A Dunhill "Black Dot" Made White Again
- Thread starter georged
- Start date
SmokingPipes.com Updates
Watch for Updates Twice a Week
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
Site Sponsors
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
If I did that, I'm afraid either you or the pipe's owner could end up dead. You from a frustration-induced heart attack, or him from you discovering who he is and sending, well, your people to, um, procure it for your own collection.
(yeah, it's that far up your alley)
Last edited:
Is it pretty common to have the hole drilled through to the draft hole? I was wondering why some sasieni dots look blue and some white on the 50s 60s pipes (not the small ones but not the large blue ones either); I wonder if it’s a similar coloring process.
What other myths are out there in the Dunny world? I saw a 001/XXX Harvard pipe for sale a few years back on eBay for $1k. I read somewhere that 001 editions were kept at Dunhill and not sold, so I was surprised to see it for sale.
What other myths are out there in the Dunny world? I saw a 001/XXX Harvard pipe for sale a few years back on eBay for $1k. I read somewhere that 001 editions were kept at Dunhill and not sold, so I was surprised to see it for sale.
The blue of Sasieni dots isn't very robust, is all. It fades rapidly over time. (plus, besides the holes not going very deep because of the tiny dot diameter, the chances of punching through to the airway four times out of four is vanishingly small)
As for Dunhill history, I know next to nothing about features/models/etc unless there's a "shop connection".
For that kind of info ping Jon Guss or Fernando Santiago. (and prepare to be amazed)
Right, finding a Sasieni with robins-egg blue dots is pretty rare, whereas Dunhill White spots are the norm. I can't say that I've even seen a Sasieni one-dot that is blue.(which would from the same era as this Dunhill). Caveat - I've never held a One Dot Sasieni in my hands, web only.
How did you find/measure the location of the center point of the dot? And how do you use an XY table to get it perfectly perpendicular to the drill bit?For decades, there have been two urban legends orbiting around the Dunhill trademark dot.
One is that they are made out of ivory. They are not. The material used since day one is something called celluloid, which is an early-days plastic.
The other urban legend is that they used some sort of black material (I've heard everything from black pearl to obsidian) for special pipes made to order for famous people, dignitaries, and so forth. That isn't true either.
Recently I received a 1922 Shell with a black dot whose owner was aware the black dot business was romantic silliness (and also knew its actual cause), and wanted his pipe to look the way Dunhill intended---as in, actually sent out their door in 1922, and also for the first years of its life.
What IS the actual cause?
Over-drilling the hole for the dot at production time until it intersected the DRAFT hole, which resulted in all that lovely black crud you see on the end of a used pipe cleaner being stuffed into the dot hole from "underneath", and the microscopically sponge-like celluloid absorbing and wicking it upward until the dot gradually darkens to pure black.
Ironically, the only way to make a 102 year-old Dunhill dot LOOK like it's made from celluloid, though, is to make it out of ivory.
Why? Because celluloid degrades slightly in a beautiful way as it ages: It becomes ever-so-faintly ivory in color as well as faintly translucent. (It's gorgeous. A patina that some collectors refer to as "milky")
So, here is the time machine process, step by step.
The single biggest hazard is drilling out the old dot absolutely exactly, without being off-center even a couple ten-thousanths of an inch, because missing will result in an OVAL hole. A mistake that has no re-wind button.
Another fussy business is fashioning a new "dot rod" from ivory (NOT elephant ivory, but walrus tusk ivory which is completely legal), because it must be cut down to an exact snug/slip-fit in the hole. Doing that requires either a jeweler's lathe (a pipemaker's lathe won't hold a workpiece so small), or doing it by hand with a belt sander and electric drill.
There is a re-wind button if you screw up the new dot rod---just keep trying until you get it right---but holding under a half-thou by hand sure is entertaining for anyone who doesn't know the tricks involved.
----------------------------------
The original, tar-blackened celluloid dot ----
View attachment 327385
A "center mark" made with a needle-point etching tool (necessary because finding center from an oblique view is impossible) ---
View attachment 327386
Clamping the stem, then aligning the center mark via x-y table ----
View attachment 327387
Drilling out the old dot. Notice the shavings aren't black... the celluloid only turns black on the topmost surface where the "upward flow of crud" stops and collects ----
View attachment 327388
The new hole ----
View attachment 327389
Walrus tusk ivory as supplied to people who do stuff with it (jewelry makers, etc.) ----
View attachment 327390
A sawn-off splinter of it chucked in a drill a ground into a rod ----
View attachment 327391
The ivory glued into the new hole ----
View attachment 327393
The ivory cut off, leveled, and polished ----
View attachment 327395
I was given to understand that for not so rich ( but very enthousiastic ) collectors sometimes Dunhill white dots were made from authentic celluloid chopsticks from the thirties and they look magnificent
I kid you not.
George, thank you for sharing the process, this means a lot to me !
Last edited:
The same way that a rifle peep sight works, and why peep sights are used on military rifles: the human brain & eye combo is absurdly sensitive to centering alignment of that kind (dots in circles). Off-center is instantly flagged with a brain screech that can't be ignored, and no training is required.
A hypodermically-sharp scribing tool and steady hand do the rest.
z axis alignment is a matter of aligning the top of the stem (in side profile) with the top of the x-y table's jaws when clamping, which are exactly 90 degrees from the direction of travel of the drill press's spindle.
If you look downward into a clear cylindrical container of water that has had a small amount of jet-black petroleum released into it from the bottom over a long period of time, what do you see? A black circle. What do you see from the side, though? Clear water.
The Great Dunhill Black Dot Mystery is functionally the same.
I've worked on a number of them, and in every case a small probe with a 90-degree upturn at its end found that the dot hole intersected the airway, and that the originally empty length of the dot hole (the portion not filled by the dot rod), was packed solid with midnight-black tar.
I suspect---but can't prove---that those which had been cleaned by owners who used alcohol-soaked pipecleaners routinely turned black the fastest, while those who didn't use a liquid solvent turned black the slowest. (That together with smoking frequency, of course.)
Thanks for the explanation. The process is quite simple but the delicacy needed to execute it requires much more.
Definitely a case of the devil residing in the details. In a luxury apartment. With a smile on his face.
To clarify, in case anyone was visualizing looking down into a tube of water to see the a black circle at the bottom of it, and thinking I meant the dot material behaved like a lens, that's definitely not what I meant. Sorry for any confusion.
The reason I said black petroleum and not some sort of paint (which could be water-based), was because oil being lighter than water would cause any molecules of it that were introduced at the bottom to slowly migrate upward and gradually collect on the surface.
The water itself would always look functionally clear from the side, while a "cap" of black slowly grew on top.
There's little question that such a model is what's happening with the black dots, because the array of shades seen in the collecting world runs from the intended original white celluloid down through yellow, rust, ruby-brown, and dirt brown as well as black. Drilled-through stems that haven't been smoked as often, or cleaned with alcohol-soaked cleaners as often. But they're on their way, and will eventually become solid black if the pipe is used enough.
Tsk tsk. Destroyed a perfectly good black dot…
Amazing work.
Your thread inspired me to fix a ruined coral dot on my old ser jac. Of course I have no skills. I used acrylic paint lol. Looks good while it lasts and its an acrylic stem so it wont get buffed. Its better than a discolored dark gray mass. Its an older la fuma (second) so its good enough.
Your thread inspired me to fix a ruined coral dot on my old ser jac. Of course I have no skills. I used acrylic paint lol. Looks good while it lasts and its an acrylic stem so it wont get buffed. Its better than a discolored dark gray mass. Its an older la fuma (second) so its good enough.
It's interesting that you said this, Sigmund..... His thread inspired me that with anything more complex than running a pipecleaner down a stem...... I'm gonna send the pipe to a professional.