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"I’m going to leave it in a drop of brandy and see if that revives it, that used to work wonders in the old days so hopefully it is still efficacious."
I'm confused as to what problem you are trying to solve. What are you going to drop in Brandy ... the stem ? Does the stem not fit tight ? Make a cup of tea and hold the stummel/shank over the steam for about 6 to 8 seconds ... the wood dried out from sitting; or just smoke it.
Also It doesn't look like my 303 which is half that height ... my guess is that's a 312. But again, I am no Peterson expert. I wish you all the best success in your efforts to revive it. It looks like and excellent piece of vintage briar to me from the one photograph.
Well, here’s my admission of a school boy error.
There were some brown stains, from lips and teeth chatter, around the lip of the stem and I thought “I don’t really want that in my mouth, Lord knows who’s mouth it’s been in” so I did my research into the best way to clean it up and one suggestion was to use toothpaste.
That seemed like a good idea, why not? After all toothpaste brightens teeth and removes stains and all that so, sacrificing my toothbrush, I set to giving it a polish.
“That looks great now” I thought, all glossy and black with a hint of minty freshness so, on auto pilot, I rinsed the brush and then, without thinking, cleaned off the toothpaste with the wet tooth brush and ? the dreaded oxidation happened instantaneously.
I then went at with a magic sponge and some olive oil asap but there was that tell tale taste of sulphur. ???
After some fairly choice, industrial language that would have put some dockers and coal miners to shame, I thought “You idiot - that was a perfectly good stem before you tried to ‘fix’ it!”
More in hope than in good judgement, I hope that a quick brandy bath would arrest the oxidation at the least.
I don’t want to bleach it and get it all pitted up and I don’t have buffing pads and micro grain sandpapers etc.
I was kind of thinking that Peterson’s would have different stems for sale because I presumed that the bowls would out live the stems by some margin and many pipers would want to replace them over their smoking lives. Rather stupidly I presumed that you might be able to pick one up for cheap, after all, the factory must pump out thousands of stems every month, not realising that I’m staring down the barrel of a £25 replacement from them. ??
I could have bought a new Peterson for that and what I paid for it on a well known auction site, and I was trying to get one on the cheap - lesson learnt; just buy a new one because estate pipes are so hit and miss and I am not a pipe repair expert, as you might be able to tell.
As for which pipe it is, I’m purely guessing from the below Peterson’s shape guide; any help in this regard would be gratefully received.
yours sincerely,
Rubbish Pipe Repairs.
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