(1974) Peterson’s 01S Silver Spigot - Detailed Restoration (Long Read 7 Parts And Over 100 Photos)

[Dshift]

I have been wanting to do very detailed and complete restoration post for a while now, but I would either forget to take before and in process photos, or the pipe wasn’t just right. I think this Pete checks most of the boxes, so let’s dive in!

This will be divided into multiple parts, because of the 15 photos limit.
Please excuse any mistakes or missed punctuations.


PART 1

Let’s start with how I got the pipe and some before photos:




As you can see the pipe has seen better days…It’s generally very dirty and grimy, with all kinds of dents,scuffs and scratches. In addition to all that we have some bite marks on the stem, a possible hole on the underside of the stem, a pretty banged up silver ring and a heavy cake and lava build up.



Now it’s also the time to mention, that I will be restoring this pipe for myself - meaning that I might follow a bit of a different restoration “Code”. I good example would be any darkening on the rim - for my pipes I would get rid of any damaged material, but not always go for completely taking out all blackening, it’s just not worth the material loss in my opinion and I don’t mind it. Also I actually like my older pipes to have some marks of time on them and not to look brand new.



With that out of the way, the first step was to unblock the airway and to fill the pipe with cotton pads and alcohol and let it sit soak for a night. I also put an alcohol drenched pipe cleaner in the stem for a night too. In the beginning I was using the very popular salt and alcohol method, but cotton pads give me the same result, without being so messy.



Of course I forgot to take photos of this first step, but you can imagine how it looked.



Next morning I reamed out all the looser cake with multiple different tools - 2x pipe tool knives, a senior reamer and a Key reamer from Vauen.







Once that was done I still had some very hard cake left, so I just repeated the cotton alcohol step but this time I let it sit for not more than 30 minutes.







When I restore pipes for selling or for other people, I like to leave a thin layer of carbon on the sides of the chamber and even a thicker layer on the bottom(this could potentially prevent a newly from damaging the wood by overreaming), unless I suspect some damage to inside of the chamber. In this case I decided to take it all out and used a 240 and then 400 grit sandpaper to smooth everything out. This genuinely makes a giant difference it the taste of the pipe afterwards. Photos of the inside of the chamber come later.



After cleaning the surface of the pipe with alcohol I could finally see what I was dealing with and was able to form a plan.







I could already see small but very defined dings on the side of the rim, the bottom of the pipe and a cluster on the left side. At this point it is still very hard to see any of the more blunt damages the pipe sustained through the years, but we will get there at a later point. The plan for now was to smooth the well defined spots but not get rid of them completely if it can be helped, The silver had no structural damage so I will be cleaning, polishing and maybe softening some of the scuffs - a full repair is not impossible, but would require skills, time and experience I don’t have at this point of time, also it would be worth only for a very special or valuable pipe.



Time to look at the rim - time to clean the lava off and also there were multiple dents along the edge, that I will be trying to completely get rid of.



First I just slightly brushed it with sandpaper to break the seal and then put some strong gel wood cleaner.









This stuff is very very potent and shouldn’t be left for long. In this case I left it for about 20 minutes.

Continues in Part 2…

 

[Dshift]

PART 2​

After the 20 minutes I brushed the rim with an electric tooth brush and warm soap water for 1 or 2 minutes.













This is what I am left with after wining it down with alcohol. As you can see the product is almost miraculous and in most cases would not even damage the stain. Unfortunately with this pipe it revealed some more dents on the rim from someone banging the pipe against something they were not supposed to bang it against…. This in addition to the edge dents meant I had to top the pipe off - this is something I avoid doing at all costs, but was necessary in this case.



I started with a 240 sandpaper and moved to 400.













It is very important to check the rim frequently, so you don’t overdo it and also make sure to rotate the pipe every couple of second so you don’t take off more on one side.



Now I can also see that the wood cleaner revealed some burn damage on the back edge of the chamber. Nothing major but needs attention - here is where I see some pipe restorers go crazy and either shave some of the inner material so there is no slope, top off the rim all the way down so there is no more trace of the damage or make a huge inner bevel. As I mentioned previously I don’t particularly care about the darker color, because this something that will happen naturally with time(this is only true for the back edge for hangers, any side burns are caused by people using their lighters the wrong way), so deal with this by creating very slight bevel sound the edge, most of the time it hides damage in an elegant way which is not very noticeable as a repair.



For that I use 400 and 600 sandpaper wrapped around a tool handle or a ping pong ball(I have seen people using a golf ball but It is too big in my opinion) and some free hand sanding to finish.






With that, the rough work on the top is done.
Continues in PART 3

 

[Dshift]

PART 3​

Next we move to the outside surface of the pipe - here I try not to jump between different sandpapers, but instead figure out the most coarse one I will be needing and sand everything, starting with that one. The best way to figure that out for me, is to sand everything with a 600(mine is almost a pre polishing one and will have hard time sanding down almost any scratch) - I am not doing any repairs at this point but it will reveal any blunt damages and unevenness and I will be able to better determine if something is manmade or wood defect.



Any potential issue would stay dark while the rest is light and covered with dust



Here we can see the cluster I mentioned earlier




Some of the well defined marks on the bottom



well defined marks on the front


scuffs around the edge




general uneven dark spots



well defined marks on the left





Some more uneven spots.

The plan is to fix all uneven spots and see if we can completely get rid of the other marks. I I have to take away too much material in order to fix them completely , I will make them look as good as possible and call them battle scars…



I could have started with 240 or 320 sandpaper, but I decided on a more gentle approach, although it will take longer, and start with a 400, then move to a 600.













Notice that I don’t touch any of the engravings.









and I did some work on the rim and rim edge again

Continues in Part 4

 

[Dshift]

PART 4​

Time for an alcohol wipe and reassessment.


A beautiful grain and stain is partially revealed.

Now let’s see what’s left and I hope I remember what I did



some kind of a swirly mark on the bottom






This hairline crack looks very dramatic in the macro shot but it is very small and shallow






the marks on the left side













Nothing too bad so I go back to the 400 and work a bit more on all of those. Results later.



Moving on to cleaning the silver olive - I like to do this part before I sand with the 1000 and the stain, because the wheel tends to leave some black residue on the wood. I do some basic micro mesh work on some of the scratches and dents and the buffing wheel and silver cloth. I would normally go for a lot better result than what I did here but the pipe was already taking too long with me documenting every step, so I decided to leave it like this and come back to finish it in a week or two. It is my pipe anyways , so no rush.















Don’t worry I did some more work on it and you will see in the after photos.

Continues in PART 5

 

[ssjones]

Your approach is similar to mine.
In the future, some of these dents will come out with steam, should you not need to top. (iron on high, wet wash cloth folded twice)

 

[Dshift]

PART 5​

Before moving to the cleaning section, I did some more work on the edge of the rim






I had to put a very slight bevel on it in order to make it presentable.



Cleaning the chamber was a breeze at this point, since it was already sanded - just a paper towel with alcohol.




There were some grooves left from a previous rough ream but nothing problematic.



For cleaning the airway and the mortis I use alcohol and a random pipe balm solution from Huber store I got from one of my last lots. It is nothing special - just red alcohol if you ask me. Then I switch between pipe cleaners, q tips and paper towels. The biggest game changer for me was using a pick? From a Vauen Automatic tamper to scoop up all the softened gunk - no joke this small tool saves me at least 20 pipe cleaners per pipe.







In the next two photos you will see everything I used to get the really dirty airflow and mortis in progression - top to bottom left to right. Please mark the cotton pads where I cleaned the pick and you can count how many scoops of goop was there….






The last pipe cleaner, q tip and paper towel were the only dry test.



With that out of the way it was time for the 1000 sandpaper and re-staining. I went for Dark brown but only one layer with 2 extra layer for balance.




After sanding with 1000 - a this point I also brush over the engravings, it doesn’t take away material just the top layer of previous stain.













Taped up the silver ring and we are ready for a round with the buffing wheel - one paste, a couple of minutes.



My current setup did not allow me to reach all the way, so it was time for my beloved electric nail drill.
Continues in PART 6

 

[Dshift]

PART 6​

These are the results right after the buffing wheel:















Next in line was the stem - I was running out of energy, focus, time and daylight, so I didn’t take too many photos. First I blasted all of the marks with the hot air gun and tried to lift some of them up a bit with a petal dentist pick. It worked as well as expected and I was left with this:









This ended up not being an actual hole, which made things a bit easier. For some reason I decided that this was the perfect time to test a new product - an already black CA glue. This turned to be mistake and either this products sucks bad, or it just needs some more testing.







This is the last photo I took with my phone, but in short this small droplet was just a test, I kept adding more and ripping it off… sometimes it would harden after a minute and sometimes it would still be liquid after an hour. Right now the stem has a small mark where the repair happened and will be drilling it out and using my usual technique. This will happen in next couple of weeks, since I still have other pipes to work on and a bunch more coming my way.



Other than that I put the stem in a hot oxy cocktail bath for 10 minutes, then dry scrubbed it with steel wool. Did some work on the repairs and the button. I used a nail file with wooden core and 240,320 and 400 sandpaper dry for most of the repairs and finished with 600 and 1000 wet to deoxidize and smooth everything. Then one round with the buffing wheel - blue paste , 1 minute.



Here is a photo of the mark on the underside:







Finally I put a thin carnauba wax layer on the pipe and it went in front of the camera.

Final shots in Part 7

 

[Dshift]

PART 7​

For everyone, who followed along, I have a fun behind the scenes fact. For some reason I decided to smoke the pipe for the first time right after I finished writing and posting this thread, almost 24 hours after I finished the pipe.
Now I can enjoy the final results along with you while I smoke this Pete's resurrection bowl.

 

[Dshift]

Your approach is similar to mine.
In the future, some of these dents will come out with steam, should you not need to top. (iron on high, wet wash cloth folded twice)
View attachment 399097

I completely forgot to mention and document this step, but all of the dents on the outside were steamed first, using a wet cotton rag and flat head. I didn't for the top because I already knew I had to top it at least a little bit because of the other issues.

 

[ashdigger]

Great stuff. This is why I have the internet!!

 

[seanv]

I didn't "like" each post because I was busy following along. Nicely done and a great looking pipe. Thanks for the write up

 

[WorthyStewart]

Awesome job. Awesome pictures. Awesome descriptions.
Stellar job that Pete came out....awesome!

 

[Dshift]

Can you guys see all of the photos or are some of them missing? On the laptop everything looks fine but on the phone a third of the photos are not showing

 

[ssjones]

I think your photos are so large in size, they take a long time to load up. All are visible now. And, the forum seemed to be running slow this AM, better now.

You made the right move on the bowl top and beveling the edge. Finish looks smashing! You did all the buffing with that little nail gun?

 

[Dshift]

I think your photos are so large in size, they take a long time to load up. All are visible now. And, the forum seemed to be running slow this AM, better now.

You made the right move on the bowl top and beveling the edge. Finish looks smashing! You did all the buffing with that little nail gun?

No no, I used the small one only on the crease, I have two buffing wheels one small and one big. Both of them are not optimal, but they do the job

 

[jpberg]

Can you guys see all of the photos or are some of them missing? On the laptop everything looks fine but on the phone a third of the photos are not showing

The first photo is almost finished loading on my 2400 baud modem.

Seriously, you made that pipe look nice.

 

[Dshift]

The first photo is almost finished loading on my 2400 baud modem.

Seriously, you made that pipe look nice.

I don’t know what’s up with the photos… besides the after shots everything else are just normal iPhone photos

 

[jakesmokes]

Great job! I always hate the airway cleaning part! Especially when it’s someone’s “favorite pipe” haha

 

[lukasstrifeson]

Ya that's a bang up job there. Well done!

 

[mingc]

sometimes it would harden after a minute and sometimes it would still be liquid after an hour.

Nice work! Superglue aka cyanoacrylate needs moisture to cure. Try running a wet tissue over the spot you're working on.