Estate pipes have become increasingly popular over the last five or six years, and with that rise in popularity among pipe smokers and collectors has also come an increased interest in estate pipe restoration. Sometimes DIY restorations go very well indeed, but other times even experienced restorers can have things go wrong. When that happens,… Continue reading Repairing the Repairs on an Early 19th Century KB Bent Bulldog
Accidents can happen to anyone, and mishaps seem most likely to strike when you're least expecting them. That was certainly the case for today's pipe restoration project. This 2002 Dunhill Amber Root 3208 Bent Bulldog fell out of its steward's pocket while he made the rounds of his farm north of Kingston, Ontario. Unfortunately, it… Continue reading Salvaging a Hog-Chewed Dunhill Amber Root 3208
One of the perks of doing what I do here at DadsPipes is having the opportunity to work on some very high end artisan-grade pipes that I cannot afford to buy for my own rack and rotation. One example is this lovely Danish hand made S. Bang that was sent to me for repair. As… Continue reading A Hand Cut Eldritch Resin Stem for a Lovely S. Bang Pipe
In a perfect world, a repair shop has access to every part it needs and can get them from suppliers quickly and easily. Enter COVID and the accompanying supply chain issues, and parts that once took about five days to arrive now takes up to 10 days, assuming they are actually available to order. Unfortunately… Continue reading A Square Peg for a Round Hole – An Exercise in Working With What You’ve Got
The pipe on the work table today was sent to me for some TLC. Its steward was concerned about the condition of the stem and the fading finish around the upper third or so of the bowl. As you can see from this first series of images, the pipe is Stanwell Legend 126, a shape… Continue reading New Life for a Stanwell Legend 126
Ask any pipe smoker, maker or collector and they will all tell you that the weakest part of a pipe, and thus the part most prone to damage, is the stem tenon. Most often cut as an integral part of the stem itself, the tenon holds the stem securely in place at the end of… Continue reading A New Delrin Tenon for an Interesting Tom Spanu Bamboo Freehand
Cost is almost always a prime consideration when it comes to estate pipe repairs. As I and other pipe restorers have proven more than once, virtually every estate pipe is repairable if the will to do so exists; whether the repair is worth the cost is a very different question, and the answer is very… Continue reading Worth Repairing? Salvaging a Seriously Cracked Lorenzetti Titus
The Brigham System has been on the market since 1938 when it was patented by Roy Brigham in Toronto, Canada. The original system consisted of a long aluminum tenon/filter holder into which fit a tube of untreated Rock Maple, which absorbed moisture from the smoke stream as it passed through the stem. Pipes from this… Continue reading A New System Stem for a Patent Era Brigham 229 Author
The Bavarian style long pipe is an iconic and historical piece of pipe history, bringing to mind long evenings by the fire, perhaps with a good book. In North America, at least, the style tends to be an outlier of sorts - you just don't see people sitting at a park bench smoking a two-foot-long… Continue reading Repairing an Acrylic Mouthpiece on a Vauen Enzian 4 Bavarian-Style Pipe
An estate pipe can be a lovely and thoughtful gift for new and experienced pipe smokers alike, but sometimes estate pieces need a bit of TLC before they can be added to a pipe lover's rack and rotation. Such is the case with this Peterson's Kapruf, which, as you can see in this initial series… Continue reading Revitalizing a Well Used Peterson’s Kapruf 56 Chubby Bent Billiard
