I received an email from Peterson pipe aficionado Mark Irwin of Peterson Pipe Notes recently, with a request for some help restoring the stem on an intricately carved bulldog shaped pipe. The brand is a new one for me. As Mark explained in his note, the fellow who owned the tiny BPL (Briar Pipe Line) shop in Dublin, Ireland outsourced bowls from Peterson, then hand-carved … Continue reading Restoring an Irish Made BPL Carved Bent Bulldog
This pipe belongs to a fellow Ontario piper and DadsPipes reader who wrote to me asking what could be done to get this older meerschaum Egg back into his rotation. At first glance, the pipe looked to be in good shape, but a closer inspection revealed that the stem had been damaged at the button end at some point and the owner simply cut it … Continue reading Overhauling an Austrian Meerschaum Straight Egg
This restoration was fairly simple – just what I was looking for after tackling a run of trickier repairs. This Trypis pipe hit the worktable in fairly good estate condition. The rim was hidden under a coat of lava but looked to be in decent shape otherwise. The stem was a bit oxidized and the alligator-skin rustication was dirty and packed up with old wax, … Continue reading Quick Shank Repair for a Trypis Canted Dublin
A DadsPipes reader and fellow Ontario piper dropped off a handful of eBay pipe purchases for me to go through before he added them to his rack and rotation. As many eBay pipe hunters have found, an estate briar listed as “cleaned and ready to smoke” may or may not actually be clean and ready to smoke. Sometimes there is also undisclosed or hidden damage … Continue reading A New Stem for a Savinelli Capri Root Briar 614
This is the third pipe sent to me for repairs by a DadsPipes reader in Birmingham, Alabama USA. You can see by the first pics that this pipe continues the owner’s run of large pipes – this David Jones rusticated pipe is a true fistful of briar! I’ve called this pipe an Author, as apart from the stummel being roughly the size of a tennis ball, … Continue reading An Internal Shank Repair and New Tenon for a David Jones Colossal Rusticated Author
This is the second pipe sent to me by the owner of the Ardor Urano S. Holmes pipe I wrote about recently. This time I’m working on repairs to a very nice Claudio Cavicchi Bologna 04 Bent Billiard. It’s a larger pipe, the owner’s tastes tending heavily towards over-sized Italian briars. Unfortunately for the stem on this Cavicchi, the size and weight make the pipe … Continue reading Stem Repair and a Small Briar Transplant for a Claudio Cavicchi Bologna 04
This pipe was sent to me by a DadsPipes reader for a little TLC. As the pics below show, the pipe was actually in pretty good condition other than some lava on the rim and a chunk of lower button missing from the acrylic stem. The smooth underside of the shank is stamped “DR” over “Ardor” over “URANO” over “ITALY” over “S. HOLMES” over “FATTA … Continue reading Rim Cleanup and a New Button for an Ardor Urano S. Holmes Rhodesian
