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Public Service Announcement

International Pipe Smoking Day—or for us, International Pete Smoking Day—is just around the corner, on Thursday February 20^th. As usual there will be a Merit Badge for everyone participating or a Certified Pete Geek certificate if you don’t already have yours. To enter, follow the directions at the bottom of this post.

#4/1100: the Supreme POY 2023 X160

This morning’s question: how do you color a Peterson natural sandblast or rusticated pipe? Do you forsake all other pipes and smoke it hourly until it achieves a darkly rich patina? Do you smoke it less frequently, wishing it might move beyond its Ugly Duckling phase?  Or do you try to forget it, letting it languish from loneliness because it never lived up to the romance of the honeymoon?

Next to nothing has been written about coloring natural sandblast and rusticated briars, a surprise given how popular they’ve been among Italian pipe smokers for decades. As it turns out, their growing popularity has quite a bit to do with our own Kapp & Peterson.

While smooth natural pipes (sometimes imperceptibly stained) have been around since the beginning of briar pipes and usually command a premium. My interest, however, was piqued in the early 2000s by discussions of Castello’s craggy Sea Rock line, but took off when Gianluca at the Sansone Smoking Store in Rome got in touch with me about the release of their Peterson Rogha small batch back in 2017.

As I understand it (and correct me if I’m wrong), Italian pipe smokers and the Italian pipe makers value sandblast natural finishes for two reasons: (1) they believe a briar untouched by stain or precarbon coating will breath freer and smoke sweeter than other pipes, and (2) they love being part of what the “character formation” of the pipe—watching it change colors as it’s smoked.

From Rome to Dublin isn’t as far as you might think, and when K&P released the Burren line after three years of premium Rogha small batches back in 2018, it was such a success that the idea would eventually become part of Peterson design vocabulary—witness the Nassau Street Edition, the Barley Spigot, the Supreme Sandblast, the DeLuxe Natural Rusticated, the Premier Barley System, the Sherlock Holmes Barley and others.*

What motivates this post, however, is my 2017 Rogha, which has become something of an Ugly Duckling–an experience those uninitiated in the mysteries of coloring a natural will all have experienced.

I turn, as I always do in such cases, to the experts. First, I asked the good people at Kapp & Peterson for their help understanding how Peterson natural sandblast and rusticated lines are finished—Glen Whelan, Josh Burgess, and Austin Quinlan.  Then I turned to Professor John Schantz for specific advice on how he’s colored his own natural pipes before committing any of my own precious Petes to such treatment.

1. Peterson’s Natural Sandblast & Rustic Pipe Finishing

Mark: Glen, Josh, Austin, thanks so much for helping us out this morning. Let me begin by asking whether any sandblasted or rusticated bowl can be used in making a natural sandblast or rusticated?

Glen: The problem with creating a natural finish pipe is that it has to be a clean bowl.  When we refer to a sandblasted or rusticated bowl as “clean” that means it has no surface imperfections and does not require any putty.

Mark: Ah. I always thought the reason bowls were sandblasted or rusticated was because there were already some flaws present.  Light begins to dawn.

217 Peterson Sansone Rogha 312

So let’s begin at the beginning with Peterson’s natural sandblast and rusticated lines, the Rogha and Burren (aka 218’s “Summertime”).  I asked Conor Palmer, who was then acting as Managing Director, on the difference between the two lines and he said, “We really like the natural, ‘unprocessed’ look and feel of the Rogha pipes that were for the Italian market . . . . We simply wanted to offer it to the wider market and so decided to incorporate it into the 2018 series with a few small tweaks. The Burren doesn’t take any finishing while the Rogha were buffed with a white soap buff to give them a slightly glossier finish.”

From the look of the two, however, and from how difficult it was for Lubinski to source bowls for the Rogha, I believe we can also say with conviction the Rogha bowls were “clean” while the Burren were not. There was probably more to it than that—the quality of the sandblasting, or some other differences, but certainly the bowl quality of the two lines was far apart.

Burren XL90

Let me turn to the visual difference between the Barley and the Supreme and Natural Rusticated finishes. The former is darker than the latter. Has something been applied to the Barley?

Josh: Yes! On the Barley we do we do an oil-based treatment, then follow it with a white soap buff and carnauba. For Supremes, we only use the white buff followed by wax. The difference is that the Barley has more of a tan finish while the Supreme is purely natural, with some shine brought out.

Barley SH Lestrade

Mark: Do the craftsmen at the factory use any “Pete Speak”—jargon—in naming the natural finishes? Do they guys call them “tanshells” or “virgin naturals” or “vergin naturals”?

Glen: Sometimes I’ve heard them referred to as “virgin” sandblasts, but we almost always simply refer to them by their in-house finish—Barley or Supreme.

Supreme 9S Sandblast

Mark: Austin, as an artisan pipe maker could you speak to the coloring differences smokers might notice between the Barley and the process used on the Supreme and Natural Rusticated?

Austin: The white soap and wax finish allows for deeper colouration and greater tonal contrast, whereas the Barley, with its oil treatment, will colour a pipe more evenly and gradually.

Mark: Have you used both?

Austin’s Tokutomi-Larrigan Sitter

His Boxwood Dublin

His Danish Egg

Austin: Yes, I have, and I’ve made three to smoke so I can understand how best to finish them. You can see how they’re coming along in the photos here.  The crazy Tokutomi-Larrigan sitter is oiled, using Danish oil, the boxwood Dublin is powdered Carnauba wax brushed on and heated with a heat gun (it turns from powder to this lacquer appearance when it melts), and finally, the Danish egg is how I’ve settled on the natural sandblasts; white soaped with a soft mop wheel, and then Carnauba waxed via soft wheels. One to apply the carnauba wax (a solid bar scraped across the wheel), and a softer wheel again that is simply for distributing the wax evenly after applying with the previous wheel.

An AQ Dublin Dog

Mark: What about your recent Dublin Dog, which like Bodger from Disney’s Incredible Journey (1963) somehow made its way to Texas?

Austin: The same way as the egg: white soap and carnauba.  I’m actually going to re-blast my Toku-Larrigan and boxwood Dublin and refinish them this way, because to my mind it colors better.

Mark: Thanks Glen, Josh, Austin! Go raibh míle maith agat.

Glen: Tá fáilte romhat.  But you might want to practice a bit Mark before you come to Ireland again. We don’t want you gettin’ laughed at—

Austin: —anymore than usual.

2. Coloring Your Natural Pete

Professor Schantz’s “Nekkid” Pipes

Mark: There is something that needs to be said at this point while I relight my pipe and get a hot cup of coffee. It’s one that will be clear to any who companion natural-finish smooth pipes: they start out very nice and proceed very nicely. What I mean is that I’ve watched my various natural smooth Petes over the years and while nothing dramatic happens, they do darken, sometimes surprisingly when I look back of photos I took when the pipe was new.  There’s no sense of “is this pipe ever going to color?” or “this thing is gettin’ kind of dingy” it’s just a frog-in-the-pot kind of gradual thing that I don’t notice.  Speaking of dingy, though, reminds me that Professor John Schantz is in the house—not, of course, that he’s dingy.

John: Right.

Mark: So how do you color natural-finish blasts and rustics, Sensei? [bowing]

John: That’s better! I rounded up “the herd” of my “nekkid”or nearly nekkid pipes, seen in the photo above.  I think I got them all (oops, just realized I forgot my Barling).  The SPECIAL House Pipe Spigot Rusticated Billiard seems to have a sealer of some sort that the others do not have.

John’s 1964 Dunhill Tanshell: pretty much what the companioner of this kind of pipe is hoping to achieve.

Let me begin by saying I removed all the bowl coatings before smoking any of these Peterson pipes, and also the Rattray’s Distillery.  The Dunhill Tanshell (front and center bottom) is a 1964, my birth year.  It was a well used but not abused estate pipe, so there is 60 years of smoking history on it.  The Pete CP Hansom (below) is my newest, with two bowls through it.  All of the others have less than twenty bowls through them.  The Barley Spigot and the Rattray’s have the most, while the 2S has maybe had ten bowls through it.

I color these “nekkid” pipes almost the same way I do my meerschaums.  I use a homemade mixture of butcher block oil and hard carnauba wax on the outside before their first smokes, and then occasionally thereafter.  (I also use it, incidentally, on my Rua’s and Iora’s.)

Using a wax mixture keeps the pipes from looking dirty and grungy as well as repelling the inevitable dirt and grime from ashes and hands.

Mark: So a two-step process?  First, the homemade mixture, then a buff with hard carnauba wax?

John: No, the buff on the wheel with the carnauba isn’t necessary.

Mark: Ah. How is the homemade butcher block oil made? And is there a commercial product you like as well?

John: There was a great commercial product from Fine Pipes International—Halcyon II. But FPI went out of business. They made Halcyon II Wax for rusticated pipes and sandblast pipes and Paragon Wax for smooth.  Halcyon II could be sparingly applied with a clean nylon brush.  It was easy to work with—brush on, let it sit a bit, brush it off,  buff with a soft rag by hand, unless it happens to be a gnarly, sharp edged rustication or blast, then just skip the final soft rag step and polish it up with the nylon brush or better yet a stiff horsehair or boar‘s hair brush if you can find one.

Mark: So much for Halcyon II.  So how do we make the Schantz Recipe?

John: Send $25 to my Etsy account and I’ll send you an ounce. . . . Just kidding. Here’s the recipe:

4 oz white beeswax (available in pellets at Amazon)
4 oz hard carnauba (available in flake at Amazon)
Heat in microwave just enough to liquify the mixture.
Allow to cool.
Reheat slightly to soften enough for application.
Apply the mixture sparingly.
Remember, it will darken the wood.

Mark: No mineral oil? No tung oil?

John: No, these quickly evaporate and unduly darken the briar.

Mark: How would you compare your recipe with Halcyon II?

John:  Mine seems to work just as well, it’s just a bit more time-consuming as the wax has to be softened. It has the advantage of providing more protection because it has more carnauba and so leaves a harder protective barrier. It also provides a greater heat-resistant coating. Here’s some of the advantages of carnauba, which I cribbed from elsewhere:

1)It’s harder than concrete and nearly insoluble in water and ethanol.
2)It’s non-toxic and hypoallergenic.
3)It can be polished to a high gloss.
4)It’s brittle when used alone, so it’s often combined with another wax type.
5)It has waterproofing qualities when applied to certain products.

Some forums suggest Renaissance wax, which is a larger cash outlay, but at least it doesn’t have to be softened.

I found another recipe similar to mine, suggesting two parts natural yellow beeswax, one part carnauba and a just a bit of mineral oil to make the mix creamier.  However, white beeswax won’t “falsely” darken the briar like the yellow.

Mark: Speak truth to power—er, pipes, right?

John: Truth in pipes, MAPSA—Make America Pipe Smokers Again.

Mark: I hate it when we talk politics.

John: You’re so easily fuddled.

Mark: We were talking about beeswax and carnauba.

John: Ah.  Yes. The beeswax, just as it does on meerschaum, hastens the natural coloring process but inhibits the gray dingy “ugly duckling” look.  By putting carnauba wax in the mix, the briar also remains cleaner.  The beeswax soaks into the wood while the carnauba hardens and protects from grime and gives it a soft luster. If you like, you can buff it to a higher shine on a wheel–good luck with rusticated bowls, which love to leap off the wheel and hurl into the wall. Or you can go with tradition and leave a low semi-gloss shine by hand buffing with a soft cotton rag.

Coda

In Part 2 of “Coloring A Sandblast or Rusticated Peterson” I’ll present a DIY on how I used the information from Glen, Josh & Austin using techniques from John.  Give me about six to eight weeks to gather supplies, smoke pipes, and do the applications.

If you have your own techniques for coloring sandblast and rustic Petes, please drop me a line and send some photos and I’ll not only incorporate them into the post but send you a Blogger Merit Badge.  As we used to say back when there was actually a device to which the words applied: Stay tuned…

Many thanks to John Schantz for answering a hundred questions
and to Glen Whelan, Josh Burgess & Austin Quinlan at Peterson
for explaining the complexities of creating such amazing pipes.
Thanks to Smokingpipes.com for several of the photos.

Michael Mikropoulos CPG very kindly keeps me updated on his progress as the Mediterranean’s foremost Pete Geek. If you’ve read the blog for long, you’ll remember he’s a Dunmore collector. Here’s a batch of his latest additions, which includes some I’ve never seen before.

This was the last bow of the Dunmore–the B5 is especially fascinating, giving us a tiny glimpse of the Patent era’s “F” style mount–square shank face with shouldered army mount.

I really like the briar & brass sandwich bands on this extremely rare iteration of the Dunmore. The work required is mind-boggling to me!

James Walsh CPG sent me this NOS 11s Centenary with its shamrock/130 stamp. This is now our second sighting of the mysterious 1975 shamrock bowl stamp, which echoes the 1906 catalog’s “Shamrock Grade” Systems, which featured the original shamrock shank stamp.

Scott Forrest CPG sends this most amazingly-grained 777, K&P’s “Emergency”-era shape named the “Dublin Bulldog,” and rightly so.  Someday I’ll make a friend at the factory who will see that this is a must to reintroduce into the catalog.

 Pete Geek Event: “Rack ’em up!”
INTERNATIONAL PETERSON SMOKER’S DAY 2025

Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes shows off his seven-day pipe rack. When you watch the BBC series a few times, you’ll be able to pick up the pipe rack and appreciate its ornate carving and floral motifs.  It looks to have been made in India. It’s also chock-full-o-Petes. 

From left to right: Peterson P-Lip straight-stemmed Belgique, Peterson 305 Calabash, three clays and a churchwarden that isn’t the Peterson 124 he is smoking in this episode. A long-stemmed clay sits atop the rack (the one he was photographed with in the immortal Sidney Paget-homage photo) and a gourd meerschaum (obscured by his bandaged hand) lies before it.  The Persian slipper tobacco pouch, also not seen in this still, hangs at the top of the mantle just below the pipe rack. If you can name the episode, claim your SH Merit Badge!

It’s coming up, that wonderful day of the year known as International Pipe (or Peterson) Smoker’s Day, which falls on Thursday, February 20^th. You can earn an IPSD 2025 merit badge—or Certified Pete Geek certificate—by sending a photo of how you “rack ’em up.” Ignore crass commercialism (at least put it back in its dog house) and raise your pipe in friendship & celebration!

I’ve seen a number of amazing hand-made and custom pipe racks, magnificent display cabinets, and hard-to-find Peterson racks and shelves from Pete Geeks over the past 10 years. Now’s your chance to show how you take display your Petes.  As someone said (if I remember it correctly), “Neither do men hide away their pipes, and put them into a closet, but on a stand or in a rack; and they shineth unto all that are in the house.”  Did I get that right? 

No matter what you use or how you display or lodge your Petes, do be a part of this year’s IPSD by sending a photo to petegeek1896@gmail.com.  Deadline for this year’s event is Wednesday the 19^th at 12 noon CST.

Catch & Release

I’ve got a few Petes up on eBay this week, including a 2024 POY, #8/1100. It’s unsmoked, and before you ask, yes, I love this shape and have two more–a Terracotta and a Sandblast.  So I’m letting this one go (I’m trying real hard to be a “smoker / collector”).  You can see all the pipes HERE.

*Doing a blog search brings up these posts:

#88: Peterson’s Rogha: A Small Batch Release of Natural Virgin Briars
#94: The Natural Outdoor Series
#102: The Burren: Peterson’s New Sandblast Natural Virgin Line
#188: The Nassau Street Edition—A Genuine Cumberland Unfinished Natural Sandblast
#261: The Barley Spigot
#279: Peterson’s “NATURAL” and Natural Finish Pipes
#286: The Sandblast Supremes: A Conversation with Sykes Wilford
#315: The DeLuxe Natural Rusticated System
#365: The Premier System Barley
#413: The Sherlock Holmes Barley

Trent Clifton CPG, our intrepid social media reporter, sent this to me yesterday:

…and you can expect a full celebration next Sunday. Next Friday, however, you just might want to check SPC for a drop at 6pm EST.  ‘Nuff said?