About a week ago mawnansmiff (Jay) started a thread about the nastiest estate pipes ever, and I submitted a eBay photo of 4 Dunhills that were possibly the worst "Dunghills" I have ever seen. So naturally I had to make an offer on them. So for about $15 each with shipping, I now own them. Whoop-De-Do! Trust me, they are even worse in person. How could someone do this to any pipe, let alone a nice pricey pipe is beyond me. I mean they aren't just heavily used, they appear to be ABUSED in no small manner! But I figured if I could salvage at least two of them it would be worth it, but knowing me I'll try to do something with all of them. Three of them are Patent era pipes, and one is maybe from 1960?
Anyway I'll show my progress on them one at a time as I get into it. Here's the little beauties, from the auction page...
The first one I did is looked to be the easiest, which isn't saying much. A nice little Canadian Shell, that had a little 1/4" vertical crack on the back edge of the bowl. However.... someone had taken a file or something and worked on the shank/stem area making it smaller at the joint. They also tried to make the bit into some kind of saddle bit by filing the top and bottom of the stem just behind of the dot. And to top it off, this pipe as well as all the rest have some kind of black sticky tape over the joint too. Lovely, but I pressed on, and did the best I could trying to make the pipe whole again and filled in a bit on the top and bottom of the stem to make it look normal. It's stamped EC, with a patent number ending with 34 and a small 3 that's underlined after England. I find dating Dunhills confusing at times, as I don't collect them, let alone buy them much at all. I'm thinking this pipe was made in 1943? Someone might have to enlighten me on this.
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Anyway I'll show my progress on them one at a time as I get into it. Here's the little beauties, from the auction page...
The first one I did is looked to be the easiest, which isn't saying much. A nice little Canadian Shell, that had a little 1/4" vertical crack on the back edge of the bowl. However.... someone had taken a file or something and worked on the shank/stem area making it smaller at the joint. They also tried to make the bit into some kind of saddle bit by filing the top and bottom of the stem just behind of the dot. And to top it off, this pipe as well as all the rest have some kind of black sticky tape over the joint too. Lovely, but I pressed on, and did the best I could trying to make the pipe whole again and filled in a bit on the top and bottom of the stem to make it look normal. It's stamped EC, with a patent number ending with 34 and a small 3 that's underlined after England. I find dating Dunhills confusing at times, as I don't collect them, let alone buy them much at all. I'm thinking this pipe was made in 1943? Someone might have to enlighten me on this.
Before:
After:
