Lathe

Kaywoodie Standard 95B and Richard's pipe tool

Kaywoodie Standard 95B

     While in NJ last weekend my wife and I visited the Golden Nugget flea market (known as the "Nugget" by locals). We made it there on Saturday morning, evidently Sunday is the big day. If you're in NJ the Nugget is worth going to. Its a mix of antiques and other odds and ends. I only found one vendor with some pipes and picked up this very sad looking Kaywoodie for 3 dollars. It's stamped "Standard" and 95B (shape number). I know nothing about Kaywoodie pipes (here is a good Kaywoodie link) other than they are very common and not worth all that much, but I figured I needed to pick something up while I was there and it seems hard to go wrong for three dollars. The stinger has 4 holes which seems to indicate the pipe is Pre 1960's ?.

I didn't realize that the aluminum collar was supposed to stay on the shank, although the stinger was so stuck I don't think I could have removed it in any other way.

Very darkened rim on a Kaywoodie 95B.

Big time gunk on the stinger.

This pipe needed a serious cleaning. The singer and shank were so gummed up I'm not sure that the pipe would have had a draw (I wasn't going to try).  Removal of the treaded collar that screws into the shank took about a day of soaking in alcohol, heating, cooling, and twisting.... Cleaning the gum out of the shank took what seemed like a box of q-tips; the stem took almost a pack of bristled pipe cleaners.... Unfortunately, I put the treading collar on the pipe to bring it back to Ohio, and couldn't get it back off when I got home, prevented me from running a drill bit through the shank to remove some of the hardened gum which would have been a real time saver.

Here it is mostly cleaned up.

Some burn marks and dents remain, but the pipe is much better than before.

Not visible in the "after" photos is a deep tooth mark on the upper surface of the bit. I don't think I can sand it out completely without weakening the stem to the point of failure. More work is needed on the stem, but I'm going to see how the pipe smokes before investing more time in it.

I also picked up a little pipe tool/knife for 4 dollars (Richard's made in Sheffield England). It had some rust spots and scratched blade (some kind of bizarre sharping accident I think). 

Richard's pipe tool. Hey, who's that in the background...

I like the streetlight in the logo.

Steaming out a dented pipe rim.

1st attempt at steaming dents out of a pipe rim.

The poor pipe was a Guildhall by Comoy's that dates to the 70's or 80's.



I hate to admit it, but many years ago I was the denter (I don't think denter is even a word)... I used have a ashtray with one of the cork knobs to tap the ash out with. I removed it, because I could not figure out why you would want something flammable in an ashtray. Only later did I learn that you were supposed to gently tap the pipe on the the cork....


Using steam to raise dented wood fibers is a common repair technique used on both furniture and pipes. I found two helpful links on steaming out dents on the Pipe Smoker Forum, I'm sure there is information in other places as well.

http://pipesmokersforum.com/forum/index.php?/topic/6280-success-with-steaming-a-dent/page__p__97981__hl__dents__fromsearch__1#entry97981

http://pipesmokersforum.com/forum/index.php?/topic/4298-hole-dent-stem-fix/page__p__68654__hl__dents__fromsearch__1#entry68654

Warning! This post chronicles what I did to repair this pipe. The repair was not perfect, in fact, I even burnt the rim some. This was a risk I was willing to take with my pipe. I am not a qualified tobacco pipe repair person. This post is for entertainment purposes only!

The dented rim. 

I figured that some of the wax and tar would need to be removed to somewhat expose the wood allowing the steam to penetrate the wood fibers. I wanted to remove as little wood and finish as possible so I used very fine 1500 grit paper and gave the rim a very light sanding.

Very light sanding with 1500 grit paper.

The lightly sanded rim. I actually don't think I removed much, if any wood. Note the lower part of the rim is faded, this was not the result of anything done today.....

I thought I would wet the dents first and give the water some time (5-10 minutes) to soak in.

Water sitting on the dents.

Many people use an iron as the heat source and I might have been better off using one? I reasoned that I wanted to heat as little of the rim as possible so I thought I would try a soldering iron. You can't really see this tip in my photo, but is was a chisel tip with flat sides like the upper tip in this photo. 

I saturated a folded paper towel, placed it over the dent, and pressed the iron on top for 1 to 2 seconds to generate the steam. Each spot got 4 or 5 quick applications.

Soldering iron and wet paper towel.

Note the clear lines where the dents were. The grain really did rise, but notice the burn spot on the right most side of the rim. I think I missed the wet paper towel.....

OK, the steam did raise the dents and I burnt part of the rim. I'm not sure if I missed the paper towel or just held it there too long and it dried all the water... Live and learn...

I let the rim dry for awhile and gave the rim and the whole pipe a VERY light sanding with the 1500 grit paper and then cleaned the whole pipe up with some alcohol before buffing with carnauba wax.

Ready for buffing. The tissue in the bowl to prevent wax dust from getting into the bowl. Note that the wood and stem shank are somewhat dull from the light sanding.

OK, it looks better, not great, but better..

All finished. The first thing I noticed was the light area on the rim (lowest part of the rim in this photo). I thought I did this, but I actually think is was faded by the sun. But the faded area is also the only region that has the dark stain in the grain. Not sure what's going on here.

The dented rim before. 

Rim after dent removal.

Here is the whole Comoy's Guildhall, all polished up and ready to go!

Another close up of the repair, faded region, and burn (the burn mark is at 2 o'clock on the outer rim).

The repair was not perfect but looks better than when I started. The two dents, especially because they were aligned, would catch my eye and remind me of my bad pipemenship... You can still pick them out in these photos, but keep in mind that most of these pictures are larger then the pipes actual size. Under normal lighting and without magnification the pipe does look fairly good; I figure that after being smoked a few times the rim will darken and mask some of the fading.

Photo of the pipe taken inside. Under normal lighting the faded stain on the rim and remnants of the dents are not nearly as noticeable.

Outside temperature vs time

Temperature taken with infrared thermometer on the outside of the briar bowl. A and C, and B and D are points opposite each other, but I forget which way the grain was going... 

Pipe Identification

Searching for the who, where, when, and why of this pipe.

The 1964 Wally Frank catalog has some similar looking pipes. Clearly not the same person carved here, but at least a similar concept. The pipe stem I have does not have that metal thing depicted in the catalog, nor evidence that there was one.

1964 Wally Frank catalog from the really well done website  Chris' Pipe Pages

See citation above.

I did find another carved Sorensen pipe on EBAY here. 

AND information on the store in Norway here

Actually, they still have some carved head pipes, and if Google Translate is correct "Sculpture pipe is hand made of beautiful briar. Manufactured by Comoy in France"  Looks like they go for around 80 dollars.. So it seems likely the pipe came from this store. It would seem, like many pipe stores, that they just re-brand some of the pipes they sell, (i.e. they don't make them) Their carved head pipes now come from Comoy's (I guess the brand has changed hands a few times), but given the age of this pipe there is no reason to believe that it was made by Comoy's.....

WHO?

The carving looks like it could be the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. I guess that would make sense given the pipes origins.

Photo source here.

Photo from Wikipedia Commons 

Photo from www.mfiles.co.uk

Flipped in Photoshop to face right.