Giving A Well Loved Friend A Second Chance (Pic Heavy)

A Long And Drawn Out Saga.
For those who didn't see my original post, I bought this 1967 Dunhill Tanshell at an antique store for $8.00. I knew It was in pretty rough shape, but for the price I couldn't pass it up. And plus I have never owned a Dunhill so I was really excited to find this. As soon as I picked it up, and saw the stores sticker on it, all I saw was "HILL" and Immediately knew what it was, and my heart started beating.
So instead of sending it in somewhere to have it professionally fixed and pay the money, I'm going to "attempt" to restore it myself. If I fail, it was a good learning experience for $8.00.
*** This is not going to be perfect, I just want to be able to smoke it***
Here's what it looked like right after I brought it home.















Ok, now that that's out of the way.
***PART ONE***
I started with reaming the bowl so I could get a better look at the damage to the bowl walls. Using my Decatur pipe reamer, I started with the smallest cutting edge carefully and moved up two more sizes. Boy this bowl is pretty small.



The cracks went much deeper than I thought. This may be more of a challenge than I was expecting...





Now with most of the cake out of the way, I took my dental pick and investigated the weird discoloring on the front of the bowl. It immediately started crumbling. Lots and lots of what I believe to be wood putty started to fall out. It's not just a crack in the front of the bowl.



That's when it truly hit me. Somebody loved this pipe so much, that they smoked it till cracking on both sides of the bowl. To the point that a huge chunk of the front came out. They wanted to keep smoking it so bad that they filled it with putty, and kept on going. This pipe must have been an absolutely great smoker, and it deserves to be brought back to life!
Then I took my attention to the small pinhole in the bottom of the bowl. With my dental pick I probed at it until I couldn't get any more material from breaking free.

And out of pure exhaustion, I decided to soak a cotton ball with Isopropyl Alcohol and stuff it in the bowl to let it soak to take care of any more oil and tar remaining, and loosen up the cracks a bit more. I may need to repeat a few times.

We will see what it looks like tomorrow.
Stay tuned for part two!

Yes I do not intend on selling this pipe. I don't even care if it looks good.

***PART TWO***
After a good soak in Iso alcohol, I could see the extent of the damage better.

I decided to use a technique that I saw once on Rebornpipes and see how it works.
The bottom of the bowl has some huge misshapen craters in it, so while I address the cracks from the inside of the bowl, I figured I should fill the bottom as well.


I mixed up a batch of J.B Weld ( The overnight kind, not the instant kind) and spread it around inside till everything was smooth.

And I let that sit overnight to harden.

Before I went to bed I started to work on the stem. It wasn't chewed to badly but It was fairly misshapen. After vigourously cleaning with ISO Alcohol (about 50 pipe cleaners worth) I deemed it clean enough on the inside.
Then I attempted to re file down the button.






Then I was finally happy with the shape.
I then Cleaned it with more alcohol on the outside, and sanded it smooth. Followed by some White Diamond on the buffing wheel.

Its not perfect, but it will work.

Then at midnight, I decided I should sleep.
Then in the morning everything was nice and filled in from the inside from the JB weld. I Then started to tackle the outer portion of the cracks.

I just so happened to have a whole lot of briar dust in the garage. I packed the cracks and holes with the briar dust, and then dripped super glue over them.



And I let that sit for 45 minutes while I took a break.

When I came back inside everything had hardened.



And I could start sanding the patches smooth.



Then I sanded the excess JB weld on the inside down, so its just covering the cracks and fissures.

After that I started lightly topping the bowl. I don't want to take off too much, and really shorten the bowl, So there will still be some spots that are noticable which is ok with me.



And I wanted to try to sort of hide the massive scorch mark on the back of the bowl, so I sanded a small bevel around the edge.

And that is how it sits for now.

***PART 3***
And in order to coat the bowl, I wanted to make pipe mud mixture. But I didn't have any...
So in the name of science...


All I needed to do was add water and voila!

Now I let that dry and harden overnight.