Dunhill Stem Repair

About six or eight years ago I came across a Dunhill Bent Rhodesian on the European estate market. Dunhill Rhodesians are anything but common so for a dedicated Rhodesian/bulldog collector it was a must have. Several years later I came across another, same style, same year but a different finish. It had been pretty badly used but the prospect of having a companion set was too much to resist so I bought it. One of the problems was that the bit had a significant chip taken out of the button end but if the rest could be salvaged I could always have a replacement bit made. For a number of reasons that never happened and that pipe sat in my box since then. Recently Dave has made several posts involving bit repair so I decided to give it a go. After a number of PMs (Dave has the patience of Job) I was ready.
The first step was to clean and sand the broken area. Here I used a bevel to support the underside of the repair. I used 220 grit sandpaper to make sure there was plenty of scratches for the mixture to grab hold of.



I decided since I was new at this I would do it in three stages. First to fill in the gap. Second to rebuild the button and lastly to fill in any small air bubbles that form when mixing. I sanded and filed between each coat.



Then came the rough sanding to get the general shape. That was followed by progressively finer sanding to establish the final shape.



Finally off to the buffer for some white diamond and a final coat of carnauba wax and it was finished.



Here is the pair. The bits were not duplicates of each other to start but I attribute that to the hand cut bits Dunhill uses. Not bad for a first try and I can always go back and touch up when my skills improve.

Beefeater, 52081, It's the 5 digit system Dunhill introduced in '79. As I understand it the first digit is the size, the second two are the bit type and the last two the pipe style. I found both on the European estate market. I never seen them offered in the US. Rumor has it that the stummels were GBD 9438s because Dunhill was having trouble meeting demand around the '79 time period and bought stummels from GBD but I'll never get a confirmation on that so rumor it will remain. The GBD (English Version) and these are almost identical. Both of the Dunhills are date coded 19 which is 1979.

lestrout, The bevel is a 45 degree angle sanded into the broken edge. By doing that you give the repair material support underneath and more bonding area. The plug you see in the airway is a piece of light cardboard covered with scotch tape. You slide a pipe cleaner underneath To keep it tight to the opening. CA glue will not stick to tape.

Medium CA glue and activated charcoal mixed 50/50. That may result in some tiny air bubbles in the surface so the final coat should be very thin (almost no charcoal).