This Falcon pipe was sent to me recently for a bit of a cleanup by a DadsPipes reader. It is, somewhat surprisingly, the first metal smoking pipe I have worked on since beginning my little venture into estate pipe restorations, so I was keen to get at it when it arrived. The design of the Falcon pipe is similar in theory to the traditional Calabash … Continue reading Cleaning Up a Falcon FDH Dublin
I was asked recently about my pipe repair and restoration setup, so I thought I’d do a little write-up here. Though there have been a few changes over the years, the core tooling and supplies have remained basically the same. DadsPipes utilizes four areas of our home here in Kitchener, including the garage where I keep the buffer and drill press, the den where I … Continue reading A Quick Tour of the DadsPipes Worktable
As many of you know, Brigham pipes are famous for their filter system composed of an aluminum tenon/filter holder and a tubular Rock Maple filter, or “distillator” as the company calls it now. I’ve made up replacement stems for many Brigham estate pipes, but this was my first time doing so for a Brigham Freehand. In theory, the system installs into a freehand style stem … Continue reading Re-Stemming a Brigham Footed Freehand
This Brigham 4-Dot was a surprise gift from my daughter, who came across it at a local antique fair. She got a good price on it due to its rather rough condition, which she figured I could remedy without too much trouble. I brought the pipe to the worktable to assess the scope of the work ahead. The stummel was quite dirty and greasy feeling, … Continue reading Bowl and Stem Repairs for a Brigham 489 Bent Acorn
This pipe was sent to me for repairs recently. At first glance the Peterson Aran 50S Rustic Poker on my worktable looked to be in pretty good shape – the stem had a few tooth dents, but was not oxidized, and the stummel was clean. Even the deeply rusticated rim was free of lava deposits. On the smooth bottom of the bowl, the pipe is … Continue reading An Internal Shank Repair for a Peterson Aran 50S Rustic Poker
Black pipes present the pipe restorer with a slightly different set of challenges than those faced when refurbishing a briar finished with the more common “woody” brown and red stains. The vast majority of black pipes to come across my worktable have been of the “opera pipe” style, finished with an opaque black or “ebony” stain (or sometimes paint) covered with a high-gloss topcoat. Over … Continue reading Dealing with the Particular Challenges of Restoring a Black Pipe
I picked up this Bent Bulldog as part of a random lot of estate pipes quite some time ago. I dug it out of the box after Christmas, and have been working on it in between other jobs for the last several weeks. The pipe was in a certain amount of distress when it came to the worktable. The stem had broken at the shank … Continue reading Repair and Rustication of a No-Name Algerian Briar Bent Bulldog
