WWII Era Dr. Grabow Re-Done - Tough One...

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agnosticpipe

Lifer
Nov 3, 2013
3,332
3,412
In the sticks in Mississippi
I got this old Dr. Grabow about a week ago, and thanks to some forum members here, especially ejames, found that it was a WWII era pipe. It's made of Mt. Laurel and has a push stem rather than the typical metal screw in stem. It was also painted with a tinted lacquer to hide? change the woods grain as it is not as nice as a briar.
Anyway long story short, this was at least finish wise one of the toughest pipe restorations I've tried. After cleaning the pipe and stripping the remaining finish off, I lightly sanded the pipe and tried polishing it. It looked horrible, lots of uneven, blotchy different shades of color, and weird grain too. So I re-sanded a little and tried to duplicate the original red color of the pipe. What a hot mess this turned out to be, as the wood would take the stain differently all over the bowl. Lots of time spent trying to even the color out, when I finally gave up and called it good enough!
So here's the results of what I ended up with. Not that crazy about it, but it is a unique pipe.

A before pic so you can see what it originally looked like.
img_1498-600x373.jpg

The after pics.
img_1533-600x401.jpg


img_1528-600x409.jpg


img_1529-600x364.jpg


 

ashdigger

Lifer
Jul 30, 2016
11,378
70,055
60
Vegas Baby!!!
That's super nice. It looks like there are obvious reasons those pipes were discontinued after the war and as soon as briar production ramped back up.

 

theloniousmonkfish

Part of the Furniture Now
Jan 1, 2017
943
497
Nice clean up. You did good on the stain considering I'm pretty sure they used tinted lacquer on it originally.

 

agnosticpipe

Lifer
Nov 3, 2013
3,332
3,412
In the sticks in Mississippi
Thanks for the positive comments guys! I can see why they used a colored lacquer on these though, as they probably had tried the stain route and saw that it wouldn't work well. Once I opened the draft hole in the shank from 1/8" to 5/32" the thing smokes pretty good. I guess if you didn't have a pipe at the time, this would do the job.

 
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