Photographed and written by

John M. Young

I am a sucker for a Dublin shaped pipe and I love the look of a forward canted bowl.  These two features are present with the above The Sterling Pipe.  I had never heard of the Brand but the briar looked like it was pretty good quality.  The stampings on the pipe read, THE over STERLING over PIPE in an almost bubble-like block font.  The logo looked like a cursive L or S, I assumed an S.  Handwriting was never a strong point of mine.  On the right side the shank is stamped AN EXCLUSIVE IMPORT over ENGLAND with 530 offset further towards the bowl.  Only the 530, I assume shape number, is definite.  The other stamps are all light and I feared that they would be hard to preserve intact.  Below are some photos of how The Sterling Pipe appeared prior to work.

The terms; dirty, dinged, oxidized and pitted all came to mind.  Yet with all the work needing to be done the “coolness” of the shape shined through and held promise.  And the fact that the briar grain was pretty darn interesting too. 

Background

An internet search of “The Sterling Pipe” only produced one result of note.  A mention of a The Sterling Pipe” from an earlier auction:

(THE STERLING PIPE LONDON ENGLAND | #3769477577 (worthpoint.com))

That’s darn little to go on.

I then tried the big English makers searching to match the shape number to a known maker’s shape.  Again no luck with Charatan, Comoy’s, GBD, Lorenz,e Rossi etc…  Next I tried the “Phone a friend” approach.  Well, actually it was a message a friend.  I reached out to Steve Laug via Facebook private messenger, showed him a few photos and asked what he thought.  He replied quickly with the following “According to Who Made that Pipe The Sterling was made by Comoy’s for export” (personal communication).  “Who Made That Pipe” refers to the book:  

Who made that pipe?: a directory of briar pipe names, their makers/sellers, and countries of origin in the 19th & 20th centuries1997, H. Wilczak

With that piece of the puzzle solved I proceeded on with the project.

The Restoration

Starting with a clean denim piece as a work surface I began work.  The reaming was the starting point with this pipe even though I knew that the stem would require more work than the briar.

The reaming tools were assembled.

The reaming went very quickly.  I find it interesting how different pipes take to the reaming.  In my experience softer briar reams far more easily than harder briar.  My favorite pipes to clean are the old Marxman Algerian briars.  There is something about that briar that almost seems like the briar sloughs off the cake with a little pressure.  This pipe did the same.

The tobacco chamber was sanded with 220 sandpaper on a wooden dowel to bare briar and an inspection of the chamber revealed no damage to the chamber walls.

The airway of the pipe was very constricted and I could barely draw air through the pipe.  I used the long drill bit-like tool from the Scotte Stainless Steel reaming tool to hand drill the airway clean.

With the airway open I took the stummel to the sink.  Here it was scrubbed with undiluted Murphy Oil Soap and a medium toothbrush.  The soap was rinsed with warm water and the stummel dried with a cotton hand towel.

Back at the workbench I got a much better look at the numerous pits and their old fills.  I took out the dental picks and tried excavating the old fill material.  It was very hard, nearly rock-like.  The fine sharp points of the picks would not penetrate the fill material.

I thought, maybe a bit of 95% ethyl alcohol would soften the fill and sell as remove any remaining wax and or finish.  The alcohol dipped make-up pad did show some color as it removed something from the briar.

I had no more success with the dental picks after the alcohol.  I tried using a sharp tipped round needle file, hoping the harder and more stiff steel of the file would be more effective against the fills.  Success.

The newly opened pits were filled with brown cyanoacrylate (CA, super glue) and briar dust.  These were filed with a flat needle file and smoothed with 32 then 400 sanding sponges.  This did leave several dark fill spots over the surface of the stummel.  More on this later.

The rim of The Sterling Pipe had damage from knocking against things other than a palm of cork ashtray knockers.  I think the previous owner preferred to knock out a dottle on pieces of broken concrete or lava rocks.  To each their own… 

I topped the rim using 220 sand paper laid flat on the countertop.  A circular motion where I rotated the stummel in my hand was used to evenly sand the rim.  Once topped to remove most of the dings I used a 1 ½ in round polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe cap wrapped with 220 sandpaper to give the inner rim it’s bevel.

The worst of the dings were still present.  To these I applied a bead of brown CA and pressed the rim into a flat bottomed container of briar dust.  This pressed the dust into the CA wetted depressions.  The rim was then topped using 400 sandpaper to smooth the new rim fills.  I unfortunately did not photograph this step, apologies.

I turned my attention to the stem.  It was lightly sanded with a 400 grit sanding sponge to remove the outermost oxidation.  Then the stem was placed into a solution of OxyClean and water.  It soaked in the Oxy for 2 hours.

Below you can kind of see the brownish clouds of oxidized rubber on both sides of the stem.

Upon removal the stem looks quite brown.

Rubbing the stem with a clean dry make-up pad removed a good deal of oxidized rubber.

The stem then got a pipe cleaner run through the airway to remove Oxy solution and was scrubbed with SoftScrub on make-up pads.

The stem was shedding oxidized rubber but looked little different after each pad.  The oxidation was worse than I had originally thought.  I decided to give the stem an overnight bath in Before and After Extra Strength Deoxidizer.  A pipe cleaner was inserted into the stem to be used as a suspension hook.

This allowed me to hang the stem suspending it in the solution.

I had decided that I was going to give this stummel a black dye base coat and try to achieve a contrast stain look.  This would allow all those darker spots from the numerous fills to me slightly hidden and give the grain some added contrast.  I did not want the rim to share in this contrast.  I had used Vallejo Liquid Mask on a previous project to keep areas free from dye and thought this would be a perfect place to work on my technique with the product.

The mask is a relatively thick liquid that goes on blue-green and dries more clear.  One dry it can be peeled off.  I applied a coating of the Liquid Mask with a cotton swab.  The mask was allowed to dry overnight.

The next day, I removed the stem from the Deoxidizer solution and let it drip off excess solution.

The stem was wiped with a coarse shop rag and a couple of pipe cleaners were run through the airway to remove any remaining solution.

The stem was returned to the workbench and scrubbed with numerous make-up pads with SoftScrub on them.  Eventually the stem looked free of oxidation.

Next came the repair of the tooth chatter and hole in the stem.  I used black CA for this.  A plastic dam was used to stop the CA from penetrating the airway.  This is just a piece of a plastic lid cut into a triangle.  I wrapped scotch tape around the triangle until it was a tight fit into the airway.

Black CA was then applied to the button edge and the area where the hole was.  I find that it is better to use several thin coats as compared to a single thick coat of CA when building up material in an area to be reconstructed.

The filled area was then spritzed with a CA drying accelerator.  Photos of the product used are further below.  

The new fill was then filed with a flat needle file and smoothed with a 320 grit sanding sponge.  

As the fill progressed I applied the black CA to a wider area to allow for a more smooth blending of the flll.

Below is how the fill was progressing and what it looked like with further filing.  It was eventually smoothed with 320 and 400 sanding sponges and the button was reshaped.

With the stem reconstruction completed I turned to dying the stummel with black Fiebing’s Leather Dye.  The needed kit was gathered; a folded pipe cleaner as the applicator, a disposable lighter for flaming the dye and the duct tape wrapped fishing bobber for a handle and plug eeping dye from the tobacco chamber.  Also notice the taped stamps.  I did not want to have to sand the black dye from the stamps and further degrade the already faint stamping.  I hoped the tape would keep most of the dye from the stamps.

The dye was applied to the briar and flamed with the lighter.  This burns off the alcohol solvent of the dye and fixes the dye to the briar.

The tape was removed.

The stummel was then rinsed with 91% Isopropyl alcohol.  Why Isopropyl?   Because that is what was sitting next to the sink.  

The stummel was then wiped with make-up pads dipped in 95% ethyl alcohol to remove excess dye.  I must have grabbed a make-up pad from by the sink that had a spot of red dye on it.  There was no red dye used for the contrast staining.

The Vallejo Liquid Mask was peeled off the rim.  Only a slight seeping or bits where I didn’t apply it well enough remained undyed.

The black dyed stummel was then sanded with 320-600 grit sanding sponges to remove the outermost black dyed briar.  This left the softer grained, more deeply black penetrated, wood black and removed the harder grained briar where the black had only slightly penetrated.

The stamps and loge were taped again with painters tape to protect them during the next sanding of the entire pipe.  Sanding continued with the series of sponges from 320-3500.  Between each sponge I wiped the stummel with an alcohol moistened make-up pad.  The stem was rubbed with a dab of mineral oil on my fingertip and wiped with a paper towel.

The stem and stummel then were worked on with the 4000-12000 micro-mesh pads.  The wiping between each pad was as with the sponges except I used Obsidian Oil rather than mineral oil on the stem.

The pipe was given a coating of Before and After Restoration Balm and allowed to sit for 30 minutes.

The balm was wiped off with an inside out athletic sock with extra white German Shepherd hair.  These dogs are also known as German Shedders by people who share homes with them.

The logo was repainted with Silver Leaf Rub’nBuff.

The pipe was then given several coats of carnauba wax with the buffer.

There you have it.  A real beauty, The Sterling Pipe 530 Canted Dublin restoration.  I am very happy with how well this one turned out and not just because I find the shape so intriguing.  The pipe cleaned up nicely.  The Contrast dye did what I wanted it to do – bring out the grain a bit more and conceal the fill spots.  The stem polished up better than I thought it would after seeing how deep the oxidation had gone into the vulcanite.  I was afraid that the stamping would be lost completely.  They do remain but are so faint that they are hard to read without bright light and magnification.  I am sure it will be a great little pipe for someone to enjoy for years to come.  The dimensions of the The Sterling Pipe 530 Canted Dublin are:

Length:  5.67 in./ 144.02 mm.

Weight:  0.97 oz./ 27.5 g.

Bowl Height: 1.66 in./  42.16 mm.

Chamber Depth: 1.22 in./ 30.99 mm.

Chamber Diameter:  0.80 in./  20.32 mm. (conically bored)

Outside Diameter:  1.35 in./ 34.29 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.

Below are some photos of the finished The Sterling Pipe 530 Canted Dublin.