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Show us your estate pipe restorations!

CowboyTed

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This is not just my thread. Everyone is welcome to show us your restoration work on old pipes.

This is a Savinelli lovat I just finished. It needed a new stem, and I decided to jazz it up a bit with a pearlescent acrylic stem. The rest of the pipe was in beautiful condition, and it got nothing more than a reaming in the bowl and a quick clean and polish job.

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The second pipe I finished this week is Dr. Grabow Starfire shape #39. It was rather well worn, with no stem when I bought it in a collection of estate pipes. I made a new stem, with a Peterson style P-lip bit, which I prefer on all my bent pipes. I gave the stem a smoother arc than what Dr. Grabow used.

I sanded the stummel down to 500 grit, then stained it with dark-brown aniline dye. I then sanded off the dye layer, so that only the porous spots retained the dark brown, and the rest of the pipe is natural briar color. This method of staining is called contrast-staining and enhances the grain by making the straight and the birdseye grain stand out better. The birdseye in this briar is just beautiful.

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This is what the factory stem would have looked like, for comparison:

Dr Grabow Starfire 39-2.jpg

Enough of my pipes, Show us yours!
 

DistillingJim

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May 23, 2016
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One of these days I'm going to get stuck into some estate pipe restoration. Just dont have time at the moment.
 

CowboyTed

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Here's an estate pipe that got a lot of reshaping on the road to restoration. It started as Wally Frank Huntleigh straight Rhodesian. I reworked it into a smaller Rhodesian first, to get rid of the crappy rustication on the front of the bowl. After deciding I didn't care for the grain in the briar, I decided to rework the shape a bit more and sandblast the resulting prince/author/diplomat-ish shape that resulted. I also bent the stem slightly.

Here are pictures of the progress from start to finish:

Original Wally Frank Rhodesian:

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Smooth Finish "Cowboy Rhodesian"
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Final re-shape and sandblast with contrast stain:

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Jb00

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Missouri
(I figured I’d resurrect an old thread)
I’ve been restoring pipes since last August. I’ve probably restored about 40 or so since then, so I won’t bore you guys with all the photos, but here are a couple of my favorites.

1. Kaywoodie Standard 1960s

2. LHS Purex cavalier 1940s

3. Kaywoodie flame grain 1940s-1950s

4. Kaywoodie select grain 1940s
 

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Yug

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Sep 5, 2021
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I have a small collection of pipes. My first pipes were bought new in the 70's and are not the most interesting ones. Since a few years I'm interested in estates and I'll show you some of them
1) a Kriswill Bernadotte (Denmark)
Kriswill Bernadotte.jpg
 

deluxestogie

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What a delightful pipe! The cleaning issue could be resolved by replacing the wire join with a releasable, nylon zip tie. That would lose some of its whimsy.

Bob

EDIT: It's worth noting that the "military" bit, which caps the briar shank with a metal sheath, derived from World War 1 soldiers repairing a cracked pipe shank using a drilled-out bullet casing.
 
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