Written and photographed by John M. Young

This was what may have been my first restoration.  It contains mistakes, early photographs and is written from a less than stellar memory.  With those  qualifiers or disqualifiers, I will continue.  Upon retirement from 32 years of teaching secondary science, I concluded that I needed more activities to fill

 my increased free time.  By the way, if you ever wondered what it looks like to turn-in one’s paperwork after 32 years of teaching here is a photo.  I had smoked a pipe on and off since 1991.  None of the earliest pipes remain as they were given away or lost to the ephemera of time. 

As part of my learning how to restore pipes I went to the internet.  I do not recall many of my original searches but I do vividly recall reading Steve Laug’s  blog posts from https://rebornpipes.com/ and thought that he was a master of restoring old pipes and communicating the steps of these restorations.  I voraciously consumed his blog posts.  I have never been a big youtube watcher and found that the written blog format better suited my learning style.  Not that there are not great restoration videos out there.  There are and I have learned a great deal from the likes of Bare Pipe.  It has been said that imitation is the greatest form of flattery.  In looking up that quote it is important to use the whole sentence rather than just the first 7 words.  Oscar Wilde’s full quote reads: “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness”.  I model my own restoration guides on the works of Steve Laug.  I accept my mediocrity and I hope that readers will find mediocrity useful in their own restorations.

From reading Steve’s posts I noticed that many of his old pipe finds came from antiques shops.  There are a couple of shops in a town close to home, so I thought I’d give that a try.  I was walking down Main Street in Plattsmouth Nebraska and came across one of the antiques shops.  I went in and was wandering about kind of expecting to find the Holy Grail, an original copy of the Declaration of Independence or a vintage Dunhill.  Sadly I found none of those.  I did ask the proprietor if there were any “old pipes” in the shop.  Behind the counter she pulled down two quart sized Mason jars with some assorted pipes.  Nothing really caught my eye except this one weirdly shaped filthy pipe.

The lighting in the shop was not conducive to details nor my old eyes and I asked if I could take the pipe to the south facing window to get a better look.  I had never seen a pipe like this and wondered “how did they drill this thing?”  Then I gave the top a twist and my question was answered.  The shop keeper had no information about the pipe nor did she know how much to charge.  A quick phone call to her son set the price firmly at $20.  I was pretty sure that it was robbery but I was fascinated and decided to help out a local small business in their fleecing of a local inhabitant.

I got the little darling home and began examining and photographing the pipe.  As a note, this is prior to me having a work bench dedicated to pipes.  My fly tying bench was kind enough to donate space for the restoration.  Below are some of the early photos.

Okay, my photos back then were not that great then again, neither was the pipe.  It was dark, dirty and just gross. In examining the pipe and its parts I was quite impressed with the delicate woodwork and the metalwork that had gone into this pipe.  The threads were cut from the briar in both the inner-bowl and the outer.  The aluminum bottom of the inner bowl and the aluminum sleeve in the stem all amazed me.  At this time I didn’t actually know there was an aluminum bottom to the inner bowl.  Below are several photos of the parts. 

I had to find out more about this old pipe’s history.  Again turning to the internet I found a pipe that looked exactly like the pipe I was holding.  The site was http://www.smokingmetal.co.uk/pipe.php?page=520.  Since that time I have been in email contact with the proprietor of the Smoking Metal website, Tony Pringle.  In our last email he said the following:  

“I have little with pipes for some years now, but like to keep the site going. Will sort my own out one of these days. Advancing nyears means I am currently tking steps to pass on the website to an American colleague as an insurance..so much work went into it and it seems to be used regularly still”  (personal email).  

I do hope that Mr. Pringle continues to do well and can find a benefactor to continue the website.  The Smoking Metal site showed its Hell Maria with very clear stamps on both the left and right of the shank.  Mine was not quite as clear but obviously the same pipe.

The stamp that I could not make out on my pipe was the MLC.  This stands for Mary Linkman & Company.  This is the same company formed by Louis B. Linkman, the originator of Dr. Grabow pipes.  In 1898 Linkman and August Fisher started a small business making pipes.  The business grew and, “in 1907 M. Linkman & Company was incorporated with Louis B. Linkman as president, August Fisher, vice-president…” (https://pipedia.org/wiki/M._Linkman_%26_Co.).  The M. Linkman & Company was a name used throughout the 1920-30s.  I remember finding a copy of a print ad from 1924, online.  It showed a drawn image of the Hell Maria but I cannot find it again.

This clearly places the dirty and scarred Hell Maria from a shop in Plattsmouth NE to origins in the 1920s.  I was really beginning to wonder if I had bitten off more than I could chew with a pipe that old.  Then I looked at it and thought, “ I can’t make it any worse”.

Using Steve Laug’s restoration guides as my guide I started where he usually did, with a cleaning of the pipe exterior.  I used undiluted Murphy Wood Cleaner (I remember the product being called “oil soap”)

and a medium stiff toothbrush to rid the pipe of the layers of dirt and grime.  To my amazement it worked.  The soap and scrubbing converted my uniformly brown pipe into some very pretty wood.  It also uncovered fills and cigarette burns from time in an ashtray.  The scrubbing removed the lava deposits on the rim as well.  This actually took several applications of the oil soap.  I also remember the grime having a reddish color in it.  I assumed that that was from the dye or stain used to stain the briar.  After the Murphy scrub the pipe was dried and returned to the fly tying, um restoring bench.  I wiped down the exterior of the pipe with cotton balls soaked in 99% isopropyl alcohol.  When wiping the briar with the cotton balls They turned bright red with dye.  I remembered thinking that I did not want a red dyed pipe.  I wanted a pipe that was more of an orange-brown.  I also remember that it took a long time for the orange Fiebing’s Leather Dye to arrive.  Here are a few photos of what the pipe looked like at this stage.

After the exterior of the pipe was cleaned I turned to the interior.  The only

pipe reamer that I had at this time was a Scotte steel expandable reaming tool.  This reamer was fine for smaller tobacco chambers.  The Hell Maria was .25 inch larger than the reamer at its widest setting. This meant that I had to use a sharp knife and a delicate touch.  I also used a dowel rod wrapped in 220 sandpaper.  The chamber got cleaned out and I discovered the aluminum bottom on top of the briar in the bottom of the chamber. 

These two photos kind of show what I had.    I never felt comfortable enough with the knife to really scrape the thin inner bowl with much force so I did not remove the aluminum bottom.  I did try to polish the aluminum with a 0000 steel wool pad held with forceps.  I used bristle pipe cleaners soaked in alcohol to clean out the 3 draft holes in the bottom of the inner bowl.

The strange thing about a pipe like this is the number of surfaces that you have to clean.  Normally once you have cleaned the exterior and tobacco chamber you are pretty much finished.  Not with this one.  I realized that I had another outer and inner to scrub.  Back to the sink.  I again used the Murphy Oil Soap and toothbrush to scrub the inside of the exterior and the exterior of the tobacco chamber. At the bottom of the outer chamber, which is actually more like the inside of a calabash inner chamber, there was what appeared to be a cardboard-like disk.  I assumed that this disk was there to absorb condensed water from the smoke.  I kept it noting that any soap or water would likely disintegrate it.  Anyway, more scrubbing followed by wiping with alcohol soaked cotton balls.  The outside of the tobacco chamber actually did not look like wood at all.  It was black and had a very plastic-like feel.  I wondered if the makers had actually made the inner tobacco chamber as a cup of bakelite or some other 1920’s plastic and glued it to the briar rim with its threads.  Out of curiosity I started sanding the bottom of the tobacco chamber/cup.  It was infused with black smoking residue that had soaked into the briar.  Once sanded through you could see the whole piece was indeed a single machined piece of briar.  Amazing. 

The shank was a nice straight tube with an opening at either end.  This proved quite easy to clean.  Given it had been smoked a great deal so there were a lot of cotton swabs soaked in alcohol and soaked bristle pipe cleaners but it eventually came clean.

In the early days of my restoration hobby, pursuit, life-style(?) I had not yet purchased any deoxidizing solution.  In the early days I used a Rubbermaid tub with a solution of Oxy-Clean and water to soften the oxidation, then a liberal dose of elbow grease, Soft-Scrub and cotton balls.  The stem was in remarkably good condition making me think that it was a material other than vulcanized rubber.  Below are photos of the top and bottom of the stem.    

I cannot remember how I cleaned the stem nor if I did actually use the Oxy water bath or not.  I also did not take any photos of this stage of the restoration.  I can say that I did use the micro-mesh pads on the stem as all of the tooth chatter was removed from the stem.  The process would have been to use 400 wet/dry sandpaper to remove the dents.  Then to start with the 1500 micro-mesh pad moistened with a drop of water.  I most likely wiped the stem with Obsidian oil and repeated with the next micro-mesh pad, 1800 (also moistened with water).  This would have been followed with the remaining pads in order of increasing fineness up to the 120000.  I did not have the  Lbepen’s Fine and Extra-Fine Polish nor did I have a buffer in those early days.  I would have been content with the final finish of the 12000 micro-mesh pad.

I do recall that I used Fiebing’s Leather Dye to stain the stummel.  The original color must have been a dark red stain and I wanted it to be more of an antique orange-brown.  Looking back at my order history on Amazon I saw that I placed the order for the orange dye on September 15 and that it was not delivered until October 23.  As mentioned earlier, I did remember having to wait to finish this pipe, apparently about 5 weeks.  To stain with wood with the Fiebing’s Dye first the stummel would have been sanded and micro-meshed as with the stem.  With the exception of wiping between pads with an alcohol dampened cotton ball rather than Obsidian Oil.  I purposefully left a few of the scars on this old pipe.  There were cigarette burns along the shank,left side, and the front of the stummel at the base and a noticeable fill where the shank meets the vertical on the stummel.  I did not want to greatly alter the shape of the pipe with excessive sanding so these scars would be worn as signs of previous victorious battles. 

The first step in staining is to prepare your work surface as the stain is near impossible to remove and is also near impossible to not drip.  I used cellophane food wrap to wrap a nylon cutting board.  This would be my working surface.  Nitrile gloves would be worn to keep me from matching the stummel.  I also got a disposable Bic lighter and several pipe cleaners.  I needed a way to hold the stummel and keep the dye from getting into the tobacco chamber.  Most people use a wine bottle cork to achieve this.  I don’t drink, so I had to find another material. I do quite a bit of fishing though, so I found a cork shaped styrofoam bobber and gave it a layer of duct tape.  A pipe cleaner folded in half was used as the applicator for the dye.

With my equipment ready I proceeded to apply a coat of Fiebing’s Light Brown Leather Dye to the stummel.  It soaked into the wood and evaporated very quickly.  All of the articles I’d read and videos I’d watched said to “flame” the still wet stummel thus baking in the dye as the alcohol in the dye burned off.  There was nothing to burn off with my first application.  The second application allowed more of the liquid dye to remain and it was burned off as I had read/seen.  I have to admit it was pretty fun to see the first time.  After three applications and two successful burns I was satisfied with the staining.  I rubbed the surface with a paper towel and noticed a great deal of stain came off on the towel.  I then took the stummel to the bench where I moistened a cotton ball with alcohol and gave the stummel a rub.  More of the dye came off staining the cotton ball bright yellow brown.  This removed some of the stain but enough had penetrated the briar and had indeed stained the wood a light brown color.  I waited for what seemed like months for the orange stain to arrive.  When it did arrive I repeated the work surface preparation and gathering of equipment.  I then applied the orange dye to the stummel.  Nervously I flamed the pipe.  Upon wiping the stummel with an alcohol dampened cotton ball I saw the orange-brown I had hoped for.  The alcohol rub had blended the two dyes very nicely.   

As stated earlier, I did not have a buffer so waxing the pipe was done with Johnson’s Paste Wax.  A coating of wax was applied and allowed to dry then was buffed off with a shoe-shine buffing brush.  This was repeated three additional times.  The final buffing was done with the inside of a cotton athletic sock.  

Those were all of the photos that I had taken back then.  I have taken a few more recently and include them below.  I’d like to think that my restoration techniques, materials and tools used today are much better than they were when I started.  I have to add that I waited over two years before I finally smoked this old girl.  She actually smokes quite well.  Thank you for joining me and I hope that you have enjoyed reading the ramblings of an old pipe lover.