Poor Cobbled Up Yello-Bole - One Lousy Pic

[agnosticpipe]

I really had no intention of showing this pipe, as it was really a train wreck, and I think I bought it for $2 because I felt sorry for it. If I figured it would actually turn out to be a smokable pipe, I would have taken a before pic. When I found this pipe in a thrift shop, I pondered whether to buy it for quite a while. I finally figured it might be useful for something, and it looked kind of old. I couldn't tell what it was until I got it home, and could just barely read the stampings. "Two Way Bit" Yello-Bole, Honey Cured. I don't know what the two way bit was as the stem had been replaced with a heavily used straight stem, that didn't fit all the way in. The shank had been broken, and the chunk that was broken out was held in by tightly wound wire. But I figured if someone bothered to fix it at all just to keep smoking it, maybe it was special to them.
Briefly, this is what I did. After I took the wire off, I soaked the bowl in alcohol before cleaning and polishing, and went to work on the stem. After cleaning it, I bent it to match the pipe better, filled some deep bite marks, then tried to figure how to fit it to the shank. I glued the piece back in, and made a band from a piece I cut off the cap of a magic marker, and with some more fussing got everything to fit back together. Not too pretty, but the briar looked better than I expected, and I thought, well what the hey, let's load it with Trout Stream and light it up.
Smoked much better than I thought it would, so I felt it deserved a picture on the site. Another survivor.... ::

 

[cortezattic]

Pretty nifty rescue! :clap:

Making a band from a piece of magic marker: my kinda guy!

 

[hawke]

Looks like a winner to me. $2 yep!

 

[masonwarden]

If not for you, it could've ended up in a waste basket! Now it's back in service - well done!

 

[tuold]

Looks completely natural to me! Very nice.

 

[ejames]

Nice save!!

 

[tbradsim1]

Thumbs up, nice redo.

 

[condorlover1]

Thats brilliant. I love the magic marker touch - I use fuse wire to make helio-coils for some of my meerschaums with buggered threads! It is truly amazing what you can use to jerry rig a pipe. Someone I knew many years ago in the UK, sadly no longer with us told me about a BSA motorcycle he purchased in the late 1920s. As he and his friend rode it home the bike got slower and slower and died at the end of his Mothers road. When they took it apart they found the piston was made of wood with a tin can lid nailed to the top of the piston!

 

[agnosticpipe]

Condor, a wooden piston, that's too funny. Might have lasted longer if it was made of briar, no? What's the saying, "necessity is the mother of invention"? Could be true. With this particular pipe I really didn't feel like shipping it off to have it professionally repaired and banded, and have a new stem made too. Seemed a little too much money for the pipe, plus it was fun cobbling the parts together to make it work. Next time I'll be sure to take a before pic, even if I think it won't be restorable. :wink: