I recently gave a face-lift to an old Dr. Grabow and was pretty pleased with the results so I thought I’d bring my virtually non-existent pipe refinishing talents to bear on another of my old pipes.
The victim this time is an old “Comfort” brand Churchwarden I found at my dad’s house five years ago. Above the brand name is stamped “Real Briar” and below the brand is stamped “Empire Made.” The vulcanite stem has a single red dot on the left side. It was unsmoked, had a pealing varnish finish, a yellow oxidized stem and a hairline split on the shank. It was obviously a low-end pipe with numerous fills and a poorly drilled straight stem that wasn’t quite straight. It smokes well and has a small chamber so it would be a nice pipe for quick smokes if it weren’t so inconvenient to carry.
I suspect dad picked it up or was given it for free after he quit smoking in the mid-1970s. I cleaned it up and smoked it occasionally, but it’s not really my style and it doesn’t get used anywhere as much as my other pipes. I usually smoke a pipe while I’m doing something outside and I like to carry them in my shirt pocket. This Churchwarden is the kind of pipe I have to set aside time to smoke, and if I’m actually going to give myself a proper smoke session, I’d rather smoke a bigger bowl.
With all that in mind, I decided to modify it into a pocket pipe that could be carried in case a pipe-smoking opportunity presented itself. My plan was to file down the bowl sides to narrow it a bit like an opera pipe, add some sort of metal band to the shank after gluing the split, and then chop off the center section of the stem to reduce the overall length to around 5 ½ inches.
Below is a picture of the pipe, cleaned up five years ago and a detail of the pipe’s stampings. The PipePhil website has one Comfort pipe in its database and surprisingly, it too is a Churchwarden. My next post will document the mayhem.
The victim this time is an old “Comfort” brand Churchwarden I found at my dad’s house five years ago. Above the brand name is stamped “Real Briar” and below the brand is stamped “Empire Made.” The vulcanite stem has a single red dot on the left side. It was unsmoked, had a pealing varnish finish, a yellow oxidized stem and a hairline split on the shank. It was obviously a low-end pipe with numerous fills and a poorly drilled straight stem that wasn’t quite straight. It smokes well and has a small chamber so it would be a nice pipe for quick smokes if it weren’t so inconvenient to carry.
I suspect dad picked it up or was given it for free after he quit smoking in the mid-1970s. I cleaned it up and smoked it occasionally, but it’s not really my style and it doesn’t get used anywhere as much as my other pipes. I usually smoke a pipe while I’m doing something outside and I like to carry them in my shirt pocket. This Churchwarden is the kind of pipe I have to set aside time to smoke, and if I’m actually going to give myself a proper smoke session, I’d rather smoke a bigger bowl.
With all that in mind, I decided to modify it into a pocket pipe that could be carried in case a pipe-smoking opportunity presented itself. My plan was to file down the bowl sides to narrow it a bit like an opera pipe, add some sort of metal band to the shank after gluing the split, and then chop off the center section of the stem to reduce the overall length to around 5 ½ inches.
Below is a picture of the pipe, cleaned up five years ago and a detail of the pipe’s stampings. The PipePhil website has one Comfort pipe in its database and surprisingly, it too is a Churchwarden. My next post will document the mayhem.
