“Ropp” ”cherry wood” “Cherrywood“ “Demichurchwarden””

Photographed and written by

John M. Young

I remember the first cherry wood pipe that I restored, several years ago. I was bummed that one was in the estate lot, but I figured that it would be good practice if nothing else. When I finished working on it I tried smoking it. I was surprised at how well the pipe smoked. I was not expecting that. That was also the first time I tried banding a cracked shank. That was long before I started documenting restorations but here are three recent photos of that pipe:

I would like to think that my stem work and banding skills have improved since then. Feel free to criticize, I can take it.

Back to the subject of this restoration blog, The French mMade Cherrywood Demichurchwarden. This pipe also came to me as part of an estate lot. The target of the lot was not this pipe. I wanted the Marxman Monk figural from a couple of blogs ago. This pipe did strike my fancy though. The sweeping curve of the stem and the long shank were both good looking and felt good while clenching. The pipe was only marked with a single stamp reading MADE IN FRANCE. Below are some photos of the pipe prior to working on it.

The Cherry Wood was in very good condition. This is most likely due to it having not been used. There was some chatter on the mouthpiece and the bowl had obviously seen fire and tobacco, but I would wager less than 5 times. The stem would require the most work and that was quite superficial. The tobacco chamber would be reamed and sanded and the airway cleaned, other than that this was more of a cleaning than a restoration.

Background

Ropp is the pipe maker that comes to my mind whenever I see one of these pipes. Lacking anything other than the “MADE IN FRANCE” stamp, I searched “Ropp” in pipedia.org and found the following:

“Eugène-Léon Ropp (1830 – 1907) had acquired a patent for a cherrywood pipe (wild cherry, lat.: Prunus avium) in 1869. In 1870 he established a workshop to manufacture such pipes in Büssingen (Bussang, Vosges mountains). Around 1893 the business moved into the former mill of Sicard (part of the community of Baume-les-Dames – Département Doubs, Upper Burgundy – from 1895 on).

The pipes were a big success in the export as well. Shortly before 1914 Ropp designated A. Frankau & Co. (BBB) in to be the exclusive distributor in the UK and it’s colonies.

Probably in 1917 a workshop in Saint-Claude in the Rue du Plan du Moulin 8 was acquired to start the fabrication of briar pipes. In 1923 a small building in the environment of Saint-Claude, serving as a workshop for polishing, was added.

Circa 1920’s 1930’s catalog in PDF, courtesy, Joseph Morris: Early Ropp Catalog

Even though cherrywood pipes were the mainstay of Ropp until the company finally closed down in September 1991. The company was taken over by Cuty-Fort Entreprises (Chacom, Jeantet, Vuillard, Jean Lacroix…) in 1994.” (Ropp – Pipedia). The entry did contain one advertisement which looked rather familiar.

I wondered if the logo on the stem of this pipe would provide any additional information. The pipedia.org entry had several Ropp logos, but none of them were a match for this pipe. Sure this might be a replacement stem. The issue with that hypothesis is, “Why would you need to replace a stem on a pipe that has almost never been smoked?” I went to pipephil.eu, the source of all things “logo” and did a search for Ropp. There were only two photos of Ropp pipes with circle or bullseye logos:

(Ropp — Pipes : Logos & Markings). Unfortunately neither of these matched the pipe in hand.

Ropp was certainly the prominent cherry wood pipe maker but, after 20 years patents expired and pipe makers countrywide could copy Ropp’s style and cash in on the market for these pipes. I assume that is what this pipe represents. Ropp does not appear shy about stamping their name upon their pipes. There are a large and diverse set of Ropp stem logos but they always seemed to have stamped the name on their pipes.

The Restoration

The restoration, if you can even call it that, began as usual with a clean denim piece.

Now before we begin, I have to start with some operational definitions. “What are those?” you ask. Operational definitions are words or phrases used in scientific writing where the author uses a specific definition of a word and how they will be using it in the article. As an example, I’ll refer to this mortise as the threaded mortise.

The shank tenon is also threaded. The stem has another tenon thus will be called the stem tenon.

Finally the shank mortise is unthreaded and fits with the stem tenon. Double the pleasure, double the fun.

As you can see from all those mortises and tenons, the pipe was really clean. I looked at the draft hole; it was drilled offset to the front of the pipe’s tobacco chamber.

Here it is with the stem attached allowing a better look at what I mean. Weird, but I suppose it does line-up well with the stem.

I started with the stem. It was very clean and only required a single alcohol dipped pipe cleaner.

Next I tried the shank. It too only needed a single pipe cleaner.

I had a foreboding feeling like something terrible was going to be discovered. Nope, it was just a barely smoked pipe. I started to scrape the tobacco chamber. I used the General triangular scraper. I rounded the tip of this frightening tool off on the neighbors grinder since I am far too lazy to swap out my buffing spindle for the grinding wheel. Lazy and honest.

After the scraping, I sanded the chamber with 320 sandpaper wrapped around a wood dowel and a couple of small pieces of sandpaper with the not-so-nimble fingertip.

The stem and stummel were taken to the sink for a scrubbing with a nylon brush and undiluted Murphy Oil Soap. Both pieces were rinsed of soap with warm water and then dried with a cotton hand towel.

I lightly sanded the surface of the stem with a 320 sanding sponge, while avoiding the stem logo.

The stem was then placed into Briarville’s Pipe Stem Oxidation Remover solution, also known as deox. I originally thought I’d leave it in for a couple of hours, but this turned into a 18 hour stay.

After the stem went into deox, I coated the stem and stummel with Before and After Restoration Balm. The dry cherry bark absorbed the balm very quickly, taking much more than I thought it would. The balm was applied with a baby toothbrush to work the product into the nooks and crannies of the bark.

After about 20 minutes the surfaces of the stem and stummel were hand buffed with an inside out athletic sock to remove excess balm.

I wanted to coat the bark with something to hold up to frequent handling. I thought that a couple of coats of Danish Oil might be good. I found a spare stem that fit the stem mortise to act as a handle while I applied the oil.

The Danish Oil was applied with a folded pipe cleaner.

The spare stem was clamped in a vice to hold the pipe as the Danish Oil dried.

The next day, I removed the stem from deox and placed it on a coarse shop rag. The stem was vigorously rubbed with the rag to remove oxidized material which the deox had softened.

Back at the workbench the airway of the stem was cleaned with a pipe cleaner.

The stem was then sanded with a 400 grit sanding sponge and oiled with mineral oil to see how the deox had worked. The answer, very well.

I taped the shank and stem logo with masking tape after reinserting the sten into the shank. This was done to protect those two from the stem sanding.

The stem was then sanded with a series of sanding sponges in grits 400-3500. Between each sponge the stem was rubbed with mineral oil and wiped with a dry paper towel to remove sanding debris.

The stem was loose fitting. To address this I used a couple of drops of black cyanoacrylate (CA, super glue) applied to the tenn. The blac CA was spread evenly onto the tenon with the edge of a fly tying bodkin. Once the CA had dried I sanded the surface with a 1000 grit sanding sponge and tested the fit.

The fit was better, but still loose. I then switched to Thin CA applied and spread as before. This was also sanded with a 1000 grit sponge.

Better, but still loose. One more time. Perfect fit was achieved.

I took the stem to the buffer where it was buffed with a blue buffing compound and the dedicated blue compound wheel. The shine was great but the logo had suffered. Before repainting it with white acrylic model paint, I cleaned the logo with 99% ethyl alcohol on a cotton swab.

The paint was applied and worked into the stamp with the fly tying bodkin.

The acrylic paint dries quickly and was rubbed with a soft cotton rag to remove the excess paint.

I returned the pipe parts to the buffer where they were waxed with carnauba wax. I worked the wax into the bark with and against the grain. Using very light coatings of wax and working it into the slightly rough texture of the bark. The stem was also given several coats of wax.

I used a cotton hand towel to hand buff the stem and stummel to make sure there were no areas of wax build-up. The final step was a hand buffing, with a microfiber polishing cloth, of the stem, shank and stummel.

I think this Cherrywood demichurchwarden turned out very nicely. The pipe feels great in both the hand and between the teeth. The rustic look of the bark covered cherry wood is both attractive and functional. I find the rustic charm similar to a corn cob pipe but with a European flair. The relatively unused bowl should provide years of use. The stem polished beautifully and the high gloss black finish accentuates the rustic nature of the rest of the pipe. The dimensions of this French made Cherrywood pipe are:

Length: 7.34 in./ 186.44 mm.

Weight: 1.52 oz./ 43.09 g.

Bowl Height: 2.02 in./ 51.31 mm.

Chamber Depth: 1.02 in./ 25.91 mm.

Chamber Diameter: 0.70 in./ 17.78 mm.

Outside Diameter: 1.33 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.