Smoking Pipe Repair & Restoration
I was recently sent a box of pipes for refurbishment that really worked out my restoration muscles. All of the pipes were very dirty and smelled strongly of OTC aromatic blends, and all needed new stems as the originals had been chewed up or bitten through. They also, as it turned out, were heat damaged…
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This project was a first for me – hand cutting an Acrylic stem from rod stock. OK, not quite rod stock, as the chunk of acrylic I used was actually an off-cut from a 1″ diameter by 4″ long acrylic stem blank, so the airway drilling was already done when I started work. A stem,…
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Here is another estate pipe from my box of refurbs-in-waiting. This Brigham 218 Pear had been buried at the bottom of the pile for some time when I dug it out and decided it was time to work on it. Here is the pipe as it looked when I brought it to the worktable. Although…
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This French-made Jeantet leather-clad Scoop came to me in an estate lot I bought last summer. At first glance the pipe appeared to be in good shape, requiring only a light cleaning to make it ready for a new pipe steward. First glances, however, are sometimes not as accurate as we would like. This series…
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It’s been a while since I worked on a pipe from my own box of refurbs-in-waiting, so today when I found myself temporarily in between other jobs, I dug through my pile of estate pipes and pulled out this 1990s vintage Brigham 303 Billiard. As you can see from this first series of pictures, the…
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Temporarily in between repair jobs the other day as I waited for a parts order to come in, I rummaged around in my refurb box and came out with a rather battered and neglected Bent Billiard stummel. An old “Pipes by Lee” briar, the original stem had departed long ago; I had, however, recently jumped…
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Leather-clad pipes were popular between the end of the Second World War and the late 1970s/early 1980s. First marketed in the 1940s by Longchamp in France as a way to utilize less-than-perfect briar bowls, customers, especially Allied soldiers stationed in France, quickly embraced leather-clad pipes, prompting other firms to hop on the trend. The pipe…
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I recently acquired two Italian made pipes marked simply “JR” and “Italy” which I have found were made as house brand pipes for JR Cigars in the USA. The first one, a nice Author shape, is already listed on the Pipe Inventory page as it really didn’t need restoration. The second of the pair needed…
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Here is the second of two John Calich pipes I picked up over the summer. While the first one, written about HERE, was a smaller, fully rusticated pipe, this Bent Billiard is more typical of John’s work in that it features a combination of smooth and rustic finishes. This series of pics shows the pipe…
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This Bent Billiard is the first of two pipes by Canadian pipe carver John Calich that I acquired as part of an estate collection earlier this summer. Calich was a master pipe carver who operated in the Greater Toronto area for 40 years, hand carving each pipe from start to finish. Pipes sold through dealers…
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