Going The Extra Mile for a Blatter Centenary Pipe

One hundred years of operation is a milestone for any company and pipe makers are no exception. Blatter Pipes was established by brothers Ernest and Henri-Georges in Montreal, Canada in 1907 as an artisanal hand-crafted pipe house and remains a family-run business today. In 2007, Blatter released a special pipe to mark their 100th year. One of these pipes made its way recently to the DadsPipes workbench. This series of images shows the pipe’s rather good condition on arrival.

Cut from a lovely piece of briar, the pipe displays some very attractive grain, set off by alternating trim rings of grain-matched briar and Ebonite. The pipe was in need of cleaning, especially the rim which was completely hidden under a layer of carbon “lava”. The Ebonite stem showed some tooth dents but was otherwise in good shape.

The pipe is stamped “Blatter” over “Montreal” on the left shank and “1907 – 2007” on the right shank followed by Robert Blatter’s signature stamp. On the flat underside of the shank the pipe is stamped “63”. I suspect this is a shape number, though it could potentially indicate that the pipe is the 63rd pipe made for the Centenary.

Purchased as an estate pipe, the new steward wanted to have the pipe cleaned up and a new Cumberland Acrylic stem fit. The cleanup was simple enough, but on twisting the stem out of the shank, I realized that the new stem would take more work than usual as the trim rings were mounted on the stem rather than the end of the shank.

There were two options here: create a new Cumberland stem with its own briar trim rings and sacrifice the grain matched rings on the original stem, or transplant the Ebonite and briar trim rings from the original stem into the new Cumberland Acrylic bit. After a bit of back and forth with the pipe’s steward, it was the second option that came out on top.

To begin the work, I set about the initial cleaning of the pipe. There was an average amount of tarry deposits in both stem and shank. A handful of pipe cleaners and cotton swabs dipped in 99% isopropyl alcohol make short work of removing them.

To address the rim lava, I gently scraped away the worst of the carbon with the flat edge of a pen knife to reveal the briar beneath. I snapped this pic after reaming a light amount of cake form the chamber. As you can see, the rim needed a bit of touching up to remove some charring.

To ensure the pipe was as clean as possible, I set the stummel up with an alcohol soak. After stuffing bowl and shank with cotton wool, I added alcohol to the bowl until it started dripping out the shank. Left to sit overnight, the alcohol dissolved the deep-seated tars and captured them in the cotton wool.

Here is a shot of the stummel the next day. The alcohol treatment had done its work, so I removed and discarded the cotton wool and set the stummel aside to air for a bit while I prepped the new stem.

Here you can see the original stem below the Cumberland acrylic stem blank chosen for this project. Cutting the stem blank to length was the easy part. Extracting the original trim rings from the old stem without damaging them would make or break this restoration.

As the original stem would be scrapped afterwards, I mounted it in the lathe and cut away the Ebonite to form a tenon behind the trim rings. This would facilitate gluing the rings into the face of the new stem.

And here are the two parts of the new stem ready for assembly. The Cumberland blank has been cut to length and a mortise drilled into the face to accept the trim ring section.

To glue it all together, I took the parts back to the lathe and after applying some two-part epoxy to the tenon, clamped the new composite stem together. I left it there overnight to give the epoxy ample time to cure.

When I came back to the stem, I turned it in the lathe to remove the excess acrylic before switching to hand tools to smooth out the transition between the two parts of the assembly. Here the stem is shown mounted on the pipe shank for ease. Note the wrap of clear hockey tape on the shank to protect it from errant file strokes.

I sanded the stem to 2000 grit, then realized I had forgotten to install the Blatter Dots. Whoops!

Blatter marks their pipes with one (Standard grade) or two (Select grade) red 1/16″ dots. I used a bit of masking tape to mark out the dot locations, then carefully drilled two holes on the centre line of the stem.

A drop of CA glue in each hole is sufficient to secure a short section of red ABS rod. For those looking for small rod stock like this, look up guitar side dot markers. Luthier supply shops carry these in black, white and, conveniently, red.

When the CA glue used to secure the Dots was dry, I sanded the stem smooth again and touched up the briar trim rings with a stain pen to match the finish on the rest of the pipe. Then it was time to take the entire pipe to the buffer for a run on the Red Tripoli and White Diamond polishing wheels to remove the fine sanding scratches and give the finished pipe a nice shine. A few light coats of Carnauba wax added more shine and a layer of protection for the refreshed finish.

This Blatter Centenary pipe is looking great after its time on the bench. The pipe is fresh, clean and ready to provide years of smoking companionship to its new steward. The new stem looks like it has always been there, thanks in large part to the grain-matched trim rings salvaged from the original bit.

Thanks for joining me for this interesting estate pipe project. I hope you enjoyed following along. Until next time, Happy Piping!

Here’s the finished pipe.