Recreating a Unique Twin Bore P-Lip Style Stem for a Rudolf’s Patent Prima

If imitation is the biggest form or flattery, then Peterson should feel very flattered by the Rudolf’s Patent pipe on the bench today. Purchased by an avid early Peterson pipe collector, the pipe was sent to me for some much needed rehabilitation. Here are a few pics of the pipe as it looked on arrival at the shop.

This vintage briar, hallmarked in Birmingham, England in 1909, is clearly heavily inspired by Charles Peterson’s now famous patented P-Lip design, and is stamped using a very similar script, including forked tails on the capital R in “Rudolf’s”. The pipe’s current steward also pointed me to this article on Pipedia, which appears to feature the very same pipe.

The Pipedia article also had a couple of images I’ll repost here. The first shows the Rudolf’s Patent stamp compared directly to the Peterson stamp, while the second shows a top view of the twin-bore P-lip (ish) stem.

Unfortunately, someone had attempted to restore this stem at some point, rebuilding the entire upper surface of the button using black CA glue. (Note the irregular airways in the above image.) This technique can work well for a pipe that is destined to be a display piece, but not so well for a pipe that will be smoked, even occasionally. When the pipe’s steward attempted to clean the pipe for the first time, the entire CA glue patch popped off, leaving the stem looking like the proverbial dog’s breakfast.

My mission here was clear, if a little daunting at this point: to reproduce the original stem design in new Ebonite and restore this 115 year old pipe to a useful state for its steward. I would need to take cues from the remnants of the original stem and the info from the Pipedia article to execute a functional stem design. Unfortunately, I had no luck finding any patent drawings for this stem design, which would have helped immensely.

Twisting the stem out of the shank, I discovered another design detail, a unique stepped tenon with a fluted end. As far as I can tell, the fluting serves no functional purpose – a standard cylindrical tenon would work just as well, but it’s a fun detail that would be easy enough to reproduce on the lathe.

A quick check on the internal geometry of the stem showed that whoever made this Rudolf’s Patent pipe limited their imitation of the Peterson Patent pipe to outward appearances. The airway here was a simple cylindrical bore for the length of the stem, unlike Peterson’s tapered airway design.

I took a few close-up shots of the button end of the stem to try to work out the original contours. You can clearly see how much CA glue was used for the earlier rebuild. Looking beyond the globs of CA glue was a bit of a challenge, but eventually I had enough information on which to base a sketch of the new stem.

This image, shot from the end of the stem, reminded me of a Hognose Snake. The twin airways exit the button above the centre line and the leading edge of the “snout” is concave below the centre line.

Before I got into actually crafting the new stem, I needed to clean the pipe. As this pic shows, there was quite a bit of gunk lurking inside the stummel’s shank and airway, but it did eventually submit to my pile of cotton swabs, pipe cleaners and 99% isopropyl alcohol.

Setting the stummel aside to rest after its cleanup, I cut a length of Ebonite rod to slightly over my finished length, and drilled a 9/64″ airway extending from the tenon end to the rear edge of the button.

I could then turn the majority of the rod to rough diameter, slightly larger than the diameter of the shank. The larger end, clamped in the jaws of the lathe chuck, would eventually form the button.

Another few minutes on the lathe and I had a tenon cut to size. A round cutting tool carved out the fluted end of the tenon.

So far so good!

And it fits snugly in the shank.

A strip of masking tape run up each side of the proto-stem marked out the line of the airway. These guide lines are essential for keeping the stem straight and symmetrical as I shape it.

My 1″x30″ benchtop belt sander made short work of removing the bulk of the excess Ebonite and roughing in the tapered profile of the stem. As you can see, I also cut down the button end of the rod.

From this point on, the power tools were put away in favour of hand tools. This was also the point at which I decided to drill the critical twin airways to connect the main airway to the button. After some careful measuring and marking, I used a 1/16″ drill bit mounted in a hand drill to carefully drill the compound angle of each side of the twin bore arrangement.

If any of my preparatory work was off by more than a fraction of a millimetre, my twin bore button would not connect to the end of the main airway and this project would have had to have been restarted from scratch. Needless to say, I was very relieved when the drill bit found the airway on the first try on both sides. Woohoo!

A half-round file laid on the bench made a convenient tool for cutting the concave portion of the lower button. This image shows the “hog nose” profile beginning to take shape.

I spent some time with a range of files – flat, round and half round – to begin refining the shape of the new stem. My study of the original button design indicated that the top edge of the button was set slightly further back toward the tenon than the underside of the button. One could argue that the button edges could or should line up, but in the absence of any drawings or images of the original design, I had to run with the information at hand.

I made frequent checks as I worked, comparing my take on the Rudolf’s stem to the rather battered original. I was feeling pretty good about my decisions so far.

I put in a little more file work to tidy up the rough edges of the stem before moving to sandpaper to finish this project off.

I sanded the stem from 220 through 2000 grit, and when I was happy with the end results, I took the entire pipe to the buffer for a run on both the Red Tripoli and White Diamond wheels to buff out the last remaining sanding scratches and bring up the shine. A few light coats of Carnauba wax to both bowl and stem completed the restoration of this 1909 Rudolf’s Patent pipe.

Reproducing a vintage stem is tricky at the best of times when a sample stem or at least detailed photos of the original stem profile are available as references. I had very limited information at hand for this project, so a good portion of this project was extrapolation and educated guesswork, but I feel confident that my interpretation of the Rudolf’s Patent stem is at least highly representative of the original design. Better yet, the new Ebonite stem is fully functional and the pipe may be enjoyed by its new steward without fear of having a chunk of CA glue break off in the process.

I hope you enjoyed following along with me on this 115 year old pipe restoration. It was both a challenging and rewarding project. I hope the finished pipe provides many decades of service to its new steward.

Until next time, Happy Piping! Here’s the finished pipe.