Polishing a Turd

[Ryan]

Short version, I changed a pipe into something I like better than what it was. Pics at end.

They say you can’t polish a turd, but I think I have come close. I bought a group of three pipes from an eBay seller recently. I was only interested in two of the pipes, and made my bid based on that. I am very happy with the two other pipes, but I still had this other one left. I couldn’t bring myself to pitch it, so I decided to try and make something of it I might like. The pipe had a Grabow stem, but I’m not so sure it was original to the pipe, it seemed to be a slightly bigger diameter.

A previous owner had applied some kind of a finish to the pipe, and it appears to have been applied with a mop. Very uneven, you could see then brush strokes. Also the end of the shank had been over-buffed and was rounded off. There were several fills in the pipe, and they were black. The only marking on the pipe said “Imported Briar”.

First thing I did was use a combination of steel wool and sanding pads to remove that awful finish. It took some elbow grease to get all of that crap off of the pipe. Then I took a chance and tried to sand back the shank end to remove the rounded over edges. I thought this might serve two purposes: to remove the rounded edge and also take it back to where the shank was a bit thicker so it would match up with the stem better. I surprised myself a bit when it worked. The stem fit isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good. Definitely much better than before.

At this point I knew I would have to do something about those ugly fills. I decided to do a little rustification. No one is going to hire me to start doing this professionally, but I am satisfied with how it came out.

Finally, I cleaned up the stem near the button (it was in good shape otherwise) and polished the whole thing.

You can’t polish a turd, but you can make it into a knock-around-the-yard pipe.

Pics below. I always forget to take a before shot, so I grabbed some pics from the eBay sale. I think it looked worse in person than the pictures show.

Before:




These are after I started removing that finish:


Here it is now:


The pipe still has no real monetary value, but I might just get some use out of it now!

 

[Flatfish]

Looks much better.
Very good.

 

[Sobrbiker]

Came out nice!

 

[RustiePyles CPG]

 

[Kobold]

Looks great!

 

[verporchting]

Nicely done. Great result.

 

[bullet08]

You see, polishing a turd is a labor intensive work. You can't polish it while it still soft and steaming warm. You must wait till it turns hard like a rock. Think of dinosaur turd. Then, using fine grain sand paper to even out the rough area. If the animal was eating soft food like nuts, that shouldn't be much of a problem. But if one eats whole animal like komodo dragon, you might need electric sander. From there on use finer and finer sand paper until it's very smooth all over. Don't forget to apply occasional oil to check the reflection of your shit eating grin.

 

[yanoJL]

Huge difference. Night and day.
Well done @Ryan

 

[OzPiper]

I was going to be flippant and say “a polished turd is still a turd”

But great job on that.
Hope it turns out to be a good smoker for you.
Load it up and get back to us

 

[FurCoat]

Great job. Glad to see another Grabow saved from the trash heap

 

[CoffeeAndBourbon]

 

[upnorth1]

Looks great! Very smokeable!

 

[renfield]

Nice job! May it give you many happy smokes.

 

[BenMN]

Nicely done!
How does it smoke?

 

[burleybreath]

Nicely done!
How does it smoke?

And what does it taste like? [snicker]

 

[Ryan]

Nicely done!
How does it smoke?

I don’t know yet, but I will report on it when I do.

 

[Sigmund]

@Ryan What tool did you use to rusticate the pipe?

I have a beater with some fills that may need "treatment"

I figure why waste a decent pipe.

 

[Ryan]

@Ryan What tool did you use to rusticate the pipe?

I have a beater with some fills that may need "treatment"

I figure why waste a decent pipe.

Dremel at high speed, that way it burns the wood enough to darken it. I used a very small conical bit, and held it “sideways” so just a sharp edge goes lightly into the wood. I practiced first on another piece of wood to make sure I would get the results I wanted.

 

[ssjones]

I saw the pictures, before reading your description. From the pix, I would have guessed the stem was OEM Grabow (in fact, I thought "that's different for a Grabow".
As my old shop teacher used to say when we glued boards - "looks like it growed that way" - nice work!

 

[Ryan]

I saw the pictures, before reading your description. From the pix, I would have guessed the stem was OEM Grabow (in fact, I thought "that's different for a Grabow".
As my old shop teacher used to say when we glued boards - "looks like it growed that way" - nice work!

It is different than most Grabow stems I have seen, it isn’t a filter. I’ve only seen the synchro stems with stingers and the filter stems, but this is neither. Maybe it had a push-in stinger once, but it looks like a typical push stem.