Tag Archives: vulcanite

New Life for a Republic Era 1994 Peterson’s “Dublin” Lovat with Sterling Silver band

Leave a reply

by Steve Laug

The next pipe I have chosen is smooth finished Peterson’s “Dublin” Lovat pipe that had a very dirty/grimy finish but had some good looking grain around the bowl sides and shank. It had a tarnished Sterling Silver band on the shank. It came to us from our contact in Copenhagen, Denmark on 14/11/2024. This Lovat was stamped on the left side of the shank and read Peterson’s [over] “Dublin”. It was stamped on the right side and read Made in the Republic of Ireland (three lines). The Sterling Silver Band is stamped on the top with three shields K & P over Sterling Silver. On the right side of the band it has three hallmarks – Hibernia seated arm on a harp (signifies country of manufacture), a crowned harp designating Sterling quality and finally a Date Letter mark – in this case it is an italic “I” (1994). On the left side it is stamped 1997. The pipe was in filthy condition when we brought it to the table. The finish was dirty with grime ground into the briar sides and rim. The bowl had a cake and there was some lava on the rim top and edges. The inner edge of the bowl appeared to be okay and a burn mark on the outer edge on the front. The stem was dirty and moderately oxidized. There were light tooth marks and chatter on the top and underside on and near the button. There was a white “P” stamp logo on the left side of the saddle stem. Jeff took photos of the pipe before his cleanup work. They tell the story and give a glimpse of the promise that we see in this pipe. Jeff took photos of the rim top and stem to show the general condition of the pipe. The bowl and was heavily caked and the rim top had a spotty lava overflow. The inner edge of the bowl looks good and you can see a burn mark on the front outer edge of the bowl. The photos of the stem show the light tooth marks and chatter on both sides near the button. Jeff took some photos of the bowl sides and heel to show the amazing grain that was around this bowl underneath the grime and grease coat on the surface. It is a nice looking pipe.  He took photos of the sides of the shank to show the stamping. The stamping is readable in the photos below and is as noted above. He also captured some of the stamping on the Sterling Silver band on the shank. I am including the link to the Pipedia’s article on Peterson pipes. It is a great read in terms of the history of the brand (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Peterson).

I turned to “The Peterson Pipe” by Mark Irwin and Gary Malmberg to get some background on the Peterson’s London Made England line. On page 298 it had the following information.

“Dublin” (1992-2003) An orange-brown smooth line with a brass-nickel-brass sandwich band, vulcanite fishtail mouthpiece, consisting mostly of D shapes released for the Danish market. Stamped PETERSON’S in script over “DUBLIN”. A tenth anniversary pipe for the line was produced with a sterling band stamped 2001. Market demand fell shortly thereafter and several pipes stamped “DUBLIN” were released in ’03 for the Fourth of July commemoratives for the US market.

I knew a date range for the pipe I was working on from the stamping on the silver– 1994-1997. My guess is that it was made in 94 and purchased in 97 by the pipe man or woman who held it in trust. Since the one I was working on did not have a D shape it is not provable that it was made for the Danish market. However, other than the shape number, the colour, the silver band and the fishtail stem is the same on the pipe. Now it was time to work on the pipe.

Jeff had done a great job cleaning up the pipe as usual. He reamed the pipe with a PipNet reamer and cut back the cake back to the bare briar. He cleaned up the walls with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He scrubbed the interior of the bowl and shank with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs, shank brushes and alcohol to remove the tars and oils. He scrubbed the exterior of the pipe with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush to remove the grime from the finish. He worked on the rim top lava and the darkened spots with the soap and tooth brush. He scrubbed the inside of the stem with alcohol and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the exterior with Soft Scrub and then soaked it in Briarville Pipe Stem Deoxidizer. He washed it off with warm water to remove the Deoxidizer. The pipe had some dark spots on the briar but it looked far better when it arrived. I took some close up photos of the rim top and also of the stem surface. I wanted to show how well it had cleaned up. The rim top had some looked good but there was darkening on the rim top and inner edge and some burn spots on the front and back outer edge of the bowl. It should clean up really well. I also took close up photos of the stem to show the light tooth marks on the surface near the button.I took photos of the stamping on the sides of the shank. You can see that it is stamped as noted above. It is clear and readable. The P logo stamp on the stem side is clear but will need to be touched up. I took photos of the stamping on the silver band to try and capture what was on the band. It is readable. I removed the stem and took a photo of the pipe to have a look at the parts and overall look. I moved on to address the damage on the rim top and the front inner edge of the bowl. I used a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the damage and bring the bowl back to round. It looked much better at this point in the process. I wiped down the dark spots on the edges of the rim and the heel of the bowl with some oxalic acid on a cotton pad. While it greatly lightened the spots it did not remove them.I sanded the bowl and rim with 320-3500 sanding pads to minimize the dark spots further on the rim edges and the heel of the bowl. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth between pads to remove the sanding dust. I polished the briar with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each sanding pad. I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the surface of the briar with my fingertips. It works to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I let it sit for 15 minutes then buffed it off with a soft cloth and raised the shine. The bowl looks great at this point. I sanded the stem with 320-3500 grit sanding pads to continue to blend the repairs into the surface of the vulcanite. I wiped the stem down after each pad with an Obsidian Oil cloth to remove the sanding dust and preserve the vulcanite.I touched up the P stamp on the top of the stem with white acrylic fingernail polish. Once it dried I scraped off the excess and sanded the surface with 1500 grit micromesh pad.I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding it with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped the stem down with Obsidian Oil after each pad. I polished it with Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine and gave it a final coat and set it aside to dry. I polished silver band with a jeweller’s cloth to remove the tarnish and protect the finish from further tarnishing. It took on a rich shine. I am excited to finish this Peterson’s “Dublin” silver banded Lovat. I put the pipe back together and buffed it with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax. I hand buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. It is fun to see what the polished bowl looks like with beautiful mixed grain all around it. Added to that the polished black vulcanite stem combined with the bowl and sandwich brass/nickel/brass band on the shank and made a stunning pipe. This smooth Classic Peterson’s “Dublin” banded Lovat is great looking and the pipe feels great in my hand. It is light and well balanced. Have a look at it with the photos below. The dimensions are Length: 5 inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 1/8 inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 32 grams/1.13 ounces. It is a beautiful pipe that I will soon be putting on the rebornpipes store in the Irish Pipe Makers Section. If you are interested in adding it to your collection send me an email or a message. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked over this pipe. Thanks to each of you who are reading this blog.

As always, I encourage your questions and comments as you read the blog. Thanks to each of you who are reading this blog. Remember we are not pipe owners; we are pipe men and women who hold our pipes in trust until they pass on into the trust of those who follow us.

Restoring a Father’s Legacy of 10 Brigham Pipes Gathered throughout his life #6

Leave a reply

by Steve Laug

Last month I was contacted by Donna to see if I knew anyone interested in purchasing her father’s pipes. She wrote as follows: “I am wondering if you would be interested in my father’s collection of Brighams.” She further spelled out what he had in the collection. He had 1 – 2 dot pipe, 3 – 3 dot pipes, 2 – 4 dot pipes and 4 – 5 dot pipes. There was a total of 10 pipes. I asked for a photo of the pipes and she sent the photo below. I was very interested.We emailed back and forth and the short story is that I paid for the collection and she shipped the pipes to me. On Tuesday after Easter the box arrived and I was happy to be able to see them up close. They were obviously well-loved pipes and in varying degrees of needing work. I wrote her and told I received them and that I was pleased with the lot. I was looking forward to working on them. She asked me to send her photos along the way as I finished the pipes. I will be sending her the links to the blog so she can see the work and the process of bringing them back to a semblance of their original beauty. Thanks Donna for the opportunity to work on your Dad’s pipes.

The sixth of the pipes I have chosen to work on from the lot was the one sitting three down on the right column in the photo above. I would call the pipe a Bent Billiard shaped pipe with a vulcanite taper stem. It is stamped on the underside of the shank and reads Brigham in script. To the left of that it is stamp with the shape number 523. The stamping will help me date the pipe. From the cake in the bowl and the other pipes I could tell her Dad love aromatic tobaccos. This pipe was heavily caked with an overflow of lava on the rim top and on the inner and outer edges of the bowl. There was burn damage on the rim top and inner edge and down the right side of the bowl. The shank end even that had a coating of tar build up. The finish was smooth with a rusticated panel on the left side of the bowl. The finish was washed out and very worn. It was probably the most worn of the lot of 10. The stem did not sit all the way in the shank so I assumed it was very dirty in the shank. I removed the stem and the Hard Rock Maple Distillator that was sitting in the tenon. The shank was black, tarry and oily. The stem was dirty, calcified and oxidized with thick oil and tar in the airway from the tenon to the button. There were light tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. The left side of the taper stem bore five brass pins though I had to clean that area to even find them. That would also help with identifying the pipe. I took some photos of the pipe before I started my work on it. I took a photo of the bowl and rim top to show the cake in the bowl. The rim top had a thick coat of lava overflowing down the crowned top with heavy burn damage around the top, inner and outer edge. I took photos of the top and underside of the stem showing the light tooth chatter on the vulcanite stem surface. It is heavily oxidized and calcified and is quite dirty on the surface of the vulcanite.The stamping is very, very faint and hard to read in the photo below. With a bright light and lens, it reads as noted above. I removed the stem from the shank and took a photo of the parts to show the parts of the pipe. The finish on the pipe is very worn and tired looking. The brass dots on the stem are hidden under the grime and oxidation. For the needed background I am including the information from Pipedia on Brigham pipes. It is a great read in terms of the history of the brand (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Pipes). Charles Lemon (Dadspipes) has written book on the history of the brand. This article is a good summary. I have included it below.

Roy Brigham, after serving an apprenticeship under an Austrian pipesmith, started his own pipe repair shop in Toronto, in 1906. By 1918 the business had grown to include five other craftsmen and had developed a reputation across Canada for the high quality of workmanship. After repairing many different brands of pipes over the years, Roy noted certain recurring complaints by pipe smokers, the most common referred to as “tongue bite”. Tongue bite is a burning sensation on the smoker’s tongue, previously thought to be due to the heat of the smoke (i.e. a “hot smoking pipe”).

He soon began manufacturing his own pipes, which were lightweight, yet featured a more rugged construction, strengthening the weak points observed in other pipes. The problem of tongue bite intrigued him, and he decided to make overcoming it a future goal.

About 1938, Roy’s son Herb joined him to assist in the business. The business barely survived the great depression because pipes were considered to be a luxury, not a necessity, and selling pipes was difficult indeed. In approximately 1937 [1], after some experimentation, Roy and Herb discovered that tongue bite was in fact a form of mild chemical burn to the tongue, caused by tars and acids in the smoke. They found that by filtering the smoke, it was possible to retain the flavour of the tobacco and yet remove these impurities and thereby stop the tongue bite.

Just as Thomas Edison had searched far and wide for the perfect material from which to make the first electric light bulb filaments, Roy & Herb began experimenting with many materials, both common and exotic, in the quest for the perfect pipe filter. Results varied wildly. Most of the materials didn’t work at all and some actually imparted their own flavour into the smoke. They eventually found just two materials that were satisfactory in pipes: bamboo and rock maple. As bamboo was obviously not as readily available, rock maple then became the logical choice.

They were able to manufacture a replaceable hollow wooden tube made from rock maple dowelling, which when inserted into a specially made pipe, caused absolutely no restriction to the draw of the pipe, yet extracted many of the impurities which had caused tongue bite. The result was indeed a truly better smoking pipe…

I then turned to a second article by Charles Lemon called, “A Closer Look at the Dots, Dates, and Markings of Brigham Pipes” to be able to pin down the time frame that the pipe was made in and to help interpret the stampings and shape number on the pipe. Here is the link to his article (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Pipes_%E2%80%93_A_Closer_Look_at_Dots,_Dates_and_Markings).

I have dubbed the decades between 1980 and 2000 the Late Canadian Era, a period that saw several changes at Brigham that are of note to the collector. First, the traditional 8-grade pinning system (the famous Brigham “Dots” which denoted the quality of the pipe) was changed to a 7-grade system to simplify pinning (more on this below), and the Norsemen and Valhalla series were merged to form the President Series, which represented the very finest pipes coming out of the Toronto factory. Early pipes from this era (left, below) are stamped with a shape number and “Brigham” over “Canada”;later pipes (late 1980s+, on right below) are stamped simply with a shape number and the Brigham logo.

I read further in the article to the section entitled Revised Dot System 1980. I quote from that below.

Brigham changed the Dot system in 1980, adding a 7 Dot at the top of the line, dropping the names of each series and eliminating the confusing vertical and horizontal 3 Dot configurations. The Norsemen and Valhalla series were combined to form the President series of freehand pipes, which adopted a 3 Dot pattern with a larger dot on the right as shown below. The 7- grade pinning system stayed in place from 1980 to 2001.

With the information from article and the chart above I knew what I was dealing with in terms of the stamping and the age of this pipe. I learned that this Late Canadian Era was made between 1980-2000. The pipe is a Brigham (5-Dot) 523, a Bent Billiard to my mind. The Brigham Canada stamping pins it down to the period between 1990-2001 when the aluminum tenon was replaced.

I started my work on the pipe by reaming the bowl with a PipNet reamer. I used the first and second cutting heads and took the cake back to bare briar. I cleaned up the reaming with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife and removed all the remnants of the cake. I scraped the rim top with the flat edge of the blade at the same time and removed most of the thick lava build up. I sanded the walls of the bowl with a piece of dowel wrapped in 220 grit sandpaper. The walls look very good at his point in the process. I cleaned out the shank, the airway and the deep mortise with alcohol, cotton swabs, hard bristle and soft bristle pipe cleaners. It was a very dirty pipe which just meant that Donna’s Dad had really enjoyed and used this pipe. I cleaned the inside of the aluminum tenon and the airway in the stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners in the same way as I did the shank. It also was very dirty.I scrubbed the exterior of the bowl and shank with a tooth brush and undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap. I scrubbed the lava on the rim top and overflow on the outside of the bowl with the soap. I rinsed  the briar with warm water to remove the grime and debris of the scrubbing. It looked significantly better after the scrubbing. The damage on the bowl front and rim top is very clear. The burn damage on the right side of the bowl, the rim top and inner bevelled edge were going to take a lot of shaping work. There was also a place on the right side about 2/3 up from the bottom that appeared to be a flaw in the briar. I topped the bowl on a 220 grit sheet of sandpaper on a topping board. I also used my Dremel and sanding drum at a slow speed to work over the burn damage on the right side of the bowl. I was able to remove most of it.Once I had sanded the rim top smooth and the right side of the bowl with the Dremel I sanded it with 220 grit sandpaper. I filled in the flaw with clear CA glue and pressed briar dust into the flaw. I continued my sanding and shape of the rim top and side with the sandpaper until I had removed the majority of the damage. It looks much better in the photo below. I also sanded the repair at the same time.I forgot to take photos of the bowl after I had sanded it with the 220 grit sandpaper. I finished that and moved on to it with 320-3500 grit sanding pads to finish minimizing the burn damage and reshape the rim top and the top half of the bowl. The briar began to take on a rich shine and the burn damage was by and large gone. The photos tell the story.I polished the briar with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding it with 1200-15000 grit pads. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each sanding pad. The grain really started to rise to the surface as I polished it. The depths of the rustication looked very good as well. I rubbed the bowl and shank down with Before & After Restoration Balm to deep clean the finish on the bowl and shank. The product works to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I worked it in with my fingers to get it into the briar. I used a horsehair shoe brush to work it into the rusticated portions. I let it sit for 10 minutes then I wiped it off and buffed it with a soft cloth. The briar really began to have a rich shine. I took some photos of the bowl at this point to mark the progress in the restoration. It is a beautiful bowl. I scrubbed the oxidation on the stem with Soft Scrub cleanser and was able to remove a large amount of it. I sanded the area around the button edge and the remaining oxidation with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper. Progress was happening! I sanded the surface of the vulcanite with the 2 inch sanding pads – 320-3500 grit pads to remove the remaining oxidation. I dry sanded the surface until I have removed all of the oxidation and the stem started to really shine.I refit the aluminum tenon with the new Brigham Rock Maple Distillator. It is a unique and cool smoking experience. I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped the stem down after each sanding pad with Obsidian Oil. I polished the stem with Before & After Pipe Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine. I gave it a coat of Obsidian Pipe Stem Oil. It works to protect the stem from oxidizing. I set it aside to dry. The final steps in my process involve using the buffer. I buffed the bowl and stem with Blue Diamond to polish out the light scratches in the briar and the vulcanite. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax. I have found that I can get a deeper shine if I follow up the wax buff with a buff with a clean buffing pad. It works to raise the shine and then I hand buff with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. It is always fun for me to see what the polished bowl looks like with the polished stem. It really is a nice pipe. The smooth, nicely grained bowl sides and the rusticated blaze on the left bowl side looks great with the vulcanite stem. The Brigham 523 Bent Billiard with a vulcanite taper stem feels great in my hand. It is a well balanced pipe. Have a look at it with the photos below.  The dimensions are Length: 6 inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 1.45 ounces/41 grams. It is a beautiful pipe that I will soon be adding to the rebornpipes store in the Canadian Pipemakers Section. If you would like to add it to your collection let me know. It should be a great smoking pipe.

As always, I encourage your questions and comments as you read the blog. Thanks to each of you who are reading this blog. Remember we are not pipe owners; we are pipe men and women who hold our pipes in trust until they pass on into the trust of those who follow us.

Restoring a Duca Carlo Italy Bent Rhodesian

Leave a reply

by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table is an interesting Bulldog or Rhodesian without the rings and with a triangle shaped taper stem. Jeff purchased this pipe from an antique mall Ogden, Utah, USA on 03/25/2021. There was a moderate cake in bowl and the rim top looked amazingly good. The rim top and the inner edge were not damaged and showed no nicks or lava buildup. The finish was dull and had grime ground into the surface of the briar. Though hard to see there are a few fills in the bowl, but the stain and finish may be hiding them at this point in the process. The pipe is stamped on the underside of the shank and reads DUCA CARLO and at the shank/stem union it is stamped ITALY. I remembered that the pipe was a Savinelli made pipe but I could not remember much more than that about connection. I would need to check the blog to see what I had found when I worked on other Duca Carlo pipes. The stem was made for a 6mm Savinelli Balsa filter. It was lightly oxidized and had light tooth marks and chatter on both sides at the stem – both on the stem surface and on the button itself. Jeff took photos of the pipe before he started his clean up work. I like to have an idea of how the pipe was smoked before we got it and what the bowl and rim top looked like. Jeff always takes some photos of the bowl and rim from various angles to show what it looked like. The stem looked very good under the oxidation. The was a gold crown logo on the topside of the stem. He took photos of the sides and heel of the bowl to give a sense of the grain on the pipe. You can also see the fills on the right side of the bowl. The next two photos show the stamping on the underside of the shank. It is faint in spots but otherwise clear and readable as noted above. The gold crown on the stem top is in good shape.I did a quick scan of the rebornpipes blog and found a link to the Duca Carlo pipe that Dal Stanton had restored (https://thepipesteward.com/2021/05/04/liberating-the-grain-of-a-candy-apple-finish-a-savinelli-duca-carlo-poker-of-italy/). I always appreciate the research that Dal does when he works on pipes because it is what I like doing when I am restoring the pipes on my table. I quote from the portion of the blog that gives the background information on the brand. (Thanks Dal for the leg work on this one!)

Whenever I work on a pipe, I’m always interested to know something of the pipe.  My first stop at Pipedia reveals that the Duca Carlo is a second of Savinelli, the well-known Italian pipe manufacturer. Savinelli’s history as an Italian pipe maker goes back to 1876 – a rich history and tradition which can be read in Pipedia’s Savinelli article.  The Duca Carlo is listed in the main Savinelli article within an extensive listing of “Savinelli made sub-brands, seconds & order productions”.  The Duca (Duke) Carlo is listed with the Duca di Milano and Duca di Paolo giving the impression that Savinelli produced these as special lines commemorating these historical figures.  With a quick internet search brings me to a Wikipedia article.  Duca Carlo reveals an interesting story of a child that died of smallpox at age 3 (See: Carlo, Duke of Calabria):

Carlo of Naples and Sicily (Italian: Carlo Tito Francesco Giuseppe; 4 January 1775 – 17 December 1778) was Duke of Calabria as heir to Naples and Sicily. Born at the Caserta Palace near Naples, he was known as the Duke of Calabria at birth as the heir apparent to his father’s throne. His mother was a daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and thus sister of Marie Antoinette.

A member of the House of Bourbon, he was a prince of Naples and Sicily by birth. He was the hereditary prince of Naples. His birth allowed his mother to have a place in the Council of State, pursuant to his parents’ marriage contract.

Carlo died of smallpox[1] aged 3. Six of his younger siblings would die of smallpox also: Princess Maria Anna (in 1780), Prince Giuseppe (in 1783), Prince Gennaro (in 1789), Prince Carlo Gennaro (also in 1789), Princess Maria Clotilde (in 1792) and Princess Maria Enricheta (also in 1792).  He was buried at the Church of Santa Chiara in Naples.

The only other reference to the Duca series in the Savinelli Pipedia article comes from a photo that does not mention a name, but the stem stamping is clearly from the Duca series of pipes listed.  No dating on the picture can be seen. The Savinelli Duca line is confirmed by my next stop. Pipephil (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-d9.html) gives two examples of Savinelli Ducas – a Duca Carlo and Duca Eraldo.  Consistent between each example is the crown stem stamping. Armed with the information that I had gleaned from Dal’s blog, I turned my attention to the pipe itself. Jeff had done a great cleanup on the pipe. He reamed the bowl with a PipNet pipe reamer and followed up with a Savinelli Fitsall pipe knife to remove the cake. He scrubbed out the mortise and the airway in the shank and the stem with alcohol, cotton swabs, shank brushes and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the bowl exterior with a tooth brush and undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap to remove the grime on the finish of the bowl and the rim top. He rinsed it under running water. One of the benefits of this scrub is that it also tends to lift some of the scratches and nicks in the surface of the briar. He dried it off with a soft cloth. He cleaned the internals and externals of the stem with alcohol, pipe cleaners and cotton swabs. He soaked the stem in Briarville’s Pipe Stem Deoxidizer and rinsed it off with warm water and cleaned out the airway in the stem with alcohol. When I received it the pipe looked very good. I took a photo of the rim top and stem to show the condition. The rim top and the inner edge of the bowl were in good condition. The stem was vulcanite and there were some tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button and on the button surface. The gold crown had lost some of its lustre in the clean up and would need to be touched up.The stamping on the pipe is faint in spots but still is clear and readable as noted above. I removed the stem from the shank and took a photo of the pipe to give a sense of the whole.I polished the briar with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each sanding pad. I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the surface of the briar with my fingertips. It works to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I let it sit for 15 minutes then buffed it off with a soft cloth and raised the shine. The bowl looks great at this point. I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. I “painted” the tooth marks and chatter on the stem and was able to raise most of it. I filled in what remained with black, rubberized CA glue. Once it hardened I flattened the repairs with a flat file. I cleaned up the repairs and blended them into the surface of the stem with 220 grit sandpaper. I sanded the stem with 320-3500 grit sandpaper to further blend in the repairs on the surface. I wiped the stem down with an Obsidian Oil cloth after each sanding pad. It began to look very good.I touched up the Crown logo stamp on the topside of the triangle taper stem with Rub’n Buff Antique Gold. I worked it into the stamp with a toothpick. I buffed off the excess with a paper towel and polished the stem with some Obsidian Oil.I polished it with micromesh sanding pads – 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. I used Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine to further polish the stem. The photos below show the polished stem. I fit the stem with a Savinelli 6mm Balsa System filter. The fit was perfect and the draw seems remarkably open.This Savinelli Made Duca Carlo Italian Bent Rhodesian with a vulcanite saddle stem is a great looking pipe now that it has been restored. The rich browns and blacks of the contrasting stains came alive with the polishing and waxing. I put the stem back on the bowl and carefully buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel using a light touch on the briar. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing the entire pipe with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished Duca Carlo Rhodesian is a beauty and fits nicely in the hand and looks very good. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 ½ inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 1.87 ounces/53 grams. This beauty will be going on the rebornpipes store in the Italian Pipe Makers section. Let me know if you are interested in adding it to your collection. Thanks for reading this blog and my reflections on the pipe while I worked on it. There are many more to come!

New Life for a Peterson’s “Dublin” Made in the Republic of Ireland 264 Canadian

Leave a reply

by Steve Laug

The next pipe I have chosen is smooth finished Peterson’s “Dublin” Canadian pipe that had a very dirty/grimy finish but had some good looking grain around the bowl sides and shank. It came to us from our contact in Copenhagen, Denmark on 14/11/2024. This Canadian was stamped on the topside of the shank and read Peterson’s [over] “Dublin”. It was stamped on the underside and read Made in the Republic of Ireland (three lines). On the right side of the shank near the bowl it is stamped with the shape number 264. The pipe was in filthy condition when we brought it to the table. The finish was dirty with grime ground into the briar sides and rim. The bowl had a thick cake and there was an overflow of lava on the rim top and edges. The inner edge of the bowl appeared to be okay but the heavy lava coat prohibited knowing with certainty. There was a thin three layered band on the shank end with a piece of silver sandwiched by gold on each side. The stem was dirty and moderately oxidized. There were light tooth marks and chatter on the top and underside on and near the button. There was a white “P” stamp logo on the top of the taper stem. Jeff took photos of the pipe before his cleanup work. They tell the story and give a glimpse of the promise that we see in this pipe. Jeff took photos of the rim top and stem to show the general condition of the pipe. The bowl and the rim top were heavily caked and had a thick lava overflow. The inner edge of the bowl is hard to assess until cleaned. The photos of the stem show the light tooth marks and chatter on both sides near the button. Jeff took some photos of the bowl sides and heel to show the amazing grain that was around this bowl. It is a nice looking pipe.  He took photos of the sides of the shank to show the stamping. The stamping is readable in the photos below and is as noted above. He also captured the white stamped P logo on the stem top. I am including the link to the Pipedia’s article on Peterson pipes. It is a great read in terms of the history of the brand (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Peterson).

I turned to “The Peterson Pipe” by Mark Irwin and Gary Malmberg to get some background on the Peterson’s London Made England line. On page 298 it had the following information.

“Dublin” (1992-2003) An orange-brown smooth line with a brass-nickel-brass sandwich band, vulcanite fishtail mouthpiece, consisting mostly of D shapes released for the Danish market. Stamped PETERSON’S in script over “DUBLIN”. A tenth anniversary pipe for the line was produced with a sterling band stamped 2001. Market demand fell shortly thereafter and several pipes stamped “DUBLIN” were released in ’03 for the Fourth of July commemoratives for the US market.

Now I knew a date range for the pipe I was working on – 1992-2003. Since the one I was working on did not have a D shape it is not clear that it was made for the Danish market. However, other than the shape number, the colour, the brass, nickel, brass band and the fishtail stem is the same on the pipe. Now it was time to work on the pipe.

Jeff had done a great job cleaning up the pipe as usual. He reamed the pipe with a PipNet reamer and cut back the cake back to the bare briar. He cleaned up the walls with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He scrubbed the interior of the bowl and shank with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs, shank brushes and alcohol to remove the tars and oils. He scrubbed the exterior of the pipe with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush to remove the grime from the finish. He worked on the rim top lava and the darkened spots with the soap and tooth brush. He scrubbed the inside of the stem with alcohol and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the exterior with Soft Scrub and then soaked it in Briarville Pipe Stem Deoxidizer. He washed it off with warm water to remove the Deoxidizer. The pipe looked far better when it arrived. I took some close up photos of the rim top and also of the stem surface. I wanted to show how well it had cleaned up. The rim top had some looked quite good and the inner edge had some darkening and damage on the front. It should clean up really well. I also took close up photos of the stem to show the light tooth marks on the surface near the button. I took photos of the stamping on the sides of the shank. You can see that it is stamped as noted above. It is clear and readable. I removed the stem and took a photo of the pipe to have a look at the parts and overall look. (The three part band was loose from the clean up and you can see it has turned in the fourth photo below.) I glued the triple band back on the shank carefully aligning it before the glue cured. I used a white all-purpose glue as I find that it works very well.I moved on to address the damage on the rim top and the front inner edge of the bowl. I used a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out the damage and bring the bowl back to round. It looked much better at this point in the process.I polished the briar with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each sanding pad. I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the surface of the briar with my fingertips. It works to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I let it sit for 15 minutes then buffed it off with a soft cloth and raised the shine. The bowl looks great at this point. I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. I “painted” the tooth marks with the flame of a lighter to lift them. I was able to lift them all significantly but a few remained on each side. I filled them in with black, rubberized CA glue. Once the glue cured I flattened the repairs with a small flat file. I sanded the repaired areas with 220 grit sandpaper to further flatten them. I wiped the stem down with an Obsidian Oil cloth when I finished. I sanded the stem with 320-3500 grit sanding pads to continue to blend the repairs into the surface of the vulcanite. I wiped the stem down after each pad with an Obsidian Oil cloth to remove the sanding dust and preserve the vulcanite.I touched up the P stamp on the top of the stem with white acrylic fingernail polish. Once it dried I scraped off the excess and sanded the surface with 1500 grit micromesh pad.I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding it with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped the stem down with Obsidian Oil after each pad. I polished it with Before & After Pipe Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine and gave it a final coat and set it aside to dry. I am excited to finish this Peterson’s “Dublin” 264 Canadian. I put the pipe back together and buffed it with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax. I hand buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad to raise the shine. It is fun to see what the polished bowl looks like with beautiful mixed grain all around it. Added to that the polished black vulcanite stem combined with the bowl and sandwich brass/nickel/brass band on the shank and made a stunning pipe. This smooth Classic Peterson’s “Dublin” 264 Canadian is great looking and the pipe feels great in my hand. It is light and well balanced. Have a look at it with the photos below. The dimensions are Length: 6 inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 1/8 inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 31 grams/1.09 ounces. It is a beautiful pipe that I will soon be putting on the rebornpipes store in the Irish Pipe Makers Section. If you are interested in adding it to your collection send me an email or a message. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me as I worked over this pipe. Thanks to each of you who are reading this blog.

As always, I encourage your questions and comments as you read the blog. Thanks to each of you who are reading this blog. Remember we are not pipe owners; we are pipe men and women who hold our pipes in trust until they pass on into the trust of those who follow us.

Straight Grain Wally Frank Canadian

Leave a reply

by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table is one that we were given by a friend in Naples, Florida, USA on 07/17/2024. The smooth finish, the grain around the bowl sides and rim top along with the stamping on the shank is what caught our eye. It is stamped on the topside of the shank and reads Straight Grain. On the underside it is stamped Wally Frank in block letters. It is a beautifully shaped Canadian with beautiful straight grain around the bowl and the shank. The bowl had been reamed and was quite clean. There was light debris in the bottom of the bowl. The stem is lightly oxidized and there are some light tooth marks and chatter on the top and underside ahead of the button and on the button surface. Jeff took some photos of the pipe to show the general condition of the pipe before he started his clean up. He took some photos of the rim top and bowl from various angles to give me a clear picture of the condition of the rim top and bowl. You can see the clean bowl and the rim top and edges. He included photos that show the top and underside of the stem. It is as described above. Jeff took some photos of the sides and heel of the bowl to show the condition of the finish on the pipe. The photos showed some great grain around the bowl and shank. It is a great looking piece of briar. He took photos of the stamping on the sides of the shank. The stamping was clear and readable as noted above.I remembered a a lot about the brand in that I knew it was an old US pipe and tobacco store in and around New York City. I also knew that they did not make their own pipes but had others carve them from a variety of well known pipe making companies. I wanted to double check and seek more information on the brand before I went to work on this one. To me it certainly looked very British but other than that I had no idea.

I turned first to the Pipephil website (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-w1.html). There was some information on the various stampings and lines of the brand and one matched this one. I also found out though the site that … the brand started in 1930. The pipes came from English, French, Danish, Italian and even US companies. That was a good start I continued by turning to Pipedia for more information and found some helpful clues regarding the pipe (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Frank). I quote:

Wally Frank, Ltd. was one of America’s oldest and most respected names in pipes and tobaccos, beginning in the early 1930’s. Wally Frank operated a chain of tobacco stores in New York City (the flagship store was in Lexington Avenue) and had a vast catalog business for pipes and pipe tobaccos. Their numerous private-label pipes were made by many makers, including Charatan, Sasieni, Weber, and many others. Wally Frank, Ltd. also owned the Pioneer brand of meerschaum pipes, made from both Turkish and African meerschaum. In addition to importing pipes, he had many pipes made in his own name and also employed pipemakers like Peter Stokkebye, Svend Bang, and Ed Burak (who later became the owner of Connoisseur). As a result, each Wally Frank pipe must be individually evaluated on its own merit.

In 1952, Wally Frank was on a buying trip in Italy and “discovered” pipe maker Carlo Scotti. Frank liked Scotti’s pipes, but there was the small problem of Scotti’s pipes bearing the same trademark or logo as one of Wally Frank’s pipe lines, the White Bar. The two men decided on creating a new logo for pipes sold in the U.S.: a hole drilled in the stem and with a piece of silver foil inserted in the hole and covered with clear Lucite.

Wally Frank (the person) wrote the forward to Georges Herment’s 1954 book “The Pipe.”

There was also a great catalog page on the Straight Grain on the site that I thought was helpful so I have included it below (https://pipedia.org/wiki/File:WallyFrankImmortal11.jpg).There was also a catalogue page of what are called Wally Frank Straigh Grain “Seconds” that also has helpful information(https://pipedia.org/wiki/File:WallyFrank16.jpg). I have included a copy of that below.Armed with that information I turned to work on the pipe itself. Jeff had done a great job cleaning up the pipe as usual. He cleaned up the inside of the bowl with a PipNet reamer and a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. The bowl walls looked very good. He scrubbed the interior of the bowl and shank with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and alcohol to remove the tars and oils. He scrubbed the exterior of the pipe with Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush to remove the grime from the finish. He worked on the rim top lava and darkening with the soap and tooth brush. He scrubbed the inside of the stem with alcohol and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the exterior with Soft Scrub and then soaked it in Briarville’s Pipe Stem Deoxidizer. He washed it off with warm water to remove the deoxidizer. The pipe looked far better. I took photos of the pipe when I received it before I started working on it. I took a close up photo of the rim top and stem surface to show the condition after the clean up. The bowl was in good condition though the rim top and edges showed some darkening. The stem surface showed some oxidation and some light tooth marks and chatter on both sides.The stamping on the shank was readable as noted above. I took the stem off the pipe and took a photo of the pipe in proportion. It is a beautiful pipe. The bowl and shank had a topcoat of varnish on the surface. From my examination of it was spotty and did not fully or evenly cover the briar surface. I decided to remove that topcoat finish with isopropyl alcohol on a cotton pad. It easily removed the varnish coat and the smooth briar surface was much better. I polished the bowl sides, bevelled rim top and the inner edge of the rim with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped it down after each sanding pad to remove the sanding debris. The pipe looked much improved at this point. I rubbed the bowl down with Before & After Restoration Balm working it into the briar with my fingertips to clean, enliven and protect it. I let the balm sit for 15 minutes and then buffed with a cotton cloth to raise the shine. Mark Hoover’s Balm is a product that I have come to appreciate and one I use on every pipe I have been working on. Looking at the stem in bright light I could see some oxidation starting mid stem going to the button. While the chatter and tooth marks were light the oxidation was quite deep and only visible in bright lights. I sanded the stem with 320-3500 grit sanding pads. I wiped the stem down with an Obsidian Oil cloth after each sanding pad. I think I finally beat the oxidation.I polished it with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads and wiping the surface down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. It is really shining. I polished it further with Before & After Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine. I gave it another coat of Obsidian Oil to finish this step. I put the stem back on the Wally Frank Straight Grain Canadian and took it to the buffer. I worked it over with Blue Diamond to polish out the remaining small scratches. I gave the bowl and the stem several coats of carnauba wax and 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 really well and the bevelled rim top looked good. I was happy with the look of the finished pipe. The photos below show what the pipe looks like after the restoration. This Wally Frank Straight Grain Canadian is a beautiful and unique take on a classic shape. The polished vulcanite taper stem looks really good with the browns of the briar. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 6 inches, Height: 2 inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ½ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 1.69 ounces/48 grams. This is another pipe that I will be putting it on the rebornpipes store in the American Pipe Makers Section shortly, if you are interested in adding it to your collection. The long shank and tall bowl look and feel great in the hand. This one should be a great smoker. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me on this beauty!

New Life for a Fischer Buffalo NY Supreme Short Snorter with a Vulcanite Saddle Stem

Leave a reply

by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table is one that we picked up from a seller in Harrison Township, Michigan, USA on 08/22/2024. The smooth finish, the grain around the bowl sides and rim top along with the stamping on the shank is what caught our eye. It is stamped on the left side of the shank and reads Fischer [over] Buffalo, N. Y. On the right side it is stamped Supreme. It is a short stubby Pot shaped pipe that I have called a short snorter or nose warmer. The bowl a thick cake and the inner edge and the top show some thick lava overflow. The stem is lightly oxidized and there are some light tooth marks and chatter on the top and underside ahead of the button and on the button surface. Jeff took some photos of the pipe to show the general condition of the pipe before he started his clean up. He took some photos of the rim top and bowl from various angles to give me a clear picture of the condition of the rim top and bowl. You can see the lava on the rim top and edges as well as the cake in the bowl. He included photos that show the top and underside of the stem. It is as described above. Jeff took some photos of the sides and heel of the bowl to show the condition of the finish on the pipe. The photos showed some great grain around the bowl and shank. It is a great looking piece of briar. He took photos of the stamping on the sides of the shank. The stamping was clear and readable as noted above.I turned to Pipephil’s site (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-f2.html) and looked up the Fischer brand. I found the listing below and have included both a screen capture and the side bar notes. The stamping is the same as the one on the pipe I am working on.Store closed in 1978. Former address: House of Fischer, 1722 Boston Ridge Road, Orchard Park, NY.

I then turned to Pipedia to the section that was listed for US pipe makers/manufacturers (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Fischer) to see if I could find out more information. I have included the article below.

Gustav Fischer was pipe maker for “The House of Fischer’, which was located in Orchard Park, NY, near Buffalo. The Fischer family apparently made pipes for six generations, starting in Germany and continuing in the United States until the 1970s. Their literature from 1956 said that all their briars were bench made. They also made meerschaums, but some confusion is caused by the fact that there was also Gustav Fischer, who made meerschaum pipes in Boston during roughly the same period.

The article went on to give information on the Fischer from Orchard Park, NY. I quote from that below.

The following information is gleaned from a thread on PipesMagazine.com

PIPES BY THE HOUSE OF FISCHER, ORCHARD PARK NY
Fischer pipes were made in USA through the 1950’s up to late 1978 when the owner, Paul Fischer retired, sold the store and moved to Florida in 1978. Unfortunately, The House of Fischer did not use a date stamp on their pipes, and therefore it is not possible to determine the exact date of manufacture.

Lee Pattison writes the following:

The Fischer shop in Buffalo closed in the late 1950’s last run by Arthur Fischer who moved shop to his home in Orchard Park. Arthur was the last of the family and retired 1978. Early pipes made in shop in Buffalo were stamped Buffalo in loop below name. Art deleted this from the stamp in early on 1960’s which helps in partial dating. Art did only pipe repair and sales. An unconfirmed report from a pipe maker Milton Kalnitz from the same era stated that the later pipe may have been made by Weber. Paul Fisher was part of the unrelated family in Boston Mass. The Buffalo shop started about 1890’s. Source of info was personal contact with family.

FISCHER PIPE QUALITY GRADE STAMPS
This is a list of various Fischer pipe stampings from my personal collection of over sixty Fischer pipes accumulated over the past forty plus years. It is by no means meant to be all-inclusive, however, if you find more Fischer pipe stampings please email me so I can update my list.

  1. Fischer Supreme
  2. Fischer Royal
  3. Fischer Imperial
  4. Fischer Golden 15
  5. Fischer 15 Grand
  6. Fischer 25 Grand
  7. Fischer Ramsgate
  8. Fischer Deluxe
  9. Fischer Special
  10. Fischer Texan (for which they applied for a patent)
  11. Fischer Seconds

The list of Quality Grade Stamps shows one with the Supreme stamp at number 1. The Short-shanked Pot has some great grain on the bowl and shank. I do know that is was made before the removal of the Buffalo stamp on the shank in the early 1960s.

Armed with that information I turned to work on the pipe itself. Jeff had done a great job cleaning up the pipe as usual. He cleaned up the inside of the bowl with a PipNet reamer and a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. The bowl walls looked very good. He scrubbed the interior of the bowl and shank with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and alcohol to remove the tars and oils. He scrubbed the exterior of the pipe with Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush to remove the grime from the finish. He worked on the rim top lava and darkening with the soap and tooth brush. He scrubbed the inside of the stem with alcohol and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the exterior with Soft Scrub and then soaked it in Briarville’s Pipe Stem Deoxidizer. He washed it off with warm water to remove the deoxidizer. The pipe looked far better. I took photos of the pipe when I received it before I started working on it. I took a close up photo of the rim top and stem surface to show the condition after the clean up. The bowl was in good condition though the rim top and edges showed some darkening. The stem surface showed the light tooth marks and chatter on both sides. The stamping on the shank was readable as noted above. I took the stem off the pipe and took a photo of the pipe in proportion. It is a beautiful pipe. I sanded the inner edge and the darkening remaining on the rim top with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper. It looked significantly better once finished.I sanded the bowl and rim with 320-3500 grit 2 inch sanding pads to clean up the scratching and darkening around the bowl sides and top. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each pad. I polished the smooth portion of the bowl sides and the inner edge of the rim with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped it down after each sanding pad to remove the sanding debris. The smooth portions and bevelled inner edge looked much better at this point. I rubbed the bowl down with Before & After Restoration Balm working it into the briar with my fingertips and a horsehair shoe brush to clean, enliven and protect it. I let the balm sit for 15 minutes and then buffed with a cotton cloth to raise the shine. Mark Hoover’s Balm is a product that I have come to appreciate and one I use on every pipe I have been working on. I set the bowl aside and turned to the stem. I “painted” the surface with the flame of a lighter to lift the tooth marks on the stem and button surface. I was able to lift many of them. I filled in the remaining marks on the button and stem with rubberized black CA glue. Once it cured I use a small file to flatten the repairs. I sanded it smooth with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper. I sanded the stem with 320-3500 grit sanding pads. I wiped the stem down with an Obsidian Oil cloth after each sanding pad.It was ready for the next step. I polished it with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads and wiping the surface down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. It is really shining. I polished it further with Before & After Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine. I gave it another coat of Obsidian Oil to finish this step. I put the stem back on the Fischer Supreme Nosewarmer Pot and took it to the buffer. I worked it over with Blue Diamond to polish out the remaining small scratches. I gave the bowl and the stem several coats of carnauba wax and 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 really well and the bevelled rim top looked good. I was happy with the look of the finished pipe. The photos below show what the pipe looks like after the restoration. This Fischer Supreme Pot is a beautiful and unique take on a classic shape. The polished vulcanite saddle stem looks really good with the browns of the briar. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 4 ¾ inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ½ inches, Chamber diameter: 7/8 of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 2.01 ounces/57 grams. This is another pipe that I will be putting it on the rebornpipes store in the American Pipe Makers Section shortly, if you are interested in adding it to your collection. The long shank and tall bowl look and feel great in the hand. This one should be a great smoker. Thanks for walking through the restoration with me on this beauty!

Restoring an Unusual Meerschaum with a Bamboo Shank

Leave a reply

by Kenneth Lieblich

I was pleasantly surprised to find this pipe recently at a local thrift shop. The thrift shops around here don’t usually carry tobacco pipes and, those that do, normally offer nothing but the dregs of the pipe world. In this case, I found a charming, simple, and beautiful billiard pipe. The bowl is made of block meerschaum, the shank is made of bamboo, and the tapered stem is made of vulcanite. Its seemingly conventional design belies a slightly enigmatic history. I must admit, I am tempted to keep this one in my own collection, but maybe one of you will talk me into selling it. The only marks on this pipe are underneath the bowl, and read Genuine Block [over] Meerschaum. Annoyingly, there were no marks on the stem, shank, or anywhere else. Having said that, however, it did lead me to think that this pipe was manufactured on the Isle of Man. I have restored a few pipes from the Isle of Man and Steve has restored countless pipes from there. In a recent blog post, Steve wrote the following:

My research on the origins of [this pipe] can be summarized like this: It was made with African Meerschaum from the Tanganyika Meerschaum Corporation and produced by Laxey Pipe Ltd. on the Isle of Man.Here is some information from Pipedia about meerschaum production on the Isle of Man:

Laxey Pipes Ltd. resided in a historical 19th century four-storey Man stone building at The Quay, Old Laxey, Isle of Man, which thankfully has been preserved.

The company specialised in the production of meerschaum pipes using the Meerschaum mined by the Tanganyika Meerschaum Corporation in the Amboseli basin in Tanganyika (since 1964 part of the United Republic of Tanzania).

Please note: you may often find names like “Manx Pipes Ltd.”, “Man Pipe Co.” and others more, but there is no indication of another Isle of Man pipe producer other than Laxey Pipe Ltd. at any time!

 Laxey Pipes Ltd. marketed own brands like “Manxpipe”, “Manxman”, “Manxland” e.c. Names like “John Bull”, “White Knight” (unwaxed), “Domino” (black, or lined) indicated some shapes / colours of Laxey’s own series. The stems either showed the astronomical sign for “male” or “man” (circle + arrow), or the crest of the Isle of Man, the 3-legged X in a circle. Manxpipes and Laxey’s other brands were available through pipe retailers in general, but also were sold (mainly) to tourists through their own shop in Laxey.

Furthermore Laxey Pipes Ltd. manufactured the meer bowls for Peterson, Barling, Nørding and others from the later 1960’s until 2001. Man Pipe e.g. was a brand distributed by Comoy’s. The bowls usually showed no nomenclature indicating the orderer. “Genuine Block Meerschaum” was engraved frequently. Often, just the stems were different, while bowls were the same.

Supply of meerschaum from East Africa run out (Kenya / Tanzania exhausted, Somalia inaccessible), and thus the last Laxey meers were supplied to trade in May, 2001. Laxey Pipes Ltd. tried to survive continuing with briar pipes – mainly in the Danish style -, but to no success. It closed down business in July, 2002.Despite the paucity of maker’s marks on my pipe, the style of the marks that are there leads me to believe that this is a Manx-made pipe. One major detail that made me harrumph a bit was the bamboo shank. I wasn’t familiar with Laxey making bamboo shanked pipes. Steve commented that the pipe was not unlike pipes from the Kaywoodie Mandarin line of bamboo-shanked pipes. Again, however, as far as I know, the Mandarin line never included meerschaum. Steve asserts, however, that Kaywoodie did produce a bamboo-meerschaum pipe. Here is an example of an unbranded bamboo meer found on eBay. Not only does the pipe have no identifying marks, but the seller had no information either.The combination of meerschaum and bamboo in pipes is certainly not unprecedented in the 21st century. For example, one can find some spectacular examples from Walt Cannoy, Ryan Alden, and the famous Turkish maker, Said Altınay. Here is a beautiful example from him:As a side note, Altınay’s website includes an interesting note on the history of bamboo in pipemaking. I provide a brief quotation:

Bamboo began appearing in briar pipe construction in the early 20th century. The earliest known pioneer of this style is believed to be Sixten Ivarsson, the Danish pipe-making legend, who introduced bamboo shanks in the mid-1900s as both an aesthetic and practical innovation. The concept soon spread, embraced by artisans such as Tom Eltang, Tokutomi, and Takahiro Hibi, who elevated the use of bamboo into a form of fine art. Its appeal was twofold: the natural lightweight strength and the distinctive, organic appearance. While traditional briar offered durability and familiarity, bamboo introduced character, contrast, and subtle resilience — giving each pipe a unique signature.

Obviously, the pipe I found is not on the order of a Cannoy, Alden, or Altınay! But I also feel comfortable in saying that this pipe is a lot older than those fellows’ pipes. I would be interested in hearing from YOU if you know more about the marriage of meerschaum and bamboo in pipemaking. Thank you kindly.

The pipe was in generally good condition and didn’t seem too challenging to clean up. There was a bit of scratching, etc. on the stem, but nothing serious. The bamboo shank was aged, but perfectly sound. Finally, the meerschaum bowl was well worn, but not bad at all.I used oil soap on a few cotton rounds and wiped down the stem to provide an initial cleaning of filth before moving on to the next steps. The primary cleaning came next. I disinfected the inside of the stem with both pipe cleaners and cotton swabs dipped in lemon-infused 99% isopropyl alcohol. I scrubbed thoroughly to make sure the interior was very clean.The goal of the next step is the removal (or minimization) of oxidation. Going to my sink, I used cream cleanser, cotton rounds, and a toothbrush, and scoured the stem to remove as much surface oxidation as possible. As the photos show, the result was a hideous, brownish mess – but better off the stem than on it.Once the stem was reasonably clean, I soaked it overnight in some Briarville Stem Oxidation Remover. This solution works to draw oxidation in the stem to the surface of the vulcanite. This is a major aid and an important step in ensuring a clean stem. The following day, I drew out the stem from its bath and scrubbed the lingering fluid with a toothbrush.As the stem was now clean and dry, I set about fixing the marks in the vulcanite. This was done by filling those divots with black cyanoacrylate adhesive, impregnated with carbon and rubber. I left this to cure and moved on.The penultimate step for the stem is sanding. First, with my set of needle files, I reduced the bulk of the cyanoacrylate repairs. I removed the excess adhesive as near to the surface as possible, without cutting into the vulcanite. Following that, I used all nine of the micromesh sanding pads (1,500 through 12,000 grit) to sand out flaws, even out the vulcanite, and provide gentle polishing of the finished surface. I also applied pipe-stem oil while using the last five micromesh pads. There was a wonderful, deep black shine to the stem when I was done. Alas, I forgot to take photos of this step.

The inside of the shank needed to be cleaned thoroughly. Similar to the stem, I then cleaned it with both pipe cleaners and cotton swabs dipped in lemon-infused 99% isopropyl alcohol.I didn’t sand the bamboo in any way, but I did rub it with some LBE Before & After Restoration Balm and let it sit for 30 minutes or so. The balm moisturizes the bamboo and gives a beautiful depth to it. I then buffed the shank with a microfibre cloth.I moved on to the bowl. The first step was to ream it out – that is to say, remove all the cake inside the bowl. This accomplished a couple of things. First (and most obviously), it cleaned the bowl and provided a refurbished chamber for future smoking. Second, when the old cake was removed, I could inspect the interior walls of the bowl and determine if there was damage or not. Given the more fragile nature of meerschaum and the relative cleanliness of the smoking chamber, I only used a piece of sandpaper taped to a wooden dowel to clean things out. This was sufficient to ensure that all the debris was removed. My next step was to remove the lava on the rim. For this, I took a piece of machine steel and gently scraped the lava away. The metal’s edge is sharp enough to remove what I need, but not so sharp that it damages the rim.I then cleaned the entrance to the bowl with both pipe cleaners and cotton swabs dipped in lemon-infused 99% isopropyl alcohol. This was done cautiously, as too much liquid can cause softening of the meerschaum. Due to my care, no such problems were encountered. I used all nine micromesh pads (1,500 through 12,000 grit) to sand the outside of the bowl and finish it off. This sanding minimizes flaws in the meerschaum and provides a beautiful smoothness to it. As the photos show, I masked the darkened portion of the bowl with tape so as not to remove it while sanding. I rubbed some Clapham’s Beeswax Polish into the meerschaum and let it dry thoroughly. Then I buffed it carefully with a microfibre cloth. Ooo – what a shine! For the final step, I took the pipe to my bench polisher and carefully buffed it – first with a blue diamond compound, then with three coats of carnauba wax. This procedure makes the pipe look its best – the stummel sings and the stem glows.

All done! This bamboo meerschaum billiard looks fantastic again and I am delighted with the results. As I mentioned before, I might keep this for myself, but you’re welcome to reach out to me if you’re interested in acquiring it: kenneth@knightsofthepipe.com. The approximate dimensions of the pipe are as follows: length 5⅝ in. (142 mm); height 1¾ in. (44 mm); bowl diameter 1⅜ in. (36 mm); chamber diameter ¾ in. (18 mm). The weight of the pipe is ¾ oz. (24 g). I hope you enjoyed reading the story of this pipe’s restoration as much as I enjoyed restoring it. If you are interested in more of my work, please follow me here on Steve’s website or send me an email. Thank you very much for reading and, as always, I welcome and encourage your comments.

Restoring a Beautiful Royal Danish 989 Made in Denmark Pot

Leave a reply

By Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table is one that we picked up in an estate lot from a seller in Sacramento, California, USA on 09/03/2024. The sandblast finish with two smooth panels looking like a Stanwell style pipe is what caught our eye. It is stamped on the underside of the shank and reads Royal Danish [over] Made in Denmark to the right it is stamped with a shape number 989. That is followed by R. It has a classic sandblast finish and the smooth panels on the sides of the bowl are a stark contrast to vulcanite, faux military taper stem. There is Royal Danish Crown logo on the right side of the stem and looks to be in good condition. The seller sent the following photo of the pipes that we purchased. The pipe I am working on is the one on the top of the right column in the photo below.Jeff took some photos of the pipe to show the general condition of the pipe before he started his clean up. The bowl appears to be lightly caked at first glance but could be thicker deeper in the bowl. The inner edge and the top show some lava overflow. The stem is oxidized and calcified which is quite normal for what I see. There are some tooth marks and chatter on the top and underside ahead of the button and on the button surface. He took some photos of the rim top and bowl from various angles to give me a clear picture of the condition of the rim top and bowl. You can see the lava on the rim top and edges as well as part of the cake in the bowl. He included photos that show the top and underside of the stem. It is as described above. Jeff took some photos of the sides and heel of the bowl to show the condition of the finish on the pipe. The photos showed some great grain around the bowl and shank. It is a great looking piece of briar. He took a photo of the stamping on the underside of the shank. The stamping was clear and readable as noted above. He also took a photo of the Crown logo on the left side of the saddle stem. It shows the faint stamping on the stem.Regardless of when this specific briar was made, the shape is very much a 1960s Danish one. I turned to Pipephil’s site and quickly scanned the article on Stanwell getting a great overview of the history. I went through the photos and did not find the shape of the pipe that I was working on (http://pipephil.eu/logos/en/logo-r6.html). There was one that showed the mixed finish of the Royal Danish line – sandblast with smooth patches on each side of the bowl. I have included a screen capture of that section below.I then turned to Pipedia and found that the Royal Danish was also listed as a second or a sub-brand made by Stanwell (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Stanwell#Sub-brands_.2F_Seconds). I have included the list of seconds from the site below. I have highlighted the Royal Danish in blue in the text.

Sub-brands / Seconds – Bijou (discontinued), Danish Quaint, Danish Sovereign, Danske Club, Henley (discontinued), Kong Christian (discontinued), Majestic, Reddish (discontinued), Royal Danish, Royal Guard, Royal Sovereign, Sailor (discontinued), Scandia, Sorn (discontinued), Svendson.

There was also an interesting advertising page on the Danish Briars by Stanwell. The first one on the list was the Royal Danish. The description of the line is clear and concise, be sure to read it below.Now I knew that I was dealing with a Stanwell made pipe in the line called Royal Danish. That line is described as “dark walnut sandblast with smooth side panels…” That matches the pipe I am working on now and now it is time to do the work on it.

Jeff had cleaned up the pipe following his normal cleaning process. In short, he reamed the bowl with a PipNet pipe reamer and cleaned up the reaming with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife.  He scrubbed the smooth bowl with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap with a tooth brush. He worked over the lava and debris on the rim top and was able to remove it. He rinsed it under running warm water to remove the soap and grime. He cleaned out the inside of the shank and the airway in the stem with alcohol, cotton swabs, shank brushes and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the stem with Soft Scrub and cotton pads to remove the debris and oils on the stem. He soaked it in a bath of Briarville’s Pipe Stem Deoxidizer to remove the oxidation. He rinsed it with warm water and dried it off. I took photos of the pipe once I received it. It really looked good. I took a close up photo of the rim top and stem surface to show the condition after the clean up. The bowl was in good condition though the rim top and edges looked very good. The stem surface showed the light tooth marks and chatter on both sides. The stamping on the shank was readable as noted above. I took the stem off the pipe and took a photo of the pipe in proportion. It is a beautiful pipe.I polished the smooth portion of the bowl sides and the inner edge of the rim with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit sanding pads. I wiped it down after each sanding pad to remove the sanding debris. The smooth portions and bevelled inner edge looked much better at this point. I rubbed the bowl down with Before & After Restoration Balm working it into the briar with my fingertips and a horsehair shoe brush to clean, enliven and protect it. I let the balm sit for 15 minutes and then buffed with a cotton cloth to raise the shine. Mark Hoover’s Balm is a product that I have come to appreciate and one I use on every pipe I have been working on. I set the bowl aside and turned to the stem. I “painted” the surface with the flame of a lighter to lift the tooth marks on the stem and button surface. I was able to lift many of them. I filled in the remaining marks on the button and stem with rubberized black CA glue. Once it cured I use a small file to flatten the repairs. I sanded it smooth with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper. I sanded the stem with 320-3500 grit sanding pads. I wiped the stem down with an Obsidian Oil cloth after each sanding pad.I touched up the stamping in the vulcanite on the top of the saddle portion of the stem. I used white acrylic fingernail polish to refresh the Crown on the top of the saddle. Once it hardened I sanded it with a 1500 grit micromesh sanding pads. I wiped it down with Obsidian Oil. As usual at this point in the restoration process I am excited to be on the homestretch. I look forward to the final look when it is put back together, polished and waxed. I put the Stanwell Royal Danish Made in Denmark 989 Saddle Stem Pot back together and it is a beauty. I polished the bowl and stem with Blue Diamond to polish the briar and the vulcanite. 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 really pops with the wax and polish. The shiny black vulcanite saddle stem is a beautiful contrast to the browns of the bowl. This Royal Danish 989 Saddle Stem Pot was a great pipe to spruce up. It is a very comfortable pipe to hold in the hand. The finished pipe is shown in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 6 ½ inches, Height: 1 ½ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¾ inches, Chamber diameter: 1 inch. The weight of the pipe is 54 grams/1.87 ounces. I will be putting this pipe on the Danish Pipe Making Companies Section of the rebornpipes store. If you are interested in adding it to your collection let me know by email or message. Thanks for reading this blog and my reflections on the pipe while I worked on it. This is an interesting estate to bring back to life.

Restoring a Father’s Legacy of 10 Brigham Pipes Gathered throughout his life #5

Leave a reply

by Steve Laug

Last month I was contacted by Donna to see if I knew anyone interested in purchasing her father’s pipes. She wrote as follows: “I am wondering if you would be interested in my father’s collection of Brighams.” She further spelled out what he had in the collection. He had 1 – 2 dot pipe, 3 – 3 dot pipes, 2 – 4 dot pipes and 4 – 5 dot pipes. There was a total of 10 pipes. I asked for a photo of the pipes and she sent the photo below. I was very interested.We emailed back and forth and the short story is that I paid for the collection and she shipped the pipes to me. On Tuesday after Easter the box arrived and I was happy to be able to see them up close. They were obviously well-loved pipes and in varying degrees of needing work. I wrote her and told I received them and that I was pleased with the lot. I was looking forward to working on them. She asked me to send her photos along the way as I finished the pipes. I will be sending her the links to the blog so she can see the work and the process of bringing them back to a semblance of their original beauty. Thanks Donna for the opportunity to work on your Dad’s pipes.

The fifth of the pipes I have chosen to work on from the lot was the one sitting at the top of the right column in the photo above. I would call the pipe a Billiard shaped pipe with a vulcanite taper stem. It is stamped on the underside of the shank and reads Brigham in script [over] Canada. On the heel it has the shape number 303. The stamping will help me date the pipe. From the cake in the bowl and the other pipes I could tell her Dad love aromatic tobaccos. This pipe was heavily caked with an overflow of lava on the rim top and on the inner and outer edges of the bowl. There was burn damage on the rim top and inner edge. The shank end even that had a coating of tar build up. The finish was smooth with three rusticated panels shaped like leaves on the right and left side. The stem did not sit all the way in the shank so I assumed it was very dirty in the shank. I removed the stem and the Hard Rock Maple Distillator was missing in the tenon. The shank was black, tarry and oily. The stem was dirty, calcified and oxidized with thick oil and tar in the airway from the tenon to the button. There were light tooth marks and chatter on both sides ahead of the button. The left side of the taper stem bore three brass pins in a triangle or pyramid format. That would also help with identifying the pipe. I took some photos of the pipe before I started my work on it. I took a photo of the bowl and rim top to show the cake in the bowl. The rim top had a thick coat of lava overflowing down the crowned top with some possible damage around the inner edge. I took photos of the top and underside of the stem showing the light tooth chatter on the vulcanite stem surface. It is heavily oxidized and calcified and is quite dirty.The stamping is very clear and it reads as noted above. I removed the stem from the shank and took a photo of the parts to show the look of the pipe. I have captured the pattern of the three brass dots on the stem. For the needed background I am including the information from Pipedia on Brigham pipes. It is a great read in terms of the history of the brand (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Pipes). Charles Lemon (Dadspipes) has written book on the history of the brand. This article is a good summary. I have included it below.

Roy Brigham, after serving an apprenticeship under an Austrian pipesmith, started his own pipe repair shop in Toronto, in 1906. By 1918 the business had grown to include five other craftsmen and had developed a reputation across Canada for the high quality of workmanship. After repairing many different brands of pipes over the years, Roy noted certain recurring complaints by pipe smokers, the most common referred to as “tongue bite”. Tongue bite is a burning sensation on the smoker’s tongue, previously thought to be due to the heat of the smoke (i.e. a “hot smoking pipe”).

He soon began manufacturing his own pipes, which were lightweight, yet featured a more rugged construction, strengthening the weak points observed in other pipes. The problem of tongue bite intrigued him, and he decided to make overcoming it a future goal.

About 1938, Roy’s son Herb joined him to assist in the business. The business barely survived the great depression because pipes were considered to be a luxury, not a necessity, and selling pipes was difficult indeed. In approximately 1937 [1], after some experimentation, Roy and Herb discovered that tongue bite was in fact a form of mild chemical burn to the tongue, caused by tars and acids in the smoke. They found that by filtering the smoke, it was possible to retain the flavour of the tobacco and yet remove these impurities and thereby stop the tongue bite.

Just as Thomas Edison had searched far and wide for the perfect material from which to make the first electric light bulb filaments, Roy & Herb began experimenting with many materials, both common and exotic, in the quest for the perfect pipe filter. Results varied wildly. Most of the materials didn’t work at all and some actually imparted their own flavour into the smoke. They eventually found just two materials that were satisfactory in pipes: bamboo and rock maple. As bamboo was obviously not as readily available, rock maple then became the logical choice.

They were able to manufacture a replaceable hollow wooden tube made from rock maple dowelling, which when inserted into a specially made pipe, caused absolutely no restriction to the draw of the pipe, yet extracted many of the impurities which had caused tongue bite. The result was indeed a truly better smoking pipe…

I then turned to a second article by Charles Lemon called, “A Closer Look at the Dots, Dates, and Markings of Brigham Pipes” to be able to pin down the time frame that the pipe was made in and to help interpret the stampings and shape number on the pipe. Here is the link to his article (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Pipes_%E2%80%93_A_Closer_Look_at_Dots,_Dates_and_Markings).

I have dubbed the decades between 1980 and 2000 the Late Canadian Era, a period that saw several changes at Brigham that are of note to the collector. First, the traditional 8-grade pinning system (the famous Brigham “Dots” which denoted the quality of the pipe) was changed to a 7-grade system to simplify pinning (more on this below), and the Norsemen and Valhalla series were merged to form the President Series, which represented the very finest pipes coming out of the Toronto factory. Early pipes from this era (left, below) are stamped with a shape number and “Brigham” over “Canada”; later pipes (late 1980s+, on right below) are stamped simply with a shape number and the Brigham logo.

I read further in the article to the section entitled Revised Dot System 1980. I quote from that below.

Brigham changed the Dot system in 1980, adding a 7 Dot at the top of the line, dropping the names of each series and eliminating the confusing vertical and horizontal 3 Dot configurations. The Norsemen and Valhalla series were combined to form the President series of freehand pipes, which adopted a 3 Dot pattern with a larger dot on the right as shown below. The 7- grade pinning system stayed in place from 1980 to 2001. With the information from article and the chart above I knew what I was dealing with in terms of the stamping and the age of this pipe. I learned that this Late Canadian Era was made between 1980-2000. The pipe is a Brigham (3-Dot) 303, a Crowned Rim Billiard to my mind. The Brigham Canada stamping pins it down to the period between 1990-2001 when the aluminum tenon was replaced.

I started my work on the pipe by reaming the bowl with a PipNet reamer. I used the first and second cutting heads and took the cake back to bare briar. I cleaned up the reaming with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife and removed all the remnants of the cake. I scraped the rim top with the flat edge of the blade at the same time and removed most of the thick lava build up. I sanded the walls of the bowl with a piece of dowel wrapped in 220 grit sandpaper. The walls look very good at his point in the process. I cleaned out the shank, the airway and the deep mortise with alcohol, cotton swabs, hard bristle and soft bristle pipe cleaners. It was a very dirty pipe which just meant that Donna’s Dad had really enjoyed and used this pipe. I cleaned the inside of the aluminum tenon and the airway in the stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners in the same way as I did the shank. It also was very dirty.I scrubbed the exterior of the bowl and shank with a tooth brush and undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap. I scrubbed the lava on the rim top and overflow on the outside of the bowl with the soap. I rinsed  the briar with warm water to remove the grime and debris of the scrubbing. It looked significantly better after the scrubbing. The damage on the bowl front and rim top is very clear. The rim top and inner bevelled edge were going to take a lot of shaping work. I also cleaned up the front of the bowl to remove the darkening and reshape the top edge with a piece of 220 grit sandpaper.I cleaned the briar again with Before & After Briar Cleaner from Mark Hoover. I worked it into the briar to remove more of the dark spots after sanding and rinsed it off with warm water. I dried if off with a soft cloth. It looks better. I sanded the smooth parts of the bowl and rim to remove the damage from the burns and to minimize the darkening on the front of the bowl. I sanded it with 320-3500 grit sanding pads to remove the sanding and shaping marks as well as the darkening on the rim top. I polished it with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding it with 1200-15000 grit pads. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each sanding pad. The grain really started to rise to the surface as I polished it. I rubbed the bowl and shank down with Before & After Restoration Balm to deep clean the finish on the bowl and shank. The product works to clean, enliven and protect the briar. I worked it in with my fingers to get it into the briar. I used a horsehair shoe brush to work it into the sand blast. I let it sit for 10 minutes then I wiped it off and buffed it with a soft cloth. The briar really began to have a rich shine. I took some photos of the bowl at this point to mark the progress in the restoration. It is a beautiful bowl. I scrubbed the oxidation on the stem with Soft Scrub cleanser and was able to remove a large amount of it. I sanded the area around the button edge and the remaining oxidation with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper. Progress was happening! I sanded the surface of the vulcanite with the 2 inch sanding pads – 320-3500 grit pads to remove the remaining oxidation. I dry sanded the surface until I have removed all of the oxidation and the stem started to really shine.I refit the aluminum tenon with the new Brigham Rock Maple Distillator. It is a unique and cool smoking experience. I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. I wiped the stem down after each sanding pad with Obsidian Oil. I polished the stem with Before & After Pipe Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine. I gave it a coat of Obsidian Pipe Stem Oil. It works to protect the stem from oxidizing. I set it aside to dry. The final steps in my process involve using the buffer. I buffed the bowl and stem with Blue Diamond to polish out the light scratches in the briar and the vulcanite. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax. I have found that I can get a deeper shine if I follow up the wax buff with a buff with a clean buffing pad. It works to raise the shine and then I hand buff with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. It is always fun for me to see what the polished bowl looks like with the polished stem. It really is a nice pipe. The smooth tall bowl sides and the rusticated blaze on the left shank side looks great with the yellow acrylic stem. The Brigham 303 Crowned Rim Billiard with a vulcanite taper stem feels great in my hand. It is a well balanced pipe. Have a look at it with the photos below. The dimensions are Length: 6 inches, Height: 2 inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 1/4 inches, Chamber diameter: 3/4 of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 1.66 ounces/47 grams. It is a beautiful pipe that I will soon be adding to the rebornpipes store in the Canadian Pipemakers Section. If you would like to add it to your collection let me know. It should be a great smoking pipe.

As always, I encourage your questions and comments as you read the blog. Thanks to each of you who are reading this blog. Remember we are not pipe owners; we are pipe men and women who hold our pipes in trust until they pass on into the trust of those who follow us.

New Life for a Dunhill Bruyere 251 F/T Made in England9 Fish Tail Stem Billiard

Leave a reply

by Steve Laug

The next pipe on the table is one that we picked up in the lot from a seller in Ogden, Utah, USA on 12/12/2024. The Bruyere finish and the Dunhill stamping is what caught our eye. It is stamped on the left side of the shank and reads 251F/T next to the bowl/shank union followed by Dunhill [over] Bruyere. On the right side it is stamped Made in [over] England9. That is followed by a circled 3A. It has a classic Bruyere smooth finish that is a stark contrast to vulcanite taper stem. The bowl appears to be moderately caked at first glance but could be thicker deeper in the bowl. The inner edge and the top show some lava overflow. The stem is oxidized and calcified which is quite normal for what I see. It also seems to have marks from a Softee Bit and some tooth marks and chatter on the top and underside ahead of the button. The classic white spot is on the top of the stem and looks to be in good condition. Jeff took some photos of the pipe to show the general condition of the pipe before he started his clean up. He took some photos of the rim top and bowl from various angles to give me a clear picture of the condition of the rim top and bowl. You can see the lava on the rim top and edges as well as part of the cake in the bowl. He included photos that show the top and underside of the stem. It is as described above. There was also an aluminum inner tube in the tenon. Jeff took some photos of the sides and heel of the bowl to show the condition of the finish on the pipe. The photos showed some great grain around the bowl and shank. It is a great looking piece of briar.He took some photos of the stamping on the sides of the bowl and shank. The stamping was clear and readable as noted above. I turned to Pipedia’s section on Dunhill Root Briar Pipes to get a bit of background on the Dunhill finishes (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill#Root_Briar). I quote:

Bruyere

The original finish produced (usually made using Calabrian briar), and a big part of developing and marketing the brand. It was the only finish from 1910 until 1917. A dark reddish-brown stain. Before the 1950s, there were three possible finishes for Dunhill pipes. The Bruyere was a smooth finish with a deep red stain, obtained through two coats, a brown understain followed by a deep red.

There was a link on the above site to a section specifically written regarding the Bruyere finish (https://pipedia.org/wiki/Dunhill_Bruyere). I turned there and have included the information from that short article below.

Initially, made from over century-old briar burls, classified by a “B” (denoted highest quality pipe); “DR” (denoted straight-grained) and an “A” (denoted first quality), until early 1915. After that, they became a high-end subset to the Dunhill ‘Bruyere’. The DR and B pipes, a limited production, they should be distinguished as hand-cut in London from burls as opposed to the Bruyere line which was generally finished from French turned bowls until 1917, when the Calabrian briar started to be used, but not completely. Only in 1920 Dunhill took the final step in its pipe making operation and began sourcing and cutting all of its own bowls, proudly announcing thereafter that “no French briar was employed”.

Bruyere pipes were usually made using Calabrian briar, a very dense and hardy briar that has a modest grain but does very well with the deep red stain.

“Before the 1950s, there were three possible finishes for Dunhill pipes. The Bruyere was a smooth finish with a deep red stain, obtained through two coats, a brown understain followed by a deep red. The Shell finish was the original sandblast with a near-black stain (though the degree to which it is truly black has varied over the years). Lastly, the Root finish was smooth also but with a light brown finish. Early Dunhill used different briars with different stains, resulting in more distinct and identifiable creations… Over the years, to these traditional styles were added four new finishes: Cumberland, Dress, Chestnut and Amber Root, plus some now-defunct finishes, such as County, Russet and Red Bark.”

There was also a link to a catalogue page that gave examples and dates that the various finishes were introduced (https://pipedia.org/wiki/File:Dunnypipescatalog-1.png). I turned to Pipephil’s dating guide to show how I arrived at the date of manufacture for this pipe (http://www.pipephil.eu/logos/en/dunhill/cledat-en1a.html). I am including the chart that is provided there for the dating a pipe. I have drawn a red box around the section. Since the pipe I am working on has a suffix9 that is raised. It to the 1950 line on the chart below. It also gave me the formula for dating the pipe – 1950 + suffix 9 = 1959.I now knew that I was working on a Bruyere that came out in 1959. The shape of the pipe was one of many Billiards that Dunhill put out and that the #251 was a normal billiard shape. The F/T marking told me it was a fish tail taper stem.

Armed with that information I turned to work on the pipe itself. Jeff had done a great job cleaning up the pipe as usual. He cleaned up the inside of the bowl with a PipNet reamer and a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. The rim top and the inner edge of the bowl look good. The bowl walls look very good. There was an inner tube in the airway into the bowl. It extended in the shank into the bottom of the bowl. He scrubbed the interior of the bowl and shank with pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and alcohol to remove the tars and oils. He scrubbed the exterior of the pipe with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap and a tooth brush to remove the grime from the finish. He worked on the rim top lava and darkening with the soap and tooth brush. He scrubbed the inside of the stem with alcohol and pipe cleaners. He scrubbed the exterior with Soft Scrub and then soaked it in Briarville’s Pipe Stem Deoxidizer. He washed it off with warm water to remove the deoxidizer. The stem was very clean and the tooth chatter and marks are very faint. Overall, the pipe looked far better. I took photos of the pipe when I received it before I started working on it. I took close up photos of the bowl, rim top and stem to show how clean the pipe was. The bowl was clean and the damage to the rim top and the inner edge is very visible in the photo below. The stem was clean and the light tooth marks and chatter can be seen in the photos.I took a photo of the stamping on the sides of the shank. It is very clear and readable and read as noted above. I also removed the stem from the shank and took photos of the pipe to show the look of the parts.I polished the Bruyere bowl and shank with 1500-12000 grit micromesh sanding pad – dry sanding it with the pads. I wiped the bowl down with a damp cloth after each pad. It began to take on a deep shine. The exterior of the bowl look better after sanding. I worked some Before & After Restoration Balm into the briar with my finger tips. I let it sit on the bowl for 10 minutes and then buffed it off with a paper towel and soft cloth. The product is a great addition to the restoration work. It enlivens, enriches and protects the briar while giving it a deep glow. It is a product I use on every pipe I restore. I was ready for the next step. I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads and wiping the surface down with Obsidian Oil after each sanding pad. It is really shining. I polished it further with Before & After Stem Polish – both Fine and Extra Fine. I gave it another coat of Obsidian Oil to finish this step. I reinserted the inner tube in the tenon. This Dunhill Bruyere 251 F/T Group 3 Billiard from 1959 is a beautiful looking piece of briar that has a shape that follows grain. It is a great looking pipe that came out looking even better after the cleanup. The Bruyere is an early finish that Dunhill specialized in making. The finish on the pipe is in excellent condition. The red and brown stain on the bowl works well to highlight the grain. The polished black vulcanite taper stem adds to the mix. With the grime gone from the finish and the bowl it was a beauty and is eye-catching. I put the stem back on the bowl and buffed the pipe with Blue Diamond on the buffing wheel being careful to not buff the stamping. I gave the bowl and the stem multiple coats of carnauba wax on the buffing wheel and followed that by buffing it with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished 1959 Dunhill Bruyere 251 F/T Billiard is quite nice and feels great in the hand. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. I can only tell you that like the other pipes I am working that it is much prettier in person than the photos capture. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 5 ½ inches, Height: 1 ¾ inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ¼ inches, Chamber diameter: ¾ of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 34 grams/1.20 ounces. It will soon be added to the British Pipe Makers Section on the rebornpipes store.

As always, I encourage your questions and comments as you read the blog. Thanks to each of you who are reading this blog. Remember we are not pipe owners; we are pipe men and women who hold our pipes in trust until they pass on into the trust of those who follow us.