WWII Era Dr. Grabow Re-Done - Tough One...

[agnosticpipe]

I got this old Dr. Grabow about a week ago, and thanks to some forum members here, especially ejames, found that it was a WWII era pipe. It's made of Mt. Laurel and has a push stem rather than the typical metal screw in stem. It was also painted with a tinted lacquer to hide? change the woods grain as it is not as nice as a briar.
Anyway long story short, this was at least finish wise one of the toughest pipe restorations I've tried. After cleaning the pipe and stripping the remaining finish off, I lightly sanded the pipe and tried polishing it. It looked horrible, lots of uneven, blotchy different shades of color, and weird grain too. So I re-sanded a little and tried to duplicate the original red color of the pipe. What a hot mess this turned out to be, as the wood would take the stain differently all over the bowl. Lots of time spent trying to even the color out, when I finally gave up and called it good enough!
So here's the results of what I ended up with. Not that crazy about it, but it is a unique pipe.

A before pic so you can see what it originally looked like.

The after pics.

 

[ashdigger]

That's super nice. It looks like there are obvious reasons those pipes were discontinued after the war and as soon as briar production ramped back up.

 

[papipeguy]

They used Mountain Laurel at the time, right? BTW, you did a beautiful job on that.

 

[smoothsailing]

You've got yourself a beautiful pipe there, something unique, you can't just pluck off the shelf. Great job on the restore.

 

[ejames]

nice Job !!

 

[davet]

Very nice, good job. :clap:

 

[gloucesterman]

Nicely done but we have all come to expect that from you. Dutch

 

[theloniousmonkfish]

Nice clean up. You did good on the stain considering I'm pretty sure they used tinted lacquer on it originally.

 

[agnosticpipe]

Thanks for the positive comments guys! I can see why they used a colored lacquer on these though, as they probably had tried the stain route and saw that it wouldn't work well. Once I opened the draft hole in the shank from 1/8" to 5/32" the thing smokes pretty good. I guess if you didn't have a pipe at the time, this would do the job.

 

[ssjones]

Very cool, that was made during some tough times for folks.

 

[voorhees]

That is a fine come back. Nice work.

 

[colorduke]

Very nice .

 

[gmjabsky]

Nice looking pipe, and a heck of a story to go with it!

 

[yohanan]

Nice Restoration, Congrats!!!

 

[dottiewarden]

After the lead-in I certainly wasn't expecting something so respectable. Great work!

 

[benpipesmoking]

those are nice