Repairing a Cracked Shank on a Danish Pride by Ben Wade Freehand

I recently refurbished a number of pipes sent in by a gentleman from Texas. These were mainly freehand pipes in need of new stems, but the pipe on the bench today needed quite a bit more TLC than a quick Ream & Clean.

The handsome mixed finish Freehand Sitter pictured below arrived without a stem and with long, thin cracks bisecting the top and bottom of the shank. These images show the pipe as it looked on arrival at the shop. Overall, the stummel was in good estate condition, barring the shank cracks, though the rim was hidden under a layer of carbon lava. A layer of very hard cake in the chamber told me that this pipe had been sitting unsmoked for quite some time.

This pic of the end of the shank shows what initially looked like fairly benign cracks, but a closer examination proved otherwise. The cracks travelled quite a distance down the shank, and I could flex them open slightly with a bit of pressure from my fingers.

Through a layer of dust and dirt, the shank stamps were just legible. They read “Danish Pride” over “by” over “Ben Wade” over “Hand Made In ” over “Denmark”.

To get the ball rolling on this repair, I needed to first clean the stummel. Starting at the top, I used a wire brush to scrub the carbon lava out of the nooks and crannies of the Plateaux rim. I was pleased to find no burns or other damage underneath.

Reaming the chamber back to briar took more effort than usual. The cake was very hard and dry, but it did eventually surrender to my three-pronged attack with reamer, scraper blade and sandpaper. The briar underneath was in great shape. The center of the chamber floor was slightly dimpled, but not enough to warrant filling with pipe mud.

I cleaned the pipe’s shank and airway with cotton swabs and pipe cleaners dipped in 99% isopropyl alcohol. It wasn’t particularly dirty but the tars had been holding the pieces of cracked shank together more than I had initially guessed. The alcohol used during the cleaning had flowed through the cracks and dissolved the tars and dirt, revealing the true extent of the damage. Yikes!

Here you can see that the crack at the rear of the shank had actually crept horizontally around the shank, just barely shy of connecting with the crack on the opposite side of the shank. The whole left side of the shank was hanging on by a hair.

Obviously, a shank band is not possible here – the inverted pyramidal shape of the shank simply won’t allow it. Glue alone would not hold the shank together (the repeated mounting and dismounting of the stem would simply push the shank apart again). The only possible repair route is an internal splint.

To shore things up temporarily, I flowed some thin CA glue into and over the cracks. I was hoping that this, combined with a padded pipe clamp, would secure the shank enough to survive enlarging the mortise to accept a splint, but, well, read on and find out.

I needed to drill out the shank to a uniform 3/8″ mortise for the entire length of the shank to ensure that my splint bridged the cracks. In preparation for the drilling, I installed a pipe clamp with a layer of padding underneath to help me hold the shank together.

With the stummel prepped, I spent some time carefully lining up the shank in the drill press vise. I used a short 3/8″ drill bit to slowly enlarge the mortise to the depth marked on the drill bit. This was delicate work, so I worked slowly, making the cuts in small increments.

This pic shows the pipe after drilling. So far so good!

A test fit with a section of 3/8″ Delrin rod showed that I needed the mortise to be a hair deeper. Rather than spend time lining everything back up on the drill press, I elected to turn the drill bit by hand to scrape out the last millimetre or two of briar.

Just as I approached my final depth, the capricious Pipe Gods decided to play with me. With a tiny “pop”, the horizontal crack around the shank met with its neighbour and the entire shank came off in my hand. Doh!

Fortunately, the break was clean and there were no missing shards of briar. Also on my side was the observation that my re-drilling of the mortise had been completed. My splint would have enough real estate on both sides of the break to make a solid repair.

Rather than rely on CA glue again to hold the shank together while I completed the repair work, I reattached the shank to the stummel using two-part epoxy. After applying the epoxy to both surfaces, I held the two halves of the stummel in position until the glue began to grab, then added a strip of masking tape around the stummel to gently clamp the parts together.

I didn’t worry about any excess epoxy squeezing out of the crack at this point. I could clean it up later when the stummel was back in one piece.

I set the stummel carefully aside and left it overnight to give the epoxy time to cure completely. When I came back to the pipe, a few minutes with dental pick and wire brush removed the excess epoxy from the sandblasted finish. The result was a clean repair without obvious gaps. Nice!

With that little detour now complete, I could get on with the splint repair. After mounting a section of Delrin rod in the lathe, I drilled a 1/4″ airway all the way through to form a tube. A drill bit doesn’t leave a flat-bottomed hole. A small chamfer on the chamber end of the splint would help the splint sit flush to the bottom of the mortise.

I needed to sand down the exterior of the splint slightly to allow room for the epoxy. When I had achieved the slip fit I was after, I roughed up the splint with needle file and sandpaper to give the epoxy more gripping power on the slippery Delrin.

I applied two-part epoxy to the walls of the shank mortise and the outside of the splint, then pushed the splint home.

And here is a shot of the final repair. The cracked shank is completely supported by the Delrin sleeve, providing no opportunity for any of the cracks to reopen. The slightly spongy Delrin will give a tiny bit when the stem is mounted, ensuring a secure fit without putting undue outward pressure on the shank.

With the structural work complete on the stummel, I could turn my attention to the last piece of this restoration puzzle – a new Vulcanite stem. After selecting an appropriately sized stem blank from my supplies, I turned the tenon down to fit snugly in the rebuilt shank mortise.

These stem blanks always have lines of excess Vulcanite running lengthwise along both sides of the stem, leftovers from the molding process. I used a combination of needle files and various grits of sandpaper to knock off the molding marks and smooth out the stem.

After wet sanding to 2000-grit, I mounted the new stem in the shank and slid a pipe cleaner through the airway. After warming the stem over my heat gun until pliable, I added the required bend. A quick run under cold water set the stem in its new shape.

Then it was time to take the finished pipe to the buffer for a run on both the Red Tripoli and White Diamond wheels followed by a few light coats of Carnauba wax to add shine and a modicum of UV protection.

This lovely Danish Pride Freehand Sitter is once again whole, structurally sound and ready to be put back into its steward’s rack and rotation after years of disuse due to the crack damage. With a little regular care and feeding, it should provide many years of trouble free smoking companionship.

Thanks for joining me for this repair adventure. It became slightly more complicated than originally anticipated, but the end results are well worth the added effort. A few scars remain as a testament to the pipe’s decades of use, most notably on the smooth patch of shank housing the nomenclature, but I’d rather see a scar than erase the pipe’s provenance for the sake of cosmetics.

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