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… 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.… 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… 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.… 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”… 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… Continue reading Repair and Rustication of a No-Name Algerian Briar Bent Bulldog
Here is another pipe from my Iqaluit piper’s collection – a striking Blatter Panel Horn. It didn’t need a lot of work, but I though you might enjoy seeing the pipe for its own sake. The pipe arrived on my worktable in very nice estate condition. Even through a layer of dust and grime the… Continue reading Refreshing a 2009 Blatter Select Panel Horn
This refurbishment is in many ways one of the more interesting of my recent pipe projects. First off, it was an eBay purchase made by a client in Taiwan who had the seller in the USA send the pipe directly to me here in Canada. The owner also sent me a wish list of work he… Continue reading A 6mm Filter Conversion and Complete Face Lift for an Indelux Old Root Duncan Series Billiard
This pipe was sent to me for stem work to address some deep tooth dents. The rest of the pipe was in excellent estate condition, and arrived already cleaned (!), which meant I could focus on the work requested. Here are pics of the pipe as I first saw it on arrival. As you can… Continue reading Repairing Deep Tooth Dents in a 1940’s Dunhill Shell LV1 Straight Brandy
Like many collectors, I feel a little jolt of adrenaline every time I add a new pipe shape to my growing array of Brigham pipes. That jolt gets bigger when a new shape comes in a mid to high grade pipe like this Brigham 4 Dot. The pipe arrived on my worktable in decent estate… Continue reading Quick Refresh of a Brigham 454 Smooth Bent Pot
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