Last year during a fit of Bulldog Fever I picked up a Brebbia 624 bent bulldog. The pipe was not terribly expensive maybe just a bit over a hundred dollars and it had a few small fills in the briar but I fell in love with the good looks of the little Italian bulldog and liked it even more once I discovered how good a flake smoker it was.
One day fate dealt me a blow that I have just gotten around to fixing. I had brought the Brebbia to work and had partially smoked a bowl of tobacco in the afternoon. I set the pipe down on my desk half finished and forgot about it until it was time to leave. Not wanting to waste the rest of the smoke and save it for later that evening I quickly looked around my desk for something to plug the top of the chamber with or act as a cap. My eyes came to rest on the tape dispenser sitting there and without another thought I tore off two big strips and attached them to the top of the bowl in an X pattern. The tape did a fine job keeping the tobacco in the bowl but later I noticed that the adhesive had done its job a little too good and it peeled the finish right off the rim and sloping sides of the pipe bowl.
With horror I grabbed a soft cloth and tried to clean the surface thinking that maybe it was just a bit of adhesive residue that caused the once perfectly glossy finish to turn a splotchy and matte appearance. No luck! I even chucked up a polishing wheel in my Dremel and tried to buff the wood back to gloss. Disappointed I put the Brebbia away in my pipe drawer and figured I would experiment with it later once the weather warmed up and I could get back to work in my garage workshop.
Fast forward to last week I just couldn't resist not having my favorite little bulldog in my rotation so I brought it to work and used a very strong and highly refined solvent (Sherwin Williams R7K214 Fast Thinner) and some very fine steel wool to strip the remainder of the finish from the wood. I love the R7K214. It is powerful and evaporates very quick so I figured it would work fine for this job.
Here is the briar stripped down to the bare wood.
Later at home on the workbench I gathered the items necessary to complete the re-waxing.
The bowl and stem
Carnauba wax
Bottle cap with rubber gasket removed
Oil lamp
Dremel tool
Carnauba wax is pretty hard especially in a cool workshop so I shaved off some flakes into a beer bottle cap and heated the wax over a small flame to make it easier to work with.
Once melted the wax is much easier to get onto the cotton buffing wheel.
Because it was chilly in my workshop I set up an electric heat gun on my workbench and commenced to buffing the carnauba onto the bowl holding the work a few inches from the nozzle of the heat gun. The stream of heat kept the wax coated buffer supple and it was easy to not hold the work too close based on having my hands up near the heat gun's business end.
In the picture above the bare wood can still be seen beside the glossy deepness where the wax has begun working into the grain. Because I don't do pipe restorations on a regular basis I haven't gotten around setting up a real buffing station but it is one thing I hope to do at some point so I can keep up on the finish of my smooth pipes as the years go by. In the mean time I have figured out how to get OK results with the Dremel.
The problem with a buffing wheel that is only an inch or so in diameter is that it leaves swirl marks on the surface because it is going around at such a high speed. I have an older Dremel that has a true variable speed control so I get it going fairly slow on its lowest setting but still nowhere near the ideal 8-12" mandrel mounted buffer wheel.
In all the job took about an hour and a half and was a rewarding little project. Happily the bulldog is back in my rotation and I certainly learned my lesson to keep tape away from the briars!
One day fate dealt me a blow that I have just gotten around to fixing. I had brought the Brebbia to work and had partially smoked a bowl of tobacco in the afternoon. I set the pipe down on my desk half finished and forgot about it until it was time to leave. Not wanting to waste the rest of the smoke and save it for later that evening I quickly looked around my desk for something to plug the top of the chamber with or act as a cap. My eyes came to rest on the tape dispenser sitting there and without another thought I tore off two big strips and attached them to the top of the bowl in an X pattern. The tape did a fine job keeping the tobacco in the bowl but later I noticed that the adhesive had done its job a little too good and it peeled the finish right off the rim and sloping sides of the pipe bowl.
With horror I grabbed a soft cloth and tried to clean the surface thinking that maybe it was just a bit of adhesive residue that caused the once perfectly glossy finish to turn a splotchy and matte appearance. No luck! I even chucked up a polishing wheel in my Dremel and tried to buff the wood back to gloss. Disappointed I put the Brebbia away in my pipe drawer and figured I would experiment with it later once the weather warmed up and I could get back to work in my garage workshop.
Fast forward to last week I just couldn't resist not having my favorite little bulldog in my rotation so I brought it to work and used a very strong and highly refined solvent (Sherwin Williams R7K214 Fast Thinner) and some very fine steel wool to strip the remainder of the finish from the wood. I love the R7K214. It is powerful and evaporates very quick so I figured it would work fine for this job.
Here is the briar stripped down to the bare wood.
Later at home on the workbench I gathered the items necessary to complete the re-waxing.
The bowl and stem
Carnauba wax
Bottle cap with rubber gasket removed
Oil lamp
Dremel tool
Carnauba wax is pretty hard especially in a cool workshop so I shaved off some flakes into a beer bottle cap and heated the wax over a small flame to make it easier to work with.
Once melted the wax is much easier to get onto the cotton buffing wheel.
Because it was chilly in my workshop I set up an electric heat gun on my workbench and commenced to buffing the carnauba onto the bowl holding the work a few inches from the nozzle of the heat gun. The stream of heat kept the wax coated buffer supple and it was easy to not hold the work too close based on having my hands up near the heat gun's business end.
In the picture above the bare wood can still be seen beside the glossy deepness where the wax has begun working into the grain. Because I don't do pipe restorations on a regular basis I haven't gotten around setting up a real buffing station but it is one thing I hope to do at some point so I can keep up on the finish of my smooth pipes as the years go by. In the mean time I have figured out how to get OK results with the Dremel.
The problem with a buffing wheel that is only an inch or so in diameter is that it leaves swirl marks on the surface because it is going around at such a high speed. I have an older Dremel that has a true variable speed control so I get it going fairly slow on its lowest setting but still nowhere near the ideal 8-12" mandrel mounted buffer wheel.
In all the job took about an hour and a half and was a rewarding little project. Happily the bulldog is back in my rotation and I certainly learned my lesson to keep tape away from the briars!
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