Hopefully this will just be a 'teaser' and I can get another visit with Howard before I leave the Vero Beach area that includes pictures.
Yesterday, I contacted Mr. Schulte via email and left my cell #. He called back within the hour and said he'd be in his shop for another couple of hours and I decided to head on over to meet him and perhaps leave a pipe with him for repair.
When I arrived, I remembered that he'd asked me to call first, so I 'dialed' his # from my cell phone keypad and waited. His answer machine picked up, and through the reflective glass window of his shop, I could see Howard, hard at work toward the back end of his workspace.
There was no doorbell on his storefront door, and of course, it was locked. Howard is primarily a mail order repair service who does not have a lot of 'walk in' business.
I tapped on the large tempered glass window trying to get his attention. I knocked on the aluminum frame of his storefront door to no avail.
I remembered I had some tools in the trunk of my car, and got out a small (16oz.) claw hammer and with that, I tapped on the metal sheathing of the commercial building that houses his shop and several other businesses in a row.
You cannot see through the glass of his westward facing storefront, because it is reflective glazing and I was about to use the hammer again when the door opened and there I stood with hammer in hand and, luckily, pipe in maw, so that Howard quickly realized I wasn't threatening him.
He was immediately receptive and invited me back into his shop, past years of accumulated tools, parts, bins of stems, lathes, buffing wheels, drill presses, and belt sanders. I couldn't take it all in as I proceeded to the rear of his shop where he waved at a bench that held a 'batch' of his current workload. He had maybe 30 or 40 pipes of all descriptions in a divided box on a bench behind another row of sanding/buffing wheels and told me he was in the process of finishing these pipes which all had had new stems put in/on and he was apparently matching the diameters to their shanks at this stage.
I showed him my Breebia RokRoot pipe and told him the story of how I thought it had become cracked in its mortise area when I knocked it off my pipe rack.
Howard, who is 74 yrs old, and has been doing pipe repair work since he was 16, pulled the stem of my pipe and peered into the mortise, confirming the crack.
As we talked he explained that he'd remove some of the external wood to allow for emplacement of a 'repair band' and the discussion was derailed into one about our health, our histories, and the fact that Howard hasn't smoked a pipe in about 30 years.
It was when he quit that his own health problems began. Oh the irony. Let me just say that despite having to live with a rather serious health issue, that Howard is a vibrant and engaging fellow who shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, his outlook is that he's probably got another good 20 years of pipe repairing because of the genetic history of longevity he boasts.
All the while we were chatting up a storm, Howard was doing his 'thing' and moving from one work station to another as he proceeded to install a nickel support band onto the stem of my carved Italian briar pipe.
It was fascinating to see how smoothly and efficiently he worked, and before I knew it, he handed the pipe to me, with a perfectly fitting mortise and tenon connection that he'd fine tuned after installing the band.
The band itself was installed to match the diameter of the stem, so that he'd removed enough of the outside wood to use the proper sized band for the job.
The band, once installed caused the mortise to close appreciably enough that the tenon was actually too tight to be practical, which was a scenario that had been expected. There was another tool employed to almost imperceptibly increase the inside diameter of the mortise with a lathe and bit, the bit the likes of none I'd ever seen. It was more like a 'tap' if you're familiar with the thread cutting tool used in metal work.
I knew that Howard was a busy man, and wanted to get out of his 'hair' so that he could finish the work he had intended to complete. He was going in again today, Sunday, for a few hours, I think so that he could finish all thes pipes and get them ready to mail to their respective owners. Surely each did not have a unique address, or the mailing alone would take an appreciable chunk of his time.
I had another pipe with me that had a screw in stem that had become past its horizontal finish point. Howard pulled a thin spacer from one of his many drawers of pipe repair parts and put it onto my LHS Author and screwed it back up and it was perfectly aligned.
My visit was all too brief and our conversation seemed incomplete. I hope to get back and hang out with Howard before I leave the area. I want to get a camera, too, and get pics of his shop to share here, if he's so disposed to allow that.
If you look up Mr Schulte's name in Pipedia, you'll find it in a list of professional pipe repair folks on the page for Pipe care/cleaning.
http://pipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_care/cleaning
Schulte's Pipe Repair is the best around! They are the only authorized repair shop in the U.S. for Dunhill pipes. Contact Howard Schulte at (772) 564-0079. 678 Old Dixie Highway, Vero Beach, Florida 32962. All work is done by mail order, but call first. Your pipe will be like new!
Yesterday, I contacted Mr. Schulte via email and left my cell #. He called back within the hour and said he'd be in his shop for another couple of hours and I decided to head on over to meet him and perhaps leave a pipe with him for repair.
When I arrived, I remembered that he'd asked me to call first, so I 'dialed' his # from my cell phone keypad and waited. His answer machine picked up, and through the reflective glass window of his shop, I could see Howard, hard at work toward the back end of his workspace.
There was no doorbell on his storefront door, and of course, it was locked. Howard is primarily a mail order repair service who does not have a lot of 'walk in' business.
I tapped on the large tempered glass window trying to get his attention. I knocked on the aluminum frame of his storefront door to no avail.
I remembered I had some tools in the trunk of my car, and got out a small (16oz.) claw hammer and with that, I tapped on the metal sheathing of the commercial building that houses his shop and several other businesses in a row.
You cannot see through the glass of his westward facing storefront, because it is reflective glazing and I was about to use the hammer again when the door opened and there I stood with hammer in hand and, luckily, pipe in maw, so that Howard quickly realized I wasn't threatening him.
He was immediately receptive and invited me back into his shop, past years of accumulated tools, parts, bins of stems, lathes, buffing wheels, drill presses, and belt sanders. I couldn't take it all in as I proceeded to the rear of his shop where he waved at a bench that held a 'batch' of his current workload. He had maybe 30 or 40 pipes of all descriptions in a divided box on a bench behind another row of sanding/buffing wheels and told me he was in the process of finishing these pipes which all had had new stems put in/on and he was apparently matching the diameters to their shanks at this stage.
I showed him my Breebia RokRoot pipe and told him the story of how I thought it had become cracked in its mortise area when I knocked it off my pipe rack.
Howard, who is 74 yrs old, and has been doing pipe repair work since he was 16, pulled the stem of my pipe and peered into the mortise, confirming the crack.
As we talked he explained that he'd remove some of the external wood to allow for emplacement of a 'repair band' and the discussion was derailed into one about our health, our histories, and the fact that Howard hasn't smoked a pipe in about 30 years.
It was when he quit that his own health problems began. Oh the irony. Let me just say that despite having to live with a rather serious health issue, that Howard is a vibrant and engaging fellow who shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, his outlook is that he's probably got another good 20 years of pipe repairing because of the genetic history of longevity he boasts.
All the while we were chatting up a storm, Howard was doing his 'thing' and moving from one work station to another as he proceeded to install a nickel support band onto the stem of my carved Italian briar pipe.
It was fascinating to see how smoothly and efficiently he worked, and before I knew it, he handed the pipe to me, with a perfectly fitting mortise and tenon connection that he'd fine tuned after installing the band.
The band itself was installed to match the diameter of the stem, so that he'd removed enough of the outside wood to use the proper sized band for the job.
The band, once installed caused the mortise to close appreciably enough that the tenon was actually too tight to be practical, which was a scenario that had been expected. There was another tool employed to almost imperceptibly increase the inside diameter of the mortise with a lathe and bit, the bit the likes of none I'd ever seen. It was more like a 'tap' if you're familiar with the thread cutting tool used in metal work.
I knew that Howard was a busy man, and wanted to get out of his 'hair' so that he could finish the work he had intended to complete. He was going in again today, Sunday, for a few hours, I think so that he could finish all thes pipes and get them ready to mail to their respective owners. Surely each did not have a unique address, or the mailing alone would take an appreciable chunk of his time.
I had another pipe with me that had a screw in stem that had become past its horizontal finish point. Howard pulled a thin spacer from one of his many drawers of pipe repair parts and put it onto my LHS Author and screwed it back up and it was perfectly aligned.
My visit was all too brief and our conversation seemed incomplete. I hope to get back and hang out with Howard before I leave the area. I want to get a camera, too, and get pics of his shop to share here, if he's so disposed to allow that.
If you look up Mr Schulte's name in Pipedia, you'll find it in a list of professional pipe repair folks on the page for Pipe care/cleaning.
http://pipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_care/cleaning
Schulte's Pipe Repair is the best around! They are the only authorized repair shop in the U.S. for Dunhill pipes. Contact Howard Schulte at (772) 564-0079. 678 Old Dixie Highway, Vero Beach, Florida 32962. All work is done by mail order, but call first. Your pipe will be like new!