The "Dry Pipe Restoration Challenge" - Post Here - Someone, Anyone? Pics

[agnosticpipe]

So, I went to ALL the trouble of finding a pipe for this challenge, so I'm going to post it! I know this may have been doomed from the get go, but I found a really funny pipe and couldn't resist it. Truly an Artisanal pipe! Stamped artistically on the bottom (with a pencil) Made 7-24-60 by Jeff. An almost 60 year old pipe, this beauty stands at 10 and half inches tall, well at least when I was done with it. Yes it is a well pipe as there is a hollow spot under the stem hole of about 3/8 of an inch. I couldn't use the existing bowl at the top because it was way off center and the pipe is made out of pine. (you could still smell the pitch) So I had to sacrifice a small clay pipe to get a small enough bowl to fit in the enlarged bowl I carved out. Sanded and polished it up and stained the clay black on top, loaded it with GH Brown Flake Unscented and it actually worked. Now I can smoke a clay pipe without burning my fingers, and the long trip for the smoke to travel helped cool it some by being absorbed by so much raw wood. A bit of a PITA to light it as the bowl is above eye level, but hey, it's not like I'm going to ruin the rim of the bowl. :mrgreen:
Before:

After:

 

[danielplainview]

Nice work Orley. That’s one crazy pipe. Let us know how the maiden voyage goes.
I wanted to get in on the resto challenge, but I couldn’t find a cavalier that I liked. Maybe the next challenge could just be a price range.

 

[crashthegrey]

Insane. Haha. I'm glad you got the bug to do something nuts with that.

 

[davek]

Umm, did that pipe smell like tobacco or something else?
I've often said that tobacco smokers should take a page from the reefer smokers on the pipe front and be more adventurous as to shapes and especially materials. Particularly sitting home on the privacy of your own porch. Who would have thought that a corn cob would be a good smoker if it wasn't already traditionally done?
This is a pipe I cobbled together, well, from a stick. A piece of Maple branch is the bowl. Being a piece of stick from the yard, it is a small bowl. Being Maple, it smokes pretty darn well. It's ugly as homemade sin but has a place in my "rotation" for things you would use a small bowl for, trying out blends or quicky smokes. Not something I smoke in public though.

 

[mikethompson]

A 1960 Jeff! Nice find
what an... Interesting (?) pipe

 

[agnosticpipe]

@davek: Yeah I thought the same thing when I saw it. Looks like a bong of some sort. But it didn't smell of weed, just faintly of aromatic tobacco. Your maple pipe is interesting, but what is the bowl covered with?
The fact is this thing smokes really well, which I mostly attribute to the clay bowl. It is however a very clumsy pipe to smoke, with the bowl above eye level, and the bent stem making it lean forward. Lots of places to hold it, but nothing feels exactly right. But hey, it's a 1960 Jeff! :rofl:

 

[bnichols23]

Wow. That's just crazy, on both. I'm impressed -- good work!