The next three photos give an idea of how the new tenon and the donor stem fit in the stem as a replacement tenon. I cut off the stem with a hacksaw. In this case, after measuring the depth of the mortise I knew I could cut of the tenon portion of the donor stem and be left with a tenon the right length for the pipe. I turned the diameter of the new tenon down with a sanding drum on my Dremel until it was close to fitting and then finished the fit by hand with 220 grit sandpaper.

As often happens with a new tenon I had to do a little fine tuning on the shank – not much really but a slight removal of briar on the left side and a little vulcanite on the left. I probably could have left it but I am picky so I sanded it lightly until the transition was smooth. I wiped down the bowl with acetone on a cotton pad to remove the mottled finish and the glue that was on the shank and the bowl from the price tags.

I examined the burns on the rim and to repair/remove them the bowl would have to be lightly topped. I used the topping board and 220 grit sandpaper to take off most of the burn marks and minimize the damage.

I sanded the rim with a medium and fine grit sanding sponge and then wiped the bowl down with a cotton pad to remove the sanding dust.

I restained the sanded areas on the shank and the rim with a stain touch up pen using the lightest colour stain. I was able to match the colour of the bowl and not have to restain the whole pipe.

I gave the bowl a quick buff with a coarse cotton rag to blend in the stained areas with the rest of the bowl and feather in the new stain.

I took the stem off and cleaned out the shank and the stem. It was a pretty clean pipe which lent proof to my earlier assumption of the pipe being lightly smoked. With the tenon replaced, the bowl stained and looking fresh all that remained was to remove the oxidation on the stem. I lightly sanded the stem with medium and fine grit sanding sponges and then went on to sand it with micromesh sanding pads. I wet sanded the stem with 1500-2400 grit pads and rubbed the stem down with Obsidian Oil. I “painted” over the saddle area and the edge of the button with the flame from a Bic lighter to remove the oxidation. I dry sanded with 3200-4000 grit pads, rubbed it down with oil once again and then sanded it with 6000-12000 grit pads. I gave it a final rubdown with Obsidian Oil.

Once the oil dried I buffed the stem and the bowl with Blue Diamond on the wheel and then gave it multiple coats of carnauba wax. I buffed it with a clean flannel buff to raise the shine. I then used the new addition to my order of things, learned from Dave Gossett and hand buffed the bowl and stem with a microfibre cloth to take the shine to the next level. The finished pipe is shown below. The fit of the stem makes the repair look like it came that way. The final photos of the stem and tenon show how the new tenon looks when it was completed. I am sure glad that the broken tenon did not ruin this old pipe and that once the new tenon was replaced the restoration was quite simple. This pipe should serve me well for years to come. Thanks for looking.

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

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Blog by Steve Laug

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Restored LHS Certified Purex #95 Squashed Tomato

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Blog by Dave Gossett

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WDC Wellington Bent System – Restoring a Mainstay Pipe of the Celebrated Maker

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

Bruno Antony: Each fellow does the other fellow’s murder. Then there is nothing to connect them. The one who had the motive isn’t there. Each fellow murders a total stranger. Like you do my murder and I do yours…For example, your wife, my father. Criss-cross.
― from “Strangers on a Train” (1951), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, screenplay by Raymond Chandler and Czenzi Ormonde, starring Farley Granger and Robert Walker [Bruno]

INTRODUCTION
The movie was one of Hitchcock’s greatest and a favorite of mine. How could it not be, with the legendary detective novelist Raymond Chandler as the top word-man? But this is not a blog about swapping murders. It does concern the swapping of a bit, however, or to be more accurate, the removal of one from a basic Peterson’s System Standard in my collection of pipes awaiting more extreme repair, and which won’t be missed before it can be mended, to use for the William Demuth Co. Wellington System Billiard.

But first, let’s play Find the Pipe in the Lot. No doubt you have spotted it without trouble, or will soon deduce the answer from following photos.

Now for the criss-cross: watch as the bit, at first loose but in place in the shank of the Peterson’s Standard System to the right in photo one, without warning falling to the trademark green sleeve along with the battered band in photo two. Look long enough, and I guarantee you’ll see the moment of selfless sacrifice for the blighted, bit-less predicament of the once proud, near-twin WDC close by. And then, in photo three – the miraculous transplant to the WDC after the donated organ has embraced its new host body, at least tentatively.

A few words concerning the William Demuth Co. are in order, for those not familiar with its illustrious history. Demuth (1835-1911) entered the U.S. as an emigrant from Germany with no money when he was 16 and worked a number of odd jobs. His break came when he attained the position of clerk for a tobacco products trade company. Demuth founded his own company in Brooklyn, New York in 1862, two years into the Civil War, when he was only 27.

Success was rapid, leading to friendships with such prominent figures as James A. Garfield. [Garfield was inaugurated as the twentieth U.S. president in 1881 after winning by the narrowest popular vote margin in history, a mere 9,464 ballots, but with an extra 59 Electoral College votes. He served only four months before he was gunned down by a single shot aimed by Charles Julius Guiteau, an American lawyer denied an ambassadorship to France(evidently for good cause, as shooting the president on July 2, four months into his term, was not very diplomatic). Although Garfield lingered for about two and a half months, the assassin’s bullet caused the blood poisoning to which he succumbed. Guiteau was hanged several days short of a year after the ultimate assassination.]

At the Presidential Inauguration, Demuth presented Garfield with two meerschaum pipes, one in Garfield’s image and the other in the new First Lady’s. The friendship of the two men led to Demuth’s commissioning of a partial presidential line of pipes. But the linchpin WDC pipe was the Wellington, which lasted beyond the company’s own lifetime. Having become a subsidiary of S.M. Frank & Co. in 1937, WDC continued until the final day of 1972. The Wellington, however, was still offered in Frank’s catalog until 1976 and even had a brief reprise in the mid-1980s by way of consumer-direct sales.

Here are two other Wellington’s, the first courtesy of pipephil.eu and the second from pipedia.org. RESTORATION

In a sentence, this restoration was more about the stem than anything else. I had decided to go with a perfect replacement from a Peterson’s Standard System pipe in my personal collection. Then, when I donned my Dollar Store 3.75X glasses for a “final” close inspection, I cringed at the sight of the faint black outline of the Peterson’s P, shown below, now filled in with a white china marker. Note the correct shape of this bit from lip to tenon. My next brainstorm was to sand off the P, and in fact set out to do so when I came to my senses. What can I say? Sometimes I have the stupidest ideas. And so I opted to let the buck stop here and repair the bit I took off of the Peterson’s System Standard shown in the criss-cross photos of the Introduction. That System Standard needs serious work, also; not only a new, genuine bit but a replacement matching band. I will tackle that one when I have the new bit and band and am up to speed on the process of banding.

With a happy glow of contentment in the pit of my belly, I replaced the above bit, with the P filled in at last, on its rightful pipe in the stand-up, two sided bookshelf with doors where I store most of my collection, and opted to proceed with this restoration by doing the long, tedious work of applying layers of black Super Glue to build up the thinner, bottom section of the bit that lacks a tenon. As a result, while the rest of the Wellington has been finished for about ten days, the old bit, mangled by some wannabe pipe fixer, took days of patient layering, sanding and micro-meshing each phase, then polishing on the buffers, and was only completed moments ago.

I started the bit on its way, which I knew would take some days, by filing it to a uniform tapering roundness and sanding with 150- and 320-grit paper before micro-meshing from 1500-4000.

After that I gave the entire surface of the bit below the bulge the first of four thick coats of black Super Glue. Aware of the risk, I then stripped the old finish with as short as possible of an Everclear soak.

Leaving the bowl and shank for about 10 minutes in the alcohol and time enough to dry, I reamed and sanded the chamber to the smoothness of a chamois cloth and retorted the pipe using the bit from my own Peterson’s System Standard. Starting with super fine 0000 steel wool, then micromesh every step from 1500-4000, the wood and steel band had a nice natural sheen.

Without stain, using the natural rich color of the briar, I prepared the bowl and shank for the coming test to see if the bit worked out, the likelihood of which I had doubts, by buffing it with white Tripoli, White Diamond and two coats of carnauba, using the plain cloth buffer between each, of course.

The following days seemed to drag with each successive layer of black Super Glue and the long drying time followed by sanding with 200-grit paper and micro-meshing up the scale each time. But in the end, the result was worth the time and effort, considerable and somewhat unnerving as they were.

CONCLUSION
Again, this battle was far more about trying to recover an available bit, so that it would fit and lock in the shank, rather than any problems I faced with the bowl and shank. As the bit was when I received the Pete System Standard with which it came, well, the bit was the tip of the iceberg with that future project. In fact, my friend and mentor, Chuck, recommended that I send it to someone he knows in Denver – not so much because the task was beyond my skills but that it was what he would do if he needed a new Peterson’s bent system pipe stem with the right measurements as well as a replacement band of the appropriate type. I was fortunate with the WDC in that it called for a bit designed after the Pete System variety.

Of course I would have preferred to place a perfect, like-new bit in this great WDC Wellington, but the personal reward came in finding out that I could take what I had and make it work.

I think I’ll do the same with the estate Peterson’s Standard System that gave its bit for this pipe, after I’ve received the new parts in the mail.

Restoring a No-Name Bent Rhodesian

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Blog by Aaron Henson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Midterm Exam #4: Re-Refurbishing an Unknown Bulldog

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Blog by Anthony Cook

It’s time for the fourth and final midterm exam! This one is an “unknown” bent bulldog that I picked up from eBay. I snagged it because I liked the shape and it was cheap. What I didn’t know at the time, but became immediately apparent when the pipe arrived, was that the end of the shank had been shattered into at least three pieces and glued back together. There was no stamping on the pipe, but I don’t think that was always the case. It was likely sacrificed during the shank repair. The repair is fairly obvious in my photos below, but I assure you that it was not nearly so in the seller’s. The right combination of lighting and angles can cover up a multitude of sins, folks. Caveat emptor.

The exposed cracks weren’t the worst part of the story though. The repair did as much damage to the pipe as the crack did. An alarming amount of material had been taken off while sanding out the excess glue. It’s difficult to see in the photos, because from any one angle everything looked correct. However, if you held the pipe in hand and rolled it around you would notice that no two faces on the shank were equal. The shank was no longer a diamond shape; it was a trapezium. The repairman hadn’t paid much attention to keeping the surfaces level either. So, there was a subtle undulation to the line of the shank as it went from thick to thin and back again several times along its length. There was also very little effort made to blend the repaired area into the rest of the pipe, and several shallow “steps” were visible where the two surfaces met. There was at least an attempt to match up the stem to the shank, but that only gave the stem the same odd angles and even they didn’t quite match up to the ones on the shank. All in all, it was a bit of a travesty. Here are a few photos taken just after it arrived.

That was all far more than my tender, noobie hands could handle at the time. So, I cleaned the internals of the pipe and put it away for later, but not before adding a bit of bend to the stem that it seemed to have lost over time.
I’ve finished up work on all the rest of the pipes in that first batch. So, this week it was time to put a collar on that dog and turn in my final midterm.

I started (or restarted I should say) by dropping the stummel into an alcohol bath for a couple of hours to soften any coating that might be on the pipe. I had quite a surprise when I removed it later on. It looked fine when it was fresh from the bath, but a hazy, white glaze began to form on the surface as it dried. I hadn’t seen anything like this before and I’ll admit to a brief moment of panic. I assumed that this was probably the result of some type of coating reacting to the alcohol. So, I wiped the stummel down with acetone taking extra care around the shank repair, since acetone will break down superglue. That did the trick and the stummel cleaned up nicely. I set up the retort to see if I could remove any more tar buildup from the pipe. I flushed the shank about 10 times with boiling alcohol before allowing the pipe to cool. I noticed that the vial appeared to be losing a lot of liquid during the retort. The cotton wasn’t discolored. So, it wasn’t gassing out through the bowl. It really had me scratching my head until I saw a spot of moisture on the shank when I was removing the retort. For some reason, it wasn’t sealing well at the mortise and I’d need to look into that before I went much further. I gave the pipe a post-retort scrub of the stem and shank, and then inspected the crack repair for gaps. The surface of the glue joints looked airtight, but I noticed that the glue hadn’t penetrated very deep. The joints left shallow fissures inside the mortise and along the shank face. I used a small pushpin to place a little super-thin CA glue directly into the fissures, and then used a toothpick to apply a thin layer of the CA around the end of the mortise to create a seal inside as well as out.

When the glue was dry, I sanded out the interior patches with sanding needles and a piece of 400-grit sandpaper wrapped around a small dowel. I refaced the shank on my topping surface in a manner similar to how I would top a bowl (pressing lightly into the paper and using a circular motion). The following pictures show the patches when fresh and after they had been sanded out. You can also get some idea of the irregularities in the shank by comparing the differences in the face angles and wall thickness around the mortise. After that, I reattached the stem and ran a retort through it again to test for leaks. The outside of the stem and shank stayed dry as a bone through the whole process. So, I began addressing the pipe’s cosmetic issues.

I lightly topped the bowl and chamfered the inner rim to remove the scratches and dings. Then, I steamed a few dents out of the finish by pressing a screwdriver that had been heated over a tea candle into a wet cloth placed over the dents. Finally, I used CA glue and briar dust to patch a few, small gouges and missing fills and sanded them out with 220-grit and 320-grit sandpaper. While I worked on the stummel, the stem had been soaking in an Oxyclean bath. I removed it and scrubbed it down with a Magic Eraser to remove any oxidation. I used black CA glue to fill the tooth dents on the top and bottom of the stem. Once that had dried I sanded it down with 220-grit paper. The stem button needed to be rebuilt since it was worn and dented. I wrapped several layers of clear tape around the stem just below the button to create a form to make a crisp edge and also inserted a Vaseline smeared wedge of cardboard into the slot to seal it. Then, I applied thick, black CA glue in several layers to the end of the stem to begin building the new button. It wasn’t a pretty thing to look at when I removed the tape, but the edge was sharp and there was enough material to work with. I trimmed away the glue artifacts created by the tape molding with an X-Acto blade and rough-shaped the new button with 220-grit paper. Once the button started taking shape, it was time to do something about the other end of the stem and also the deformity of the shank. This was the part of the exam that I had not been looking forward to. Up to this point, everything had been the equivalent to multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank questions. There were a couple of challenges, but nothing too rough. The next part was more like the essay section.

After a lot of thought, I finally decided that there just wasn’t enough material left around the stem to square everything back up. So, I thought I’d try some trickery of my own. If I couldn’t make everything right, maybe I could use a little more finesse and subtlety than the original repairman did to make it at least look “righter”. If ya can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

I used 220-grit sandpaper to start carefully nudging the edges of the shank and stem saddle this way and that to give them an appearance of alignment. All the while I paid special attention to keep the faces as level and even as I could. There was very little technical skill involved. I was basically just freehanding. Once I had corrected the lines as much as I could, I began blending the reworked areas into the rest of the pipe with 320-grit. The photo below shows the progress somewhere early in the reshaping phase. Honestly, I was at this for a while and kind of lost myself in the middle of it. So, I didn’t get many photos. When I was as satisfied as I was likely to be with the shape of the shank and saddle, I went back to work on the rest of the stem to finish it up. I continued shaping the button with 320-grit and 400-grit paper. Then, I smoothed the entire surface by lightly sanding with 600-grit and 1200-grit paper. Finally, I polished the stem with micro-mesh pads 1500-12000. The stem work was wrapped up. So, it was time to do the same for the stummel. The off-kilter shape of the shank made it difficult to find a band that would fit well. It took three attempts before I found one that would work. I used a method for shaping a round band for the diamond shank similar to what Steve has previously written about here, but it took quite a bit of reworking to get it to conform to the now strange dimensions of the shank. I’m still not quite happy with how it fits, but I’m not sure what I could have done differently. There was nothing left to do at that point but to address the finish of the stummel. I wanted the final color to be close to the original but a little darker to help hide the bit of crack repair that was still visible. I heated the stummel over the heat gun to open the grain and then applied Fiebing’s black dye to the stummel. I then sanded down the surface with 400-grit paper to remove the remaining scratches and most of the black stain, except for what had set in the grain and recesses of the rings. Next, I applied a mahogany stain before sanding with 600-grit and 1200-grit paper. I took the stummel to the buffer and gave it a quick Tripoli buff, and then applied a final stain of British Tan.

The stummel was polished with micro-mesh pads starting with 3600-grit and working through to 12000-grit. I then buffed the entire pipe with white diamond compound and gave it several coats of carnauba wax to finish it up.

I leaned back in my chair and checked the clock on the wall. There were only minutes to go and most of the other seats were already empty. I had to admit that this was really as good as it was going to get. So, with a sigh, I stood up from my chair, gathered my exam materials, and delivered them to the desk at the front of the room…

NEPAL PROJECT PIPE SALE 13 – Breathing New Life into a Kaywoodie Signet Bulldog

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Blog by Steve Laug

This is the thirteenth pipe from the box of pipes that I was gifted by a good friend of mine with the instructed purpose of cleaning them up and selling them with all of the proceeds going to the aid of earthquake victims in Nepal. Once again all funds raised will all go to the SA Foundation, and organization that has worked in Nepal for over 15 years helping provide recovery, housing and job training for women who are victims of sexual exploitation and trafficking. The ongoing earthquakes (over 300) that continue to shake Nepal have left much in ruins. The SA Foundation Project there was able to find new housing for the women and help with staff as well. Every dollar raised from the sale of these pipes will go to the work in Nepal.

It is a Kaywoodie Signet Bulldog. I did a bit of digging on the web and found out from the Kaywoodie forum that the KW Signet line was made from 1956 to 1972. It is stamped very clearly on the underside of the left side of the diamond shank, Kaywoodie over Signet. There are no other stampings on the pipe. The finish appears to have been rusticated and possibly blasted in a swirling pattern up and around the bowl. The grooves in the briar are deep and the red brown stain gives the swirls a sense of movement as the pipe is rotated in the hands. It almost undulates as it is turned over and the varieties of browns lend themselves to the illusion of movement. That makes it an interesting finish. The exterior of the bowl is a well shaped bulldog sans a bead around the top of the bowl. The bowl was the cleanest of the lot of pipes donated. It did not need reaming but merely a light wipe of a pipe cleaner in the bowl. The finish was dirty but in decent shape.

The rim had some darkening but was not damaged on either the outer or inner edge. It would only need to be scrubbed to clean up the darkening. The shank and airway were dirty. As I have often found in a metal mortise pipe, there was a lot of tar and oil built up in the threads of the mortise and behind it in the shank. The aluminum was oxidized and scratched. The stem was a screw mount with a classic KW four hole stinger apparatus and metal tenon. The stinger was not removable but part of the metal tenon. It was dirty and covered in oils. The stem was oxidized and had tooth marks on the top and underside near the button. Most of the oxidation was on both ends of the stem.

I used a lighter to heat the bite marks on the stem and raise them to the surface. I paint the surface with the flame, never letting it sit too long in one place. This lifted the bite marks and they would be easily removed with a light sanding. An added benefit to using the lighter is that it also burns off the surface oxidation. The photo below shows the top side of the stem after I “painted” it with the lighter. The bite marks had disappeared the oxidation was less prominent. I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper to remove the remaining tooth chatter and light tooth marks.

I scrubbed the stinger and tenon apparatus with 0000 steel wool to remove the buildup of tar and oil that had hardened there. I cleaned out the airway in the stem and shank as well as the threaded mortise with cotton swabs, pipe cleaners, and alcohol to remove all of the residual oils. I finished by scrubbing the threads on the stinger with a tooth brush to remove the last of the oils. I also scrubbed the end of the shank cap. I scrubbed the briar with a tooth brush and Murphy’s Oil Soap and then rinsed it under running water to remove the soap. I dried it off with a cotton towel and took some photos of the cleaned finish.

The smooth area on the underside of the left side of the shank where the stamping was had some peeling varnish or clear coat on it. I wiped down the shank with acetone on a cotton pad to remove the peeling finish on that portion of the shank. IT came off quite easily which leads me think it was a varnish rather than a lacquer or plastic coat. With the bowl cleaned and finished it was time to work on the stem. I sanded it with a medium and a fine grit sanding sponge to remove the oxidation and scratches. I sanded it with micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-2400 grit pads and dry sanding with 3200-12,000 grit pads. I rubbed down the stem with Obsidian Oil between each set of three pads and then a final time after the sanding with the 12,000 grit pad.

When the oil had dried I buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond – lightly pressing the bowl into the buffing wheel and normally buffing the stem. I then gave the bowl a light coat of carnauba and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax. I finished by buffing the pipe with a soft flannel buff to raise the shine. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below.

This Kaywoodie Signet Bulldog a small pipe, roughly a Group 2/3 in Dunhill terms. The pattern of rustication and possibly sandblasting as well give it an interesting to look at and the feel of it in the hand will make it quite tactile when heated up and smoked. The stain is a combination of medium and lighter browns that gives it a subtle look of movement when it is held and turned in the hand. It should make someone a great addition. If you are interested in this pipe email me with an offer at slaug@uniserve.com and we can discuss it. The entirety of the sale price will go to the Nepal project. I will pay the postage so that does not get taken off the proceeds. If you are interested in reading about the SA Foundation you can look at their website at http://www.safoundation.com.

Thanks for looking.

Building a New Button on the Cut off Stem of a Savinelli Autograph 4

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Blog by Steve Laug

I decided to tackle another button rebuild. A friend brought over a cut off Savinelli Autograph long shank plateau Dublin that he had picked up. The shank was stamped Savinelli Autograph 4 on the underside and there was a signature stamp on the stem. I have no idea how the stem got cut off but my guess would be that someone removed the damaged part of the stem and button and then saw how close to the surface the airway was and decided to abort the mission of cutting a new button on the stem. I have been working with developing my mixture of medium viscosity black cyanoacrylate glue and charcoal powder to rebuild/craft new buttons. I have used it on quite a few repairs of my own and on a few for friends. It definitely dries harder than the glue by itself and seems to be very strong once it has cured. I thought this pipe would be a good candidate for that process. I wrapped the end of the stem with a band of cellophane tape to make a straight edge to work against for the glue and charcoal powder mixture. It works to keep a semi-straight edge but I find it is more of a guide than anything else. It gives me an edge to work with when I build up the layers of patch material.

I mixed a batch of glue and charcoal powder on a card that I use for that purpose. That way when I have finished the mix and repair I can fold the card and throw it away without getting the glue all over the place. I stirred the powder and glue together with a dental pick until I had a thick paste mixture that was still workable. I applied it to the end of the cut off stem with the dental pick and shaped it roughly to match the kind of button shape I was aiming for when finished.

I put the pipe on a cork and candle stick holder that I use for drying bowls when I stain them or stems when I have done this kind of repair and set it aside to cure for two days. This kind of patch is a long haul project. It is not a quick repair. If you start reshaping the button too soon the repair breaks off in chunks that are still soft underneath the surface. So, having learned that I left it alone and did other work while the days passed. After two days of curing the repair was solid all the way through. I would still need to be careful as the longer it cured the harder it would become. I used emery cloth and 180 grit sandpaper to shape the button into an oval and to face the end of the button. You can see in the photo below how much more material there was to work with now in terms of shaping the airway and the slot in the button thanks to the build-up of material.

I worked over the edge of the button with the sand paper as well to clean up the sharp edge next to the blade of the stem. I moved on to sand with 220 grit sandpaper and also with a medium and a fine grit sanding sponge to further define the new button and to clean up the scratches. After the initial shaping and sanding I put the stem to the side to cure longer and addressed the bowl and shank. I reamed the bowl with a PipNet reamer and took the cake back to a very thin layer.

I cleaned the interior of the airway and mortise with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and isopropyl alcohol until they were clean. I scrubbed the bowl and the plateau rim with a tooth brush and Murphy’s Oil Soap to clean off the grime and dirt in the plateau and the sandblast shank.

I scrubbed the plateau with a brass tire brush to dig out the built up tars and oils that had clogged the crevices in the finish there. I put my thumb in the bowl and carefully rinsed off the soap with cool running water. I dried the bowl with a cotton rag and took the next series of photos to show what the bowl looked like clean.

The next day I decided to work on the slot in the button and open it up with a flare to create a Y shape. I used needle files to work on the airway. The next series of photos show the files and the progress of opening the airway.

With the airway/slot roughed in it was time to continue shaping the button and the face of the slot. I sanded it with 220 grit sandpaper to refined the shape and to smooth out the end of the stem.

I used a folded piece of sandpaper to smooth out the interior of the slot and further shape it. The photo below shows the state of the slot and the shape of the button. With the shaping completed it was time to work on fine sanding of the stem and new button. The charcoal bits in the mixture are hard and coarse and need to be refined with fine sanding. I worked over the stem and button with micromesh sanding pads, wet sanding with 1500-2400 grit pads to remove the majority of the coarseness. It is only this first step in the process of polishing the stem but it is amazing to see the transformation as I work through the various grits of micromesh. I rubbed the stem down with Obsidian Oil when I had finished with the 2400 grit pad. I will still need to refine the inner edge of the button with files but the overall shape of the stem and button are clearly visible.

I wet sanded the stem with the 2400 grit micromesh until I had minimized the scratches and polished the button. I then rubbed it down with another coat of Obsidian Oil and then sanded it with 3200-4000 grit micromesh pads. I gave it another coat of oil and then sanded it with 6000-12,000 grit pads. I gave it a final coat of oil and let it dry.

I buffed the stem and the bowl with Blue Diamond and then lightly buffed the blast with the same. I gave it multiple coats of carnauba wax and buffed it with a clean flannel buffing pad to raise the shine. The finished pipe is shown below. The new button looks like it belongs. The shape of the slot is open and it accepts a pipe cleaner with ease. It should provide years of service to the pipeman who is holding it in trust. He should enjoy smoking it with much more ease. Thanks for having a look!

Bead repair on a baby Rhodesian

4 Replies

Blog by Dave Gossett

It is a pleasure to introduce you all to Dave Gossett’s work. Pat Russell, another contributor here sent me links to Dave’s work on Pipes Magazine forum and Dave sent me links to his own YouTube channel showing the beautiful work that he does. With no further ado here are Dave’s own words:

I received this pipe from a friend that acquired it in an estate lot. The only stampings on the pipe read imp, which I assume once read imported briar. This pipe had seen better days but it still drew my attention. Maybe it was the novelty of its size.

I started out by repairing the bowl chamber which had been badly reamed over the years. After removing the cake I sanded the bowl chamber smooth using 400 grit wrapped around a small sharpie marker.

Next I proceeded to rebuild the bead line. I covered a small piece of cardboard in clear tape and wedged it in the groove under the damaged areas to keep the channel clear. Medium viscosity cyanoacrylate glue and fine ground briar dust will fill the missing voids. The glue will not stick to the clear tape and the wedge is easily removed after the repair has set up. I put a few small drops of glue in place and sprinkled the dust on top, then used the flat edge of a knife pressed it flat against the pipe. I repeated this several times around the circumference of the bead line. After I had all the missing briar filled in I proceeded with the sanding . I started with 800 grit to smooth out all the excess glue, and then worked my way up to 2000 grit on the rest of the pipe.

Fiebings Dark brown leather dye is the base stain mix with a drop of oxblood. Once the stain dried, I went over it again with 2000 grit to give the grain a nice contrast, followed by a couple coats of pure carnauba wax on the buffing wheel.

Here it is sitting with a Savinelli 320 for size reference. Next to a Bic lighter truly shows how small this Rhodesian really is.

Here is link to his YouTube channel. As he says: No worries. No blathering,YABO’s, or reviews, just pipes…. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_IKfDgcIgpOfsIYoodS_Hg

NEPAL PROJECT PIPE SALE 12 – Restoring an Iwan Ries Blackruf Bent Billiard

2 Replies

Blog by Steve Laug

This is the twelfth pipe from the box of pipes that I was gifted by a good friend of mine with the instructed purpose of cleaning them up and selling them with all of the proceeds going to the aid of earthquake victims in Nepal. Once again all funds raised will all go to the SA Foundation, and organization that has worked in Nepal for over 15 years helping provide recovery, housing and job training for women who are victims of sexual exploitation and trafficking. The ongoing earthquakes (over 300) that continue to shake Nepal have left much in ruins. The SA Foundation Project there was able to find new housing for the women and help with staff as well. Every dollar raised from the sale of these pipes will go to the work in Nepal.

This one is Iwan Ries & Co. Blackruf, or sandblast billiard. It is stamped very clearly on the left side of the shank, Iwan Ries & Co. over Blackruf. There are no other stampings on the pipe. The finish is in the best shape of all of the pipes in this lot that I have worked on. The sandblast is not deep and the finish is a mix of blasted birdseye and swirls. That makes it an interesting blast. The exterior of the bowl is not round as the blast removed a lot of the wood near the top left edge of the pipe. It is still nice and thick but is out of round. The bowl needed a light reaming and the shank and airway were dirty. The rim was very clean and the inner edge is sharp and undamaged. The stem was oxidized and had tooth marks on the top and underside near the button. Most of the oxidation was on both ends of the stem. The stem was also slightly twisted from the bend back to that it did not sit correctly. The button on the top side was quite thin and worn down and the sharp edges on both the top and bottom had been smoothed out. The tenon was unique to me in that it was rounded at the end. Once it was cleaned up and repaired this would be a beautiful looking pipe.

I took some close-up pictures of the rim and the stem to show how they looked when I brought them to the work table.

The next photo shows the rounded end of the tenon, the oxidation on the stem and also the dusty buildup on the bowl in the grooves of the sandblast. I reamed the bowl back to a thin cake with a PipNet reamer. There was a lot of tobacco debris in the bowl, stuck to the sides that needed to be removed and the cake was uneven so I wanted to even it out and make it easier to rebuild the new cake.

I scrubbed out the mortise and the airway to the bowl with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and alcohol. It took quite a bit of scrubbing to get them clean and to remove the “crud” (technical term) that had collected there over the years. I used a thin, sharp knife to scrape out the thick ridge of “gunk” (another technical term) in the mortise. I cleaned out the stem with pipe cleaners and alcohol and also sanded the surface of the dents with 220 grit sandpaper and then wiped it down with alcohol to prepare it for the repairs. I filled the deep dents/tooth marks with clear superglue and let them dry (one side at a time). On the top side I also built up the button edge to give it some additional thickness.

Once the glue had dried I used a needle file to redefine the sharp edge of the button against the surface of the stem. I sanded the patches with 220 grit sandpaper until they were even with the surface of the stem so that they blended in better. I sanded the repairs with a medium and a fine grit sanding sponge to reduce the scratches on the surface.

I wanted to rebend the stem to take out the twist in the end. I set up a heat gun and heated the stem so that it would go back to its original shape. That is one of the things I love about vulcanite – is that it seems to have “memory” and returns to the shape it was before bending or twisting. It took some time to heat and straighten it out. A secondary benefit of heating the stem is that it smooths out all of the scratches and gives the stem a mat look. I rebent it over an old rolling pin to get a straight bend. I held it in the bend while I cooled it with running water. I polished it micromesh sanding pads – wet sanding with 1500-2400 grit pads and rubbing it down with Obsidian Oil when I finished this first set. I dry sanded with 3200-4000 grit pads and rubbed it down with oil again when I finished that set. Finally I dry sanded it with 6000-12,000 grit pads and gave it a final coat of Obsidian Oil and set it aside to dry.

I buffed it with Blue Diamond Plastic Polish on the wheel to give a deep shine and to remove any final scratches.

I buffed the bowl lightly with Blue Diamond and the stem once again before giving them both a coat of carnauba wax. I gave the bowl a light coat so as not to fill in the grooves and repeated several more coats on the stem. The finished pipe is shown below. It is ready for the next pipeman who will enjoy smoking this beauty.

This Iwan Ries Blackruf bent billiard is quite a large pipe, basically a Group 4/5 in Dunhill terms. The shallow mixed grain blast makes it interesting to look at and the feel of it in the hand will make it quite tactile when heated up and smoked. The stain is a combination of dark browns and black that gives it a multidimensional look. It should make someone a great addition. If you are interested in this pipe email me with an offer at slaug@uniserve.com and we can discuss it. The entirety of the sale price will go to the Nepal project. I will pay the postage so that does not get taken off the proceeds. If you are interested in reading about the SA Foundation you can look at their website at http://www.safoundation.com.

Thanks for looking.

rebornpipes

reclaiming old and worn estate pipes

Tag Archives: Stem repairs

Replacing a Broken Tenon & Doing a Simple Restoration on a Unique Bjarne Danish Handmade Egg

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

A Restored LHS Certified Purex #95 Squashed Tomato

WDC Wellington Bent System – Restoring a Mainstay Pipe of the Celebrated Maker

Restoring a No-Name Bent Rhodesian

Midterm Exam #4: Re-Refurbishing an Unknown Bulldog

NEPAL PROJECT PIPE SALE 13 – Breathing New Life into a Kaywoodie Signet Bulldog

Building a New Button on the Cut off Stem of a Savinelli Autograph 4

Bead repair on a baby Rhodesian

NEPAL PROJECT PIPE SALE 12 – Restoring an Iwan Ries Blackruf Bent Billiard

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