Briar Bowl – refinishing – NebraskaPeteGeek

Photographed and written by

John M. Young

I am writing this on Saint Patrick’s Day and it’s a beautifully shaped Dublin pipe. Coincidence? I know, I should have been working on a Peterson but have you seen the auction prices of used Peterson’s lately? Anyway, this lovely (well, it will be lovely) Medico came to me as an attempt to invest in the gold market surge. Another pathetic attempt at humor.

OK, it has been several days since I started writing this blog. I don’t know why but I was just having a terrible time sitting to do the writing. It’s not because of the pipe, it’s a beauty. Oh well, here goes.

The below photos are of the Medico Gold Crest before I started work on it.

Overall a typical well used and loved pipe. It needed reaming and rim work. The stem was gnawed on nylon which would require more time than a vulcanite stem. There were numerous old fills that would need to be replaced. The gold Rolled Gold (“R.G.” from the stamp) would need buffing. Overall a typical restoration.

Background

I am going to use the “Background” from a Gold Crest Meerschaum pipe I restored a while back. “According to TobaccoPipes.com,

“When you trace the Medico tobacco pipes history, you have to trace it back to the origins of the company that created it. The company that originated the Medico brand is the S.M Frank & Co. This company dates back to the year 1900. In that year, a man named Sam Frank began selling pipes and related tobacco products. Eventually, the company began making its own line of pipes. With the help of an experienced pipe manufacturer, Ferdinand Feuerbach, the company produced the popular Royal DeMuth and Hesson Guard Milano tobacco pipes. The company continued to grow well into the early part of the 1930s.

So, where did Medico pipes come into the picture?

By the early 1930s, there were some concerns about the tars and nicotine found in tobacco smoke. In order to mellow out the flavor of hot tobacco smoke as well as to capture the tars and nicotine, the S.M. Frank & Co. introduced the Medico pipe filter. This is an absorbent paper filter that many people still use to this day. In order to accommodate the new filter, the company developed an accompanying brand of pipes known as Medico. That line of pipes continues in production today.

The company ended up buying some of their main competition in 1955. That year the Kaywoodie brands came under the S.M. Frank Company. The Medico brand continued production through this transition without many changes. The next big change for the brand came in the late 1960s. In 1966, the company developed a synthetic material that combined the traditional briar wood with resins. It is known as Brylon. At that time, all Medico pipes were made from imported briar wood. In order to keep production costs down, the company began offering some lines with Brylon. Today, that is still true.

Today, the Medico brand of pipes is still a top selling one for the S.M Frank & Co. This line of pipes comes in thirteen different finishes with five made of briar wood and the rest from Brylon. All come with the push bit with a filter inside. The filter is easily changed out when the smoker desires. In the briar wood finishes, this line includes the Silver Crest, Premier, Bold Rebel, Kensington, and Windsor. In the Brylon, the line includes the Lancer, Apollo, Standard, Varsity, Conqueror, Medalist, Cavalier, and V.E.Q. As far as price, the briar wood pipes tend to be higher in cost that the Brylon ones.” (Medico Pipes History | TobaccoPipes.com)

I was unable to precisely identify the years in which the Gold Crest line was made. I did find a couple of print advertisements from 1958 and 1966, at least that is what the eBay sellers were claiming. The first ad is from 1958 and shows a Gold Crest with a list price of $5. The ad says “NEW! See the 1958 series of MEDICO Crest”. This could be read as meaning that the Crest line changed from year to year or that 1958 was the first year of the line.

(1958 Medico Pipes Ad Filter Pipes Crest | eBay)

The second ad looks quite “1966” but it doesn’t mention the Gold Crest pipe. Neither advertisement had the M within the crest as with the Medico Gold Crest in hand.

(1966 Medico Gold Crest Pipe Art Illustration Photo Vintage Magazine Print Ad | eBay)

Looking at just those two advertisements I would feel comfortable saying that this pipe is from around 1960.” (A Medico Gold Crest Meerschaum Apple Restoration – NebraskaPeteGeek)

The Restoration

The pipe was taken from the photo table to the workbench where it received a semi-clean denim piece.

The first step was to reem the tobacco chamber. I thought the PipNet with the #1 and #2 blades would be sufficient.

They were but the chamber was more caked than I initially thought.

The #3 blades came out and did a bit of work also.

The Smokingpipes Low Country reamer and the General triangular scraper also were used.

Below is a photo of the reemed chamber.

Once sanded it looked much better and showed no signs of heat damage.

The rim was encrusted in smoking residues or lava.

This was moistened with saliva and scraped with a sharp pocket knife, revealing the slightly damaged rim seen below.

I topped the rim using 320 sandpaper laid on a countertop. Followed by 400 sandpaper.

The topped rim looked far better. The inner rim did show some signs of charring from lighters on both the right and left sides.

I tried to sand the inner rim with a wooden sphere wrapped in 320 sandpaper.

The sanding helped but there remained slight depressions on both the left and the right. I didn’t want to alter the bore any more than I had to.

The shank was cleaned out using cotton swabs, bristle pipe cleaners, a dental scraper, nylon shank brush and a good deal of 99% ethyl alcohol.

To the sink! The stummel was taken to the sink for a scrub with undiluted Murphy Oil Soap and a nylon brush. The soap was rinsed with warm water and dried with a cotton hand towel.

There remained some clear coat finish on the stummel.

I am not a fan of clear coats.

I tried to remove the finish with 99% ethyl alcohol. This did little.

Between the scrubbing and the alcohol the old fills were softened. This made them easier to pick out using a fly tying bodkin.

I tried using 100% acetone on a cotton make-up pad. The finish succumbed to this solvent readily.

The pits were packed with briar dust.

The briar dust then had a small drop of thin cyanoacrylate (CA, super glue) applied via a disposable tip on the CA bottle. Each new fill was filed with a small flat file. If additional briar dust and CA were needed a second application was done.

The stampings and gold band were covered in masking tape to protect them from the sanding which was soon to follow.

I switched to working on the stem for some reason. I guess I had put it off long enough. Medico nylon stems are not easy to restore as they do not take well to using black CA for filling pits, dents or other teeth marks. I began with a small flat file.

Augh, so much tooth trauma.

The center of the stem had been bent inwards from biting, collapsing the airway a little. I thought that if I were to heat the nylon with boiling water then force a bamboo skewer into the airway, I might be able to reform it.

I would love to say this worked beautifully but I’d be lying. It did slightly improve the denting but only slightly. I then tried heating the stem with a heat gun. Again, I met only slight improvements.

Giving up on my attempts at restoring the stem to new condition, I called my improvement good and cleaned out the airway with alcohol, pipe cleaners, cotton swabs and a shank brush.

Okay, back to the stummel. This was sanded with a series of sanding sponges from 320-1500. Between each sponge I wiped the stummel with a make-up pad dipped in alcohol.

The sanding continued with sponges 2000-3500 with the same wiping between sponges.

The band was polished on the buffer with a blue buffing compound. I was afraid that it might obliterate the very light stampings and it pretty much did.

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

The remaining balm was hand buffed away with an inside out athletic sock.

After all the filing and attempted stretching of the nylon, The stem was sanded with a series of sanding sponges then buffed on the buffer. The below photos show the stem as good as I was able to get it.

Yeah, it is better but I don’t even want to think about the amount of time I spent to get it to the condition that you see in those two photos.

I still needed to refresh the gold crest on the stem. For this I opted to use Rub’n’Buff Gold Leaf wax.

I applied the gold with one of the bamboo skewers and after sharpening the tip with a pocket knife. The wax was allowed to dry for a couple of minutes then hand buffed with a soft cloth.

The pipe was then taken to the buffer for several coats of carnauba wax.

The final step was a hand buffing with a microfiber polishing cloth.

This Medico Gold Crest Dublin did turn out very nicely. The briar shows good edge grain front and read with lovely striping. There is not much bird’s eye to the grain which would make it even more interesting. The nylon of the stem is far better now than when the restoration began. I still have not discovered a good or efficient way to restore nylon. Perhaps someday. Until then I have to accept that my abilities are taxed and accept this as good enough. The gold band did polish up well at the cost of the lightly stamped 14K 1/40 R.G. stamping. I am sure that this lovely Dublin will be a fine smoking pipe and bring someone many more hours of smoking contemplation. The dimensions of the Medico Gold Crest 65 Dublin are:

Length: 5.98 in./ 151.89 mm.
Weight: 1.16 oz./ 32.88 g.
Bowl Height: 1.81 in./ 45.97 mm.
Chamber Depth: 1.56 in./ 39.62 mm.
Chamber Diameter: 0.82 in./ 20.83 mm.
Outside Diameter: 1.38 in./ 35.05 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.