Tag Archives: Yello-Bole Airograte Pipes

The Resuscitation of an Old Airograte Yello-Bole

by Kenneth Lieblich

A gentleman recently contacted me to ask if I would restore his Airograte Yello-Bole. I was happy to take on the project, as it was an interesting pipe – and it looked like it could use some TLC. In the end, the pipe turned out very well, but it was a very labour-intensive cleaning and restoration. Take a close look at the before and after photos – I think they speak for themselves. This pipe has had a hard life, but it must have been greatly loved. This restoration made the pipe look so much better, but the battle scars of the past will always be with it – and so they should be! They are part of its history. Let’s talk about the background of the pipe. The patent on the Airograte dates to 1949, and I have included the pages from the US Patent Office below, for those who wish to read them: I also found a blurb from inside the box of an Airograte Yello-Bole from years ago. I’ve included the photo below, but I also typed out the words in case you can’t quite make them out:

Airograte Yello-Bole introduces an entirely new principle in pipe smoking. One of the basic, patented features is a removable metal grate which holds the tobacco in suspension. This allows fresh air to be drawn into, and circulate through, the lower aluminum chamber resulting in a cool, dry smoke. The metal grate may be easily washed and cleaned. Ordinary cleansing tissue will wipe clean the aluminum chamber and bottom of bowl. Shank and bit should be cleaned with a pipe cleaner. Airograte Yello-Bole’s design and patented construction give better combustion and moisture evaporation. Result? No messy juices, no bite, no bitterness, no drag and no smelly heel. Interchangeable bowls in assorted shapes are available. Buy an extra bowl… Smoke one, rest the other. Each bowl is caked with Real Honey. You’ll enjoy Airograte Yello-Bole because it’s the sweetest, driest, coolest pipe smoking sensation!On Pipedia, there is a good article about the history of the Yello-Bole company and its progenitor, Kaufmann Bros. & Bondy. On the Airograte itself, Pipedia says:

The Yello Bole Aristocrat Airograte: An Aluminum and wood pipe with a twist. This pipe doesn’t have a bowl per say, but more a briar cylinder that screws into the base of the body. At the bottom of the bowl is a metal grate, thus allowing air to be pulled through all the tobacco and reducing any chance of clogging. The lower bowl catches all moisture and tar reducing bite. These pipes can be had in a silver/chrome finish as well as a soft gold finish. The stem of these pipes has cooling fins up each side, and can be found in a straight or bent form.Steve has written several blogs about the Airograte and here is one of his comments about it:

The Airograte Pipe was also made by Yello-Bole and was their version of the Falcon pipe or the Dr. Grabow Viking. It had a metal base and shank with an interchangeable bowl. Yello-Bole made a variation to the theme by make the bowl more of a tube and inserting a metal grate between the bowl and the base for dry smoking air flow. It also had the Nylon Bit like the Grabow and the Falcon version. These pipes sold for $5.95 and you could purchase a variety of interchangeable bowls for the base.Let’s examine the condition of this pipe a little more closely. The bowl is dirty-beyond-dirty. As you can see, the chamber is absolutely choked with old cake and there is a lot of lava on the rim. To make matters worse, there is a serious abrasion on the rim. On the underside of the bowl, there are small cracks in the base which extend into the screw threads. The stem was, sadly, no better. There is plenty of calcification on the bit. Fortunately, since the stem is made of a hard nylon, there is no oxidation. However, the tooth marks, dents, and chomps on this stem are among the most severe I’ve seen in a long while. The photos do not accurately convey just how concave (and low) these tooth marks are. The aluminum body of the pipe was dull, dirty, and heavily scratched. Some of those scratches would come out, but some wouldn’t. Unsurprisingly, the metal grate was clogged with tobacco filth.

Suffice it to say that I had my work cut out for me! Let’s begin with the stem. As it is made of nylon, there was no oxidation – and no oxidation means no need for deoxidation fluid. I used 99% lemon-infused isopropyl alcohol on a few cotton rounds and scoured the stem. Then, I cleaned the inside of the stem with pipe cleaners dipped in the alcohol. I scrubbed thoroughly to make sure the interior was clean. I used ‘zillions’ of pipe cleaners for this stem. Now that the stem is clean and dry, I set about fixing the marks and dents in the nylon. This was done by filling those divots with black cyanoacrylate adhesive, impregnated with carbon and rubber. This took a lot of work (and more than one try) to get right. I left this to cure and moved on. Sorry – I neglected to take a photo of this step.The penultimate step for the stem is sanding. First, with my set of needle files, I reduce the bulk of the cyanoacrylate repairs. I want to remove the excess adhesive as near to the surface as possible, without cutting into the nylon. Following that, I use all nine of the micromesh sanding pads (1,500 through 12,000 grit) to sand out flaws, even out the nylon, and provide gentle polishing of the finished surface. I also apply pipe-stem oil while using the last five micromesh pads. There was a wonderful, deep black shine to the stem when I was done, but I had to do this whole process twice, as I wasn’t happy with the initial results.Now that the stem is (nearly) complete, I can move on to the bowl. The first step for me is to ream it – that is to say, remove all the cake inside the bowl. This accomplishes a couple of things. First (and most obviously), it cleans the bowl and provides a refurbished chamber for future smoking. Second, when the old cake is removed, I can inspect the interior walls of the bowl and determine if there is damage or not. I used a reamer and a piece of sandpaper taped to a wooden dowel. Collectively, these ensure that all the debris is removed. To my surprise, the walls were in decent shape, but, as I mentioned earlier, there were tiny cracks in the base of the bowl. To tidy up the briar, I also wiped down the outside with some oil soap on cotton rounds (and a toothbrush). This does a good job of cleaning any latent dirt on the surface of the briar. One of the difficulties in maintaining an Airograte Yello-Bole is that the wooden threads of the bowl are impregnated with the awful filth at the bottom of the metal shank. I used a brass-wire brush, a dental tool, and a small butter knife to try and clean things up. This didn’t help much. So, the next step of the cleaning process was to scour the inside of the bowl with some soap and tube brushes. This also didn’t help the base much. So, I poured some acetone into a small container and soaked the bowl’s threads for a little while. This helped quite a bit. I continued to wipe with some cotton rounds and it cleaned up fairly well. Quite frankly, this bowl was never going to be new again, but I was satisfied with it after soaking. The damage to the rim is significant. In order to lessen (but not eliminate) the nicks on the rim, I ‘topped’ the pipe – that is to say, I gently and evenly sanded the rim on a piece of 220-grit sandpaper. This effectively minimizes the damage, without altering the look of the pipe. There will always be some sign of the wound on the rim, but, as I’ve said before, it is part of the pipe’s history.

I decided to repair the tiny cracks in the briar next. This was initially straightforward enough: I was able to fill them with cyanoacrylate adhesive. However, it ended up being a bit tricky because I didn’t want to risk affecting the bowl threads by gumming them up with glue! I acted carefully and the repairs worked out perfectly.At long last, I used all nine micromesh pads (1,500 through 12,000 grit) on the outside of the bowl to finish it off. This sanding minimizes flaws in the briar and provides a beautiful smoothness to the wood. I rubbed some Before & After Restoration Balm into the briar and let it sit for 20 minutes or so. The balm moisturizes the wood and gives a beautiful depth to the briar. I then buffed it with a microfibre cloth. I’ve done the nylon, I’ve done the briar – now on to the two pieces of aluminum: the shank and the grate. As both were so dirty, I decided to drop them in an isopropyl alcohol bath and let them sit overnight. This accomplished precisely nothing. I then used my technique from above and dropped both bits in acetone for a while. This worked much better! A lot of filth came off. With that inspiration, I took both pieces to the sink and scrubbed them inside and outside with my cream cleanser. Now we’re getting somewhere! Over the next little while, I used several tools with acetone etc. to get into all the nooks and crannies in order to really clean everything well. Now to bring some shine back! Polishing up the aluminum was troublesome because of the grooves on the side. I used some 0000 steel wool to give a beautiful polish to the shank. This worked very well, but it’s such a mess! I laid out some paper towel to catch the debris because it goes everywhere. I did the same procedure on the grate as well.You can see in the following photo the difference that steel wool makes. On the left is the unsanded metal and on the right is the metal after an initial pass of steel wool. This is promising!The buffing procedure was different because of the metal – although the briar bowl and nylon stem did receive the normal White Diamond and carnauba wax treatment. I used Red Tripoli first and White Diamond second to polish the metal shank nicely. It came out so well! When I went back to my workbench, I cleaned the grooves in the metal with some soft pipe cleaners – just to remove any slight, remaining polishing compound. I then took a microfiber cloth to wipe the metal parts of the pipe to make it shine!Wow. That was quite the restoration job! This Airograte Yello-Bole looks so much better and I am happy to send it back to its owner. It was a lot of work, but I learned a lot and I am pleased with the results. The approximate dimensions of the pipe are as follows: length 5⅔ in. (144 mm); height 1⅝ in. (41 mm); bowl diameter 1⅜ in. (36 mm); chamber diameter ⅞ in. (21 mm). The weight of the pipe is 1¼ oz. (37 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 at kenneth@knightsofthepipe.com. Thank you very much for reading and, as always, I welcome and encourage your comments.

An Interesting Look Back in Time at Pipe Marketing

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Blog by Steve Laug

I don’t know how he does this but Jeff comes across things in his pipe hunting, auction cruising perambulations that I never seem to see and in new or next to new condition. This time he found some old pipe labels that had not been used and were in perfect condition. I don’t know if these were printed as box labels or for display boards but they are really quite interesting. Each label has a lot “advertspeak” that I find fascinating, you know the spin that the Marketing Team puts on pipes that their companies make. Jeff sent me these photos of his find. Have a look. They give us an enjoyable look back in time at how pipes were marketed. I will describe each one for you so if you cannot read it at least you will have an idea of what it says. First here are a couple of photos of the lot.I have always enjoyed Yello-Bole pipes and have even sold a few NOS Collegiate pipes so this is an interesting piece for me. It says Yello-Bole Collegiate $4.50 and describes the pipe as coming in Small Youthful Shapes. The imported Briar Bowl is Guaranteed against burn-out for Life. What do you think – are you youthful enough for these small petite pipes? I don’t think I ever was personally.The Checker Pipe was made by Yello-Bole. Over the years I have restored several of these CHECKER pipes that have a Hand Carved Checker-Board design carved into the briar around the bowl. The ones I have worked on have had a mixture of smooth and rusticated patches on the checkerboard differentiating the red and black squares. These pipes sold for $5.50.The Airograte Pipe was also made by Yello-Bole and was their version of the Falcon pipe or the Dr. Grabow Viking. It had a metal base and shank with an interchangeable bowl. Yello-Bole made a variation to the theme by make the bowl more of a tube and inserting a metal grate between the bowl and the base for dry smoking air flow. It also had the Nylon Bit like the Grabow and the Falcon version. These pipes sold for $5.95 and you could purchase a variety of interchangeable bowls for the base.We move from Yello-Bole pipes to the Medico Pipe Company and their lines. The first label in the collection shows the Medico Tuxedo Filter Pipe. The label shows a Tuxedoed Gent with a pipe and a bow tie. These pipes are said to “give pleasure and peace of mind” for only $3.50. They were made of Imported Briar. Who would not want to spend $3.50 when Pleasure and Peace of Mind can be had for such a reasonable price? Are you in?The next one is for a Medico pipe. The label reads MEDICO Medalist Filter Pipes over Imported Briar and a whopping $4.95 to purchase one of these lovelies. I am not sure but I think this may well have been one of the first pipes I ever purchased at a local drugstore.I have worked on quite a few Medico Ventilator Pipes over the years and even converted them to be non-ventilated! This bit of marketing says – “Protect yourself – with the only pipe that must be smoked with a filter.” (So much for deciding to use or not use a filter as the Medico Marketing department decided that you need to purchase those annoying paper tubes to smoke this pipe.) After telling us to protect ourselves the label says Medico Ventilator Filter Pipe. Made of Imported Briar and sporting a Guaranteed Bite-proof Nylon Bit. The pipe sold for $4.95.These next Medicos have survived time and become collectible I hear. I have worked on all the variations in terms of playing card symbols – Diamonds, Hearts, Clubs and Spades. This fancy pipe sold for $5.95 and was labeled Medico Casino Filter Pipes. They were made out of Genuine Sandblasted Imported Briar, were embossed with playing card symbols and once more had those “amazing” Bite-proof Nylon Bits. Can’t you see yourself firing up one of these pipes with the guys at the weekly poker game? The silver coloured band adds a touch of class.The Medico Ever-Dri is yet another attempt to find the cool dry smoke and according to the Marketing Team they have found it and it only costs you $7.95. The label includes the usual Medico Ever-Dri Filter Pipe with a Guaranteed Bite-proof nylon bit. There is a diagram on the label that shows their inventive system. Their system has a Condensor shield and tube that keeps the shank dry, Throw Away Nicotine Trapped in Medico Filter, Dry Heel, Free Draft Drying Chamber and it is made of Imported Briar.The next label is for a “higher end” Medico – a Crest Filter Pipe. The label is golden and lists the price at $10.00. The Medico Crest has a Bulldog smoking a pipe logo. The label says that these Filter Pipe have a Guaranteed Bite-Proof Nylon Bit (Oh boy – I hate nylon stems as they are a bear to clean up after someone has chewed the bite-proof bit). The pipe is made of the Choicest Imported Briar.These labels give a walk back in time to the era of the 60s. The labels came from two US pipe companies that provided their offerings to the pipe smoking public. The first was Yello-Bole and the second Medico. These pipes were standard fare of the American pipesmoker throughout most of the 20^th century. They were reasonably priced and offered outstanding guarantees. They are still readily available on the estate pipe market and are an easy restore (barring the famous Bite-proof nylon stem). Hope you have enjoyed this bit of pipe history. Thanks for reading.

Thanks to Father Tom I have a Base for the Yello-Bole Airograte Bowls

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Blog by Steve Laug

Those of you who have followed the blog for a long time will get the irony of the title. I have written quite a few Father Tom stories over the years and have had them on the blog. I am hoping that a book of these stories will be published in the near future. Anyway on the Pipe Smokers Unlimited Forum I posted that I was looking for a base unit/stem for some Yello-Bole Airograte pipe bowls that I had been gifted. I had refurbished the bowls and written of them here on the blog: https://rebornpipes.com/2014/07/17/restoring-a-couple-of-yello-bole-airograte-bowls/ Father Tom sent me a private message saying that he had one and would be glad to send it to me. We exchanged a few messages and settled on a trade. Last evening when I got home from work I was greeted by a package from him. The pipe had arrived. He had put a Grabow Viking bowl on the stem just for traveling and when I opened the box and removed the pipe from the wrappings I was excited to get to work on it. I removed the Grabow bowl and went to work cleaning the stem. I used pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and isopropyl alcohol to remove the buildup from the bottom of the base and the dental pick to clean out the threads.
Once it was clean I used Vaseline to lubricate the threads so that the bowls would turn easily into the base. I applied it with cotton swabs to get it into the threads. In the background are some brass screens that Tom sent along that go in the base between the bottom and the bowls. The open bottom on the bowls sit against this screen. Tom has found that these brass screens work far better than the original metal plate with holes that originally formed the grate for the bottom of the bowls. He says they clog far less frequently. The Airograte base has two small airholes in the sides of the bowl just below the ledge where the grate or screen sits. These tiny holes allow air to the bottom of the tobacco when smoked. When air is drawn in the bowl, it enters through these small airways. In this particular base the airways were clogged. I used an unfolded paper clip to open them again. I pushed out the clogs from both sides of the base from both the inside and the outside. The airflow is now unrestricted in those airways. I put the brass screen in place in the base once I had the cleaning finished. The bowl will screw on top of the screen and the tobacco when loaded will sit on top of the screen. With the above statement about the bowl sitting on top of the screen I thought that it might be helpful to take a photo of the two different bowls. The one on the left is the bowl for the Airograte while the one on the right is for Grabow Viking. The Airograte is more of a tube that sits on top of the grate. The tobacco burns on the grate. The Viking bowl also fits perfectly on the nylon stemmed pipe I have written about earlier. I am pretty certain that the nylon one is also a Grabow though it is unstamped. The photo below shows the bowl from the nylon pipe and the Grabow bowl from the bottom. While I was cleaning up the bowl base I noticed the Patent and Patent pending information on the bottom of the bowl. This made me curious to see exactly what was patented/patent pending. I went to the US Patent Office on line ( http://patft.uspto.gov/ ) and searched the number on the bottom of the base. I was able to find that the patent had been applied for in 1949 by Samuel Lawrence Atkins of New York City. The patent was for the airograte that sat between the airway in the bowl and the tobacco and the two small holes in the bottom sides of the bowl. It was designed to give a dry and even burning smoke and keep bits of tobacco from entering the airway and mouthpiece. I have included a copy of the patent document with a diagram below. I find that it is always interesting to read the pitch that is made in terms of purpose for the design. The ongoing hunt for the perfect pipe continues to this day. With the bowl finished, the base cleaned and the airway opens and clean all that remained was to tidy up the stem. The nylon stem, though similar to the ones on Vikings and Falcons had a slimmer profile. The thinness made it very comfortable in the mouth. There was tooth chatter against the button on the top and the bottom of the stem as well as some deep tooth marks mid stem that had been poorly sanded out leaving dents in the flat surface of the stem midway up the stem on both sides. I sanded the stem with 220 grit sandpaper to remove the tooth chatter and to smooth out the flow of the taper. I followed that by sanding with a medium and fine grit sanding sponge to work on the scratches. Once the dents and scratches were gone I worked on the stem with micromesh sanding pads. I wet sanded with 1500-3200 grit pads. I found it really frustrating work to try to remove the scratches and marks. Wet sanding did not seem to really do the job – so I started over with the pads and a drop of olive oil. The oil seemed to do the trick. It proved to be the right medium for the micromesh. It gave bite to the pads and really worked quite well. I continued to sand with the drop of oil through the 3200-4000 grit pads. The scratches really began to disappear and the stem was getting smoother. I did the same with the 6000-12000 grit pads and a drop of olive oil. Once I had finished sanding the stem with the micromesh I gave it a light buff with White Diamond. A light touch is essential when buffing nylon stems or you make more of a mess than you started with. I rubbed the stem down with Obsidian Oil and when dry I coated it with Paragon Wax and hand buffed it. Below are some photos of the pipe with each of the two bowls in place. I really like the looks of the finned shank on this one. The flat stem makes it very comfortable. I am looking forward to loading a bowl and trying out the patented “Airograte” screen that is on the bottom of the bowl.