A Small Amber Stem Meerschaum Bulldog Restoration

Photographed and written by

John M. Young

This is the fourth pipe in my briar free stage apparently. I have to say that I am looking forward to returning to work on briar pipes. The meerschaums are fun but their frequent lack of a documented heritage leaves me wanting and since I mainly do this for entertainment and relaxation the absence of a feeling of completion doesn’t sit well with me. I know what you are thinking, ‘quit complaining and get on with it.’ You are correct. Besides, the next pipe in the queue is another meerschaum.

This adorable little darling was purchased to allow me to work on a few novel traits. First, an amber stem, second an orific bit and third meerschaum. The threaded bone tenon was a bonus. The pipe came with a fitted case which had a distinctive mildew smell. The leather exterior of the case had almost completely deteriorated with only a few scraps remaining. What was left was paper thin and very brittle to the touch. The interior of the case had remnants of a velvet-like green lining which was also severely deteriorated by age. Inside the lining could be made out and read REAL MEERSCHAUM. The pipe had no markings. Below are photos of the case and pipe prior to any work done.

The joining where the shank met the stem was in remarkably good alignment and showed only a slight “overclocking”.

In all honesty, I was pretty sure that I would screw up major parts of this restoration. I was ready to do so and call any errors on my part inexperience. Then I thought that would do a disservice to the legacy of the old pipe and merely be an excuse for mistakes. I searched Steve Laug’s rebornpipes.com for meerschaum restorations and read several. The handful of meerschaum restorations which I had done all were rusticated pipes. This would be the first smooth meerschaum that I’d tackled. Everything about it seemed fragile; the disintegrating case, the amber stem, the bone tenon and the delicate smooth meerschaum stummel. So here goes, good or bad, I’ll show you all what I did.

Background

This is an easy one. There, done. Really, I have nothing to go one. I tried searching for “REAL MEERSCHAUM” marked cases – no matches. Most of the cases are actually marked”Genuine Meerschaum” so, I thought I might get lucky with the “Real” but, no. I guess we can talk about the orific bit quickly. Mouthpieces with orific bits seem to have gone out of favor by 1920 and were replaced with the slot which we are all more familiar with. Steve Laug wrote a great blog on the demise of the orific button and I’ll link to it here.

Judging by the case, the amber stem and the orific button, I think I can safely say that this pipe is from before 1920 and most likely carved in Europe.

The Restoration

Dirty little pipe on a clean piece of denim.

The reaming was done with scrapers and sandpaper only. Twisting reamers are considered too aggressive for meerschaums due to their potential torque.

The Scraping was slower than normal as I was trying to be careful of the meerschaum. I am still developing a feel for the amount of pressure which can be used. Also the sound. Briar has a squeak, to my ears, that is different from the sound of a scraper on cake. I have not had enough experience reaming meerschaum to have developed an “ear” for it. I know, practice, practice, practice.

The reamed bowl before the sanding.

After the reaming, I started cleaning the airway. How something so short could have enough tar to take down a saber-tooth cat I’m not sure. Many bristle pipe cleaners and cotton swabs dipped in 95% ethyl alcohol later the airway was clean.

It was a bit difficult for me not to grab the Murphy Oil Soap when cleaning a stummel. I didn’t. The stummel was scrubbed with only warm water and a medium bristle toothbrush.

I forgot to mention that I lightly sanded the rim while I was sanding the tobacco chamber. This was done in an attempt to remove the lava which had formed over the rim.

I didn’t want to take away too much of the surface meerschaum as I thought that a ring of fresh mineral would look ridiculous with the rest of the colored meerschaum.

Below is the scrubbed stummel, left and right.

With the stummel cleaned I turned my attention to the stem. Fortunately it was nowhere near as dirty as the shank had been. Alcohol dipped bristle pipe cleaners made short work of this. The bone tenon was slightly overclocked when tightened. I added a very light coat of thin clean cyanoacrylate (CA, super glue) to the threads of the bone tenon. I hoped that this slight increase in their thickness would be enough to reduce the overclocking.

The stem immediately behind the button had teeth dents both above and below. These were filled by first lightly sanding the amber to provide additional surface area for the CA to adhere to. The dents each received a small drop of CA. You can see the damaged button in the photo below. I will come back to how I repaired it.

The CA was spritzed with a CA drying accelerator. This cured the CA as it evaporated. The newly cured CA was then filed and sanded smooth and blended with the existing amber.

The CA added to the bone tenon had cured without the use of an accelerator and allowed for a correct alignment of the stem with the shank. Better lucky than good, any day. I then used a series of micro-mesh pads from 1500-2400 wetted with a couple drops of water. The micro-mesh pads 3200-12000 were used dry. Between each pad I wiped the pipe off with a paper towel moistened with water.

It was time to give the small Bulldog a fresh coat of beeswax. The kit that I used is illustrated with a photo from a previous meerschaum waxing. I place beeswax in a small glass jar and place the jar in a pan with water. The boiling water melted the wax and allowed me more time to apply the liquid wax. It is kind of like a double boiler and a hot water bath. The working surface has a heat gun and an empty tin to collect wax drippings. The wax is moved close to the work surface hopefully keeping my dripping to a minimum as I apply the wax to the stummel with a paintbrush.

As the wax was melting I heated the stummel with the heat gun.

Below is the boiling water melting the beeswax.

Once the entire stummel was “painted” with wax, I used the heat gun to remelt the wax. The dripping wax was collected in the tin. As I was melting the wax from the pipe I was also spreading it around with the paintbrush to ensure complete coverage.

Once the wax had either been absorbed by the meerschaum or had dripped into the tin, I put on the nearest glove and wiped the stummel with a dry paper towel. The glove was a necessary part as the stummel was very hot.

The color of the meerschaum had softened and took on a more warm golden hue.

Now, back to that button repair, I promised you.

Great idea: Use a toothpick wrapped in Scotch tape as a plug for the airway. The CA shouldn’t stick to the tape.

I inserted the toothpick, good thing this is an orific button.

I then used a fly tying bodkin as a dropper for brown CA. The brown CA was filled in around the toothpick. I used a medium CA rather than a thin formulation. It took a couple of applications to fill the broken voids.

The CA was allowed to cure on its own rather than using a drying accelerator.

After the CA had cured I removed the toothpick, pretty sure that my great idea would work but still cautious.

Success! I used a round diamond rat-tail file to smooth the interior of the airway. The button was reshaped using a flat file and sandpaper.

A sub-par photograph. I guess you will either have to wait for the “finished” photos or jump down to them.

Ugg, the case. I am sure that it once had a leather covering. That was long gone. I think all that remained was a papier mache shell. At least I think that is what it was made of.

There was also at one time a wooden frame around the case. Below you can still see a couple of flakes of old leather, the blackish paper tin stuff.

Enter great idea number two: Coat the whole exterior with sodium silicate, also known as water glass. That should act as an adhesive which would penetrate the papier mache and better hold it together. It would do the same for the wood frame. In my imagination this worked wonderfully. I removed the disintegrating flaking leather and started painting the exterior of the case.

I worked. I was not happy with the color though. It didn’t look like my imagination at all.

Well, I was rather committed at this point. I continued and painted the edges as well.

Great idea number three: Lightly sand the case, dye it with Fiebing’s black leather dye then give it a coat of black shoe polish. I know it didn’t have any leather but, It sounded good to me.

The case was sanded then dyed black. I did not flame the dye. My imagination told me that was a really bad idea. For once I listened.

The case was allowed to dry for an hour then I applied the black shoe polish with a cotton swab. Once applied, I used a shoe shine brush to buff the shoe polish.

The pipe was taken to the buffer where the stem received several coats of carnauba wax. The stummel did not receive any carnauba as it just got fresh beeswax.

Yeah, it is still a beaten, battered, scared, little bulldog but it is a cute little beaten, battered, scared bulldog. I am not sure if sanding would have removed all of the scratches. If the pipe had been that severely sanded, it most likely would not have any color of a developed meerschaum pipe. I am okay with the scars and think they show that this old pipe has stories which would probably amaze all of us if only it could tell them.The repairs to the amber stem turned out very well. The brown CA is a near perfect match to the color of the amber. The dimensions of this Small Amber Stem Meerschaum Bulldog are:

Length: 4.51 in./ 181.86 mm.
Weight: 0.82 oz./ 23.40 g.
Bowl Height: 1.63 in./ 54.61 mm.
Chamber Depth: 1.05 in./ 39.88 mm.
Chamber Diameter: 0.70 in./ 20.57 mm.
Outside Diameter: 1.40 in./ 33.78 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.