I found this on another forum. It's about 4 years old but very interesting. Kind of makes pipe dating a bit more intruiging.
About 12 or 14 years ago, I was in constant email touch with an elderly gentleman, 90 plus years old, in Ireland who had worked all his life for Kapp & Peterson, started at the age of 13 and worked for them until he got too old and feeble. He was a gold mine of information which I am incorporating into my little booklet. One of the items he passed along -
Peterson buys sterling silver bands annually by the thousands and sends them to the essayers office in Dublin to be essayed and hall marked. Upon receipt of the silver bands, K&P would distribute them to the various finishing stations where they may be dumped on top of older dated silver bands. Thus due to this inversion layer of bands, it may be two or three years before the older bands are used, meaning the pipe itself is two or three years newer than the dated band. There is no absolute way of telling these pipes from ones that use the year band in which the pipe was made.
About 12 or 14 years ago, I was in constant email touch with an elderly gentleman, 90 plus years old, in Ireland who had worked all his life for Kapp & Peterson, started at the age of 13 and worked for them until he got too old and feeble. He was a gold mine of information which I am incorporating into my little booklet. One of the items he passed along -
Peterson buys sterling silver bands annually by the thousands and sends them to the essayers office in Dublin to be essayed and hall marked. Upon receipt of the silver bands, K&P would distribute them to the various finishing stations where they may be dumped on top of older dated silver bands. Thus due to this inversion layer of bands, it may be two or three years before the older bands are used, meaning the pipe itself is two or three years newer than the dated band. There is no absolute way of telling these pipes from ones that use the year band in which the pipe was made.
