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I just want to say thank you to the wise men and women of this forum for dispensing sound and helpful advice.
I have taken the information here and am in the process of trying to rehab two of my very oldest pipes: a Mountbatten pot and a BBB pot.
Mountbatten, as you may know, was considered a Charatan “second,” back in the day. And my BBB has the triangle of BBB on the stem, making it one of the ancient ones.
Both of these pipes were purchased at the old Royal Cigar Store in Atlanta in the 1960s. I smoked them all through college and beyond and then forgot about them.
As you can see from the photos, they are still not in the best of shape, but I am working on them now for the first time in, oh, say, 40 years.
They have been sitting patiently in a pipe rack, gathering moss, crud, mold, the stems oxidizing in their misery. I spent Sunday taking out the moldy cake. Then began working on the stems. The stems are going to require much more work. The bowls are not there yet, either, but this is a works in progress, a labor of love.
Using the information on cleaning and how to work on stems from the vast knowledge here, I am on my way to bringing these old-timers hopefully back to something close to their former glory.
To say I am excited is an understatement. I am like a young college student again, thinking of “what tobacco will I smoke in my old friends once they are restored?”
So, it is a great big thank you to all of the sages here on PM Forum.
Without the knowledge found here; without the encouragement to restore old pipes; without the willingness to help, I would never have begun this venture and would have left my old buddies on the roadside, wasting away and pining for the day when they were my two favorite pipes.
One day soon, they will again enter my rotation of pipes, to take a turn in the lineup with the likes of Dunhill, Peterson, Savinelli, Ashton, Ferndown, Sasieni, Boswell, and Edwards.
Until that day!
