Photographed and written by 

John M. Young

You know that feeling after a long day at work when you finally make it home and you just want to sit in your favorite chair in vegetative relaxation?  That is how I felt after the restoration of the Medico Guardsman.  I just wanted an easy pipe to work on.  I looked through the boxes of “help me” pipes and selected a black the pipe apple.  I have no recollection of when this pipe came to me or by what means.  If I were to guess, I’d say it was part of an estate lot from a couple years ago.  It’s days of languishing unused and unappreciated had come to an end.

The pipe was in very good shape with just a touch of lava on the rim, no cake to speak of in the tobacco chamber, no layer of grime on the surface but it did have a surprising amount of tooth chatter on the stem.  Maybe the previous owner liked the appearance of being a pipe smoker without the smoking part.  To each their own…  Below are some photos of the pipe before any work was done.

This appeared like it was going to be more of a cleaning and polish job with a bit of stem work than a full blown restoration.  I was okay with that.

Background on The Pipe

This brand of pipes is a perfect example of an inventor applying the term, “Better living through modern chemistry”.  The first line in pipedia.org reads as follows:  “the pipe (pyrolytic graphite/phenolic resin)” (Super-Temp – Pipedia).  No introduction, no capitalization, no context, just that line.  I find that funny and telling, like the pipe smoking world is just not ready for anything other than clay, briar or meerschaum.  So unaccepting the line isn’t even worthy of punctuation.  S.M. Frank has been successfully making and selling Brylon (briar dust and resin) since 1966 (Yello-Bole – Pipedia).  

Pipedia.org does go on a bit more to say, “In 1963, Super-Temp Corporation began making plastic pipes with pyrolytic graphite bowl liners. They were called the pipe. In 1965, Super-Temp contracted to market their unique pipes through Venturi, Inc., the company which sold Tar Gard cigarette filters. Colors and stripes began to be offered circa 1967. About 1970, THE SMOKE pipes were added to the line – they were non-traditional shapes with a less expensive bowl liner. Venturi pipes were added around 1972 – they had no liner in the bowls at all. The pipes were out of production by 1975.” (Super-Temp – Pipedia)

A while back Dal Stanton did a wonderful job with a restoration of a blue bulldog the pipe.  You can find that blog post here.  In typical Dal Stanton fashion his research for the brand was wonderfully in-depth and I will defer to Dal and his post if you would like more information about the brand and it’s history.  I will mention a gentleman who I found very interesting, a “Billie W. Taylor II, Ph.D. Pipe Collector.”  That is the title he uses on his website dedicated to the pipe, THE SMOKE and Venturi pipes.  Here is the link to his site.  I feel I must thank him for his site and his permission to link to his site, ”If you like this page and wish to share it, you are welcome to link to it, with my thanks.” (Billie W. Taylor II, http://www.thepipe.info/)

The Restoration

I guess I am just used to calling this next part “The Restoration”, though in this case I don’t really consider this a restoration,  the pipe is in too good of condition for a restoration.  Anyway, I began in my normal fashion with a clean denim piece for a work surface.

Heck, the pipe was cleaner than the clean denim.  I blame the guy who does the laundry, yeah, that’d be me.

The reaming tools were assembled and barely used.

See what I mean by barely used?  

This pipe looked like it had been smoked maybe a handful of times.  There was a bit of lava on the rim.  “Bit” could be an exaggeration…

I probably could have skipped the scraping of the lava from the rim and just scrubbed it when I did the Murphy Oil Soap scrub but it is a habit to scrape the rim, I guess.

Below is the scraped rim.

Below is the stummel after having been scrubbed with a medium toothbrush and undiluted Murphy Oil Soap.  The soap was rinsed with warm water and the stummel dried with a cotton hand towel.

Oh how nice it would be if every shank were this easy to clean.

The stem was slightly more dirty but it too was quickly cleaned with 95% alcohol and bristle pipe cleaners.  The stem and it’s tooth chatter were more difficult to repair than expected.  The plastic just did not respond to sanding like a vulcanite stem did.

I worked the stem with the sequence of sanding sponges 320-3500.  I taped off the shank as it was not needing any sanding.  Between sponges I wiped the stem off with an alcohol dampened make-up pad.  I remember reading Dal Stanton’s post where he had a similar experience with working with the plastic stem material.  He ended up unhappy with his initial work and went back and started all over with 320 sandpaper and worked back up to  the Before and After Fine & Extra Fine Polish.  I thought about redoing the whole sequence then thought to myself, “Hey self, this is going to be a working pipe, not something for sale or a museum exhibit”.  I agreed with self and proceeded.

Next I removed the tape and wiped the pipe with the make-up pad to remove any adhesive from the tape.  I used a series of micro-mesh pads from 4000-12000 grit on both stem and stummel.  Between each of these pads the sem was again wiped off with the alcohol dampened make-up pad.

The whole pipe, stem and stummel, were polished with Before and After Fine Polish.  The polish was hand buffed with a soft cotton cloth.  The same process was repeated with the Before and After Extra Fine Polish.  I forgot to photograph that step. 

The pipe was then taken to the buffer where it received several coats of carnauba wax.

I really like the look of this pipe.  It could be because the apple is a favorite shape or the classy elegance of an all glossy black pipe.  Either way, it is pretty.  There are two things that I have noticed; one – that the pipe feels heavy for the size and two – there is a strange chemical taste similar to formaldehyde when I draw air through the pipe.  Neither of these are good selling points.  As an example of this, the last two pipes restored were the pipe apple and a Medico Guardsman apple.  The sizes of the two pipes are within a few millimeters of each other on all dimensions yet the Medico weighs in at 1.11 oz and the

the pipe weighs 1.47 oz., over a third of an ounce more.  I did smoke the pipe and found that it was a nice cool smoking pipe.  I did notice the formaldehyde taste once.  I do not know if this will continue with future smokes or if that is a “breaking in” issue with this bowl material.  

The dimensions of the the pipe Apple are: 

Length:  5.34 in./ 135.64 mm.

Weight:  1.47 oz./ 41.9 g.

Bowl Height: 1.54 in./  39.12 mm.

Chamber Depth: 1.29 in./ 32.77 mm.

Chamber Diameter:  0.72 in./ 18.29 mm.

Outside Diameter:  1.44 in./ 36.58 mm.

I do hope that you have found something here useful to your own pipe care, maintenance or restorations.  If you like this sort of thing, please click the like and subscribe buttons.  Thank you for reading the ramblings of an old pipe lover.