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** A HAPPY 4TH OF JULY WEEKEND **

Just when we thought AI was going to pull us all into the Matrix and turn us into coppertops, along comes Nate Lynn CPG with his snappy AI take on an old Folgers commercial.  I imagine the Evil Empire is scratching its head, wondering how this got under the barbed wire. Thanks, Nate!

LARRY BLACKETT PEWTER P-LIP TAMPER
Pete Geek Event

Fellow Pete Geek Justin Beal (CPG) has been working with everyone’s favorite pewter tamper artisan, Larry L. Blackett, on a project that is now ready for us: the official Pete Geek Pewter Tamper.

Several years ago Justin ran across a steel machined P-Lip stem tamper–I remember it, as it created a bit of a sensation for me and the handful of PGs I knew and we searched high and low only to find that it was an artisan’s one-off creation. Fast forward to earlier this year, when Justin asked Larry Blackett if he could recreate it for us in pewter.  Not only was Larry’s answer yes, but he will make it in both a patinated dark and the shiny bright–the dark one, for these dark times, not seen nearly as often but wicked cool.

Shiny

These tampers are made from 100% food grade pewter–think pewter tankards, eating utinsels, and so forth. His final shiny process is the same used Rolex uses for their watch bands.

Larry has a long history as a pewter artisan making historical buttons, then launched into tampers–in fact, I remember his first Chicago pipe show.

Patinated

Tampers are $50 ea, including shipping, for the US, and $70 ea, including shipping, overseas. Justin has asked that proceeds go as a fundraiser to help underwrite the expenses of the blog, so order 5 or 6 and give them to friends!

If you want one more more, fill out Gigi’s Google Form requesting which finish (shiny or patinated) and how many of each you want. Because Larry is making up the exact number of tampers we request, this is a prepay venture, and you will receive a PayPal invoice.  Here’s the Google Signup Form:

Sign Up:  BLACKETT PEWTER P-LIP TAMPER EVENT

THE PIPE PILGRIMAGE OF THE NEBRASKA PETE GEEK

John M. Young, aka “The NPG” or Nebraska Pete Geek,” should be a name familiar to anyone calling himself both a PG and a DIYer. His restoration tutorials are my favorite on the internet, and not jus because he has a wonderful way of featuring a Peterson pipe about every third or fourth post.  While he’s too busy to put up an online shop, if you ever see a pipe on his site you’re interested in, you can drop him a line to see if he’ll part with it. Sometimes I’m sure he keeps a Pete back to add to his companions, but I’ve scored two remarkable Petes in the last year, my grail 79 Pebble Grain Dunmore Rustic and, just recently, a Dublin Millennium IRISH SECONDS you can see in John’s DIY at the end of this post.

I’ve learned so much from the NPG blog that I asked John if he’d do a pipe pilgrimage interview for the blog, and he very, very politely turned me down. Not just once, but two or three time! I suspect this is because of his continuing work for OPS (Offworld Planetary Security), even though he continues to disavow any connection to that organization with one of those “I can neither confirm nor deny” statements my dark cover friends used to give me.  Needless to say, I finally wore him down, and I think you’ll be glad I did.

Mark: What was the pipe dharma door or doors by which you entered the vocation of pipe smoking?

The NPG: Well, I can answer this honestly without fearing repercussions from my parents, now.  I remember sneaking down to the local Convenience Store (that was literally its name) when I was twelve and purchasing a Dr Grabow pipe.

The Convenience Store is gone, but the strip mall is still there:

I still remember the red and white blister package. The  pouch of tobacco was Borkhum Riff Cherry Cavendish.  I have little recollection of what became of that pipe, but I remember smoking it at Tomahawk Park.  After that there was another Dr Grabow purchased in high school, but there was also, I think, alcohol involved, clouding that memory.

Aside from the Grabow, back in the 1970s, I remember many of the neighbors smoking pipes while they were out working on their yards or cars:  Mr. Chase and his Falcons and Vikings, Mr. Erickson with his briars, and of course Dr. Norber Schuerman.

“Sherm,” as he was known, was the superintendent of the Omaha Public Schools (OPS) and a dear friend of my father, also an OPS guy.  Sherm and other OPS power players spent many an evening at our house for work-leisure activities, and he always had a pipe in hand and a dirty martini close by.  When I was twelve, I became the de facto bartender for the group.  I still remember each man’s drink and exactly how they liked them mixed.

I credit Sherm with sparking my interest in pipes and pipe tobacco.  Neither mom nor dad smoked, though I remember my uncle saying that dad had gotten him hooked on cigars when we were driving to town after the milking one day (my sister and I were sent to the family’s dairy farm every summer). They’ve all passed away now, Shern leaving us last November.

Mark: Didn’t end up being a bartender, I suppose.  So go back to the beginning–

The NPG:  Well, I was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska.  We lived in Laramie, Wyoming for a couple of years while dad was getting his PhD (he was, interestingly, high school dropout prior to getting his doctorate).  During the summers my sister and I spent time as more-or-less indentured servants at my aunt and uncle’s dairy farm in northeast Iowa.  Seriously, good experiences and memories, those.

After high school, I enrolled at the University of Nebraska Omaha as a geography major.  Loving college but not finding a way to have it pay the bills, I switched majors to education with subject endorsements in geography and earth science.  I figured that there never seems to be a shortage of children to educate—thus, job security.  I started teaching in the Omaha Public School district in the fall of 1990, middle school (7th & 8th grade) science.  I picked up a masters in secondary education specializing in science in 1995.  Four years later I was recruited to a high school honors chemistry position.  Another four years and I became the Curriculum Specialist and oversaw the departments of math, science and industrial technology.  In 2015, I went back to teaching with a newly acquired English as a Second Language (ESL) endorsement and taught science to newcomers to the US until I retired in 2022.

Mark: Well, I can attest from personal experience that teaching 7^th and 8^th graders is pretty much the same as working for OPS (Offworld Planetary Security).

We’ve emailed back and forth about your love of herpetology and getting out in the wild to get up close and personal with our slithery friends.  How did that come about?

Some of us only have holy grail pipes. The NPG also has a holy grail snake:
the rare Rubber Boa (yeah, it’s a real thing).

The NPG:  After high school I became quite interested in reptiles, snakes in particular.  From the late 1980-1998 I built up a reptile collection of mostly boas and pythons and successfully bred them.  I would wholesale whole clutches of baby snakes to dealers.  I actually made more money from this than teaching for a few years.

I never collected any native species, they were instead the subject of my quest to photograph all the herptiles of Nebraska, which is ongoing.   Part of my masters degree was field biology, surveying herptiles in a couple of counties in central Nebraska.  This meant that I got to live out of my truck for a summer, catching reptiles and amphibians.  The birth of children and moving to a new home changed my priorities and saw me selling off the whole captive breeding business.

Mark: You said earlier that your two passions in retirement are pipe restoration and work as a Master Naturalist.  Before we return to pipes, especially since so many Pete Geeks I know spend a great deal of time in the great outdoors, canoeing, backpacking, camping, or smoking in the backyard as far from their wives as they can get, could you explain what being a Master Naturalist entails? This might be a good avenue for all the PGs banished from smoking in the home.

The NPG: A long-time friend, Dr. Dennis Ferraro, became the Nebraska State Herpetologist and professor at the University of Nebraska Lincoln (UNL).  He started the Nebraska Naturalist program, where citizens are trained in wildlife identification and conservation.  These citizens then go out and do various volunteer work with organizations for education, conservation, interpretation, or citizen science.  I am interested in the citizen science aspect and have continued to work with defining species distributions within the state.  Dr. Ferraro does ask me to join him for spring and fall work with Prairie Rattlesnakes as an extra pair of eyes for training undergraduates and graduate students on the proper handling of venomous species.

Mark: Yoicks.  We were in Mesa Verde one summer and had a close-enough encounter with a little pink rattler. I was jumping at any little rattly noises for the next month.

Back to pipes. You went from bartender (6^th grade) to pipe smoker (college grad) with no vices you’ve agreed to share in public.  When did you resume the Gentle Art of Smoking?

The NPG: My real pipe smoking began in 1990 or ’91 after getting my first teaching job, and I smoked a pipe regularly from then on.  Sherm had a personal blend made for him by Nickleby’s Tobacconist in Omaha.  I smoked that pretty exclusively in the 1990s.  I picked up a pound of it shortly after Sherm’s passing as a remembrance of him.  He was a great guy, pipe smoker, mentor and school superintendent.

My regular pipe smoking ended with the birth of my second daughter in December of 1998.  She was born with mental and physical handicaps that required a great deal of time and money, and pipe smoking took a back seat for many years.  It wasn’t until the mid 2010s that I pick up a pipe again, and then only occasionally.  Finally, in 2020 I asked my oldest daughter and her husband if they would be interested in moving into my house if I finished the basement, as they were in a one bedroom with a new baby.  The replied yes, and as both of them enjoyed pipe smoking, it became a ritual for us outside in the evenings.  They have since moved into their own house and taken the grandkids (a second came along while they lived here), but they left their dog with me.  with them and leaving their dog with me.

Mark: So what attracted you to Peterson out of all the other pipe marques?

The NPG: I fell in love with the idea of Peterson pipes, their history and ingenuity, long before I actually owned one.  I remember seeing two full sets of Peterson Sherlock Holmes pipes in their stands at Nickleby’s and ogled them every time I was in the shop, but they were just something outside of my price range as a school teacher.

Mark: One of the prices we paid as teachers, NPG.  I remember when I wanted a SH Hansom. I’d been teaching five or six years, but the price was crazy. I settled for a Kinsale, then after smoking it awhile, regretted “settling,” and sold off the Kinsale to trade up for the Hansom.

Some of the NPG’s Petes

The NPG: This is the shelf of the pipe/tobacco cabinet from upstairs.  These are the Petersons that get smoked on a more frequent basis.  The first 6 in the leather racks, from left, are all straight Systems.  There are a couple of Marxman “The Four Hundred”s, a Marxman figural camel and my commissioned Phillip Riverra version of a 1906 Jap, on the far left.

Mark: Do you have favorite System and Classic Range shapes? Do you have any holy grail Petes you’ve been looking for?

The NPG: Oh goodness, you want me to pick a favorite?  That’s just sadistic, Mark.  I guess that I’d have to say that I like the apple shape, bent or straight, over most others.  As for Systems, the 12.5 / 317 is an absolute gem to me.  I have to note that I’m a big fan of the straight System pipes as well.  That kind of segues into the holy grail pipes.  I would love to lay hands on a straight System 30.  I have restored a couple of 120s and several 31s and find them to be amazing smokers.  Also deserving of mention are the 1906 Japs, I find them very attractive.  I did pick up a 2017 POY as an estate pipe.  It smokes like a dream, with or without the filter.

Mark: How did you get into pipe restorations? 

The NPG’s Restoration Station

After I retired in 2022, I decided I needed something to keep me off the streets and out of the gangs, so I started began restoring pipes.  I had putzed around previously, but started reading Steve Laug’s blog and those of Kenneth Lieblich, Dal Stanton and Charles Lemon.  I watched some videos, mainly BarePipe, on YouTube.

I like the written language and think that yelling at students all those years to do something other than watch a video affected me far more than them.

My serious restorations began with picking up a beat up MLC Hell Maria from an antique shop in Plattsmouth, Nebraska.  I tried to photograph the process in Steve Laug’s style but my attempts were novice at best.  The pipe turned out pretty well, though I still kick myself for not protecting the stamps.  Live and learn and hopefully remember the learning part.

The Before & After Photography Studio

Pretty soon I invested in a better setup to photograph what I was doing.

The rolltop desk was my grandfather’s desk.  This is what I used as the workbench/workstation for the first years of restorations.  Now it is more of a supply closet and queue staging ground.

“Still a geographer at heart”: John says these Petes don’t get smoked nearly as much as they deserve.

A DIY ON FILLS
from the blog of the NPG

I always read The Nebraska Pete Geek’s blog posts twice. Sometimes three times.  The first time is just to see what he’s been up to, how cool the pipe looks after he’s done. The second time I slow down to enjoy the humor and details.  The third time I go back and extract the crucial nuggets for my own skill set.

Having finished the 1906 Catalog restoration and lining up next May’s project, I thought I’d take a a few days on two restorations to apply what I’ve learned recently from John.  I’ve had a handsome XL302 Standard with the WDC-style P-Lip, which K&P issued for about 10 years or so from the late 1970s to the late ’80s, which I’ve wanted to clean up for a long time.

The original ball XL302 is one off the great workhorses of the Peterson stable.
It was first seen in the ephemera in 1979 and with its original wide-shoulder WDC-style stem is still found in great numbers on eBay, often with this great “Cobra” style cheeking to the front of the bowl.

The first thing John suggested, which I’ve never, ever tried, was to use a not-too-sharp pen knife blade to gently scrape off the lava flow. Egad, I thought, won’t that destroy the rim? Leave scarring, etc.? As it turns out, no.  And SO much easier than going the long way around with sand sanitizer dabbed on the rim, or isopropyl, etc., which I’ve done for years and years. This didn’t get off everything, but the application of some 320 and 400 grit sanding pads did the rest, and all without fading out the stain on the rim.

The second thing I borrowed from John was the full-strength Murphy’s Oil soap wash. This is done after the chamber has been reamed and/or sanded out. What I found on the three pipes I’ve done this with is that the chamber comes out smelling sweetly, with no tobacco odor at all. Maybe this won’t work every time, but it’s far better than the overnight alcohol soak to clear out the chamber smells.

You can see my first attempt at the NPG fill restoration method describe below–the oval dark brown spot half way down. I might should have used light brown on this bowl, as it was almost as light as Premier-grade wood before restoration.

The third technique, and one I’m going to show you with an extract from one of the many restorations John has used this on, is the restoration of fills that have discolored or partially fallen out.  I learned this from his recent post on an IRISH SECONDS (Dublin Millennium Oom Paul) restoration, and when I curiously found that very pipe in my mailbox a few weeks later, I really could not believe what I was seeing.  I wanted to learn to do this myself. The full restoration is found on his blog at https://scimansays1787.com/?s=Peterson+Reject and is well worth you time, no matter your skill level. And now, to the tutorial.  John—

I believe this to below photo best describes why this pipe was considered to be an Irish Seconds, the number of flaws leading to fills in the briar.  I counted 11 on the left side alone.  The old fill was picked from the briar using a fly tying bodkin.

The front only had two spots to pick then fill.

The right side with its birds eyes also had a couple of spots.

The rim had fills and a couple of cosmetic cracks.  These were not deep structural cracks.

I used brown cyanoacrylate (CA, super glue) placed into the pits.  I then pressed briar dust into the wet CA.  This new fill sets up quickly.   The excess briar dust was brushed off using a wire brush.

The same process was used on the other fills.

Once cured the new fills were filed with a small flat file to smooth them.

This was repeated on each side.

The fills of the cosmetic cracks on the rim were done with brown CA alone, no briar dust though, briar dust was used in filing the pits.  The entire stummel was then lightly sanded with 320 and 400 grit sanding sponges taking care to avoid the stamps on either side of the shank.

… and a few photos of the end results:

Many thanks to John M. Young,
The Nebraska Pete Geek

You can find The Nebraska Pete Geek blog at scimansays1787.com .
You can reach John at scimansays1787@gmail.com.

K&P Reels on Instagram

Can you believe it? Your blogger, charter member of the International Luddite Association and staunch witness against the current Evil Empire predicted in the Huxley-Orwellian matrix, has joined Instagram.  No, don’t look for me—I’m incog—but I wanted to take a look at the reels (see, I even know the lingo) Laudisi-Peterson has put up there.  It turns out (as you know, surely) there’s quite a bundle.  It’s great to see these clips of the craftsmen, of their work at the various stations, and of the factory, as well as tidbits of Peterson history, lore, and education.

Chris Lauer CPG’s 307 Meer & A Brace of Emeralds.

Chris recently received a 307 Tawny De Luxe, made c. 1978, with a gold-plated mount. In addition to being such a rarity, note once again the WDC-style wide-shoulder mount in use at this time.  The wide tenon end made it particularly strong, whether used in the mortise of a meer or a briar.

Chris also received two wonderful Emeralds, an 03 ball and a 268 kaffir.  I say wonderful because this Pebble Grain rustication has been lost to time.  No one knows how it was done anymore.  The Emerald was first seen in the ephemera in 1987; a smooth was added in 1991, and during those years it is sometimes also seen stamped “Jade.”  BTW, it is a “ball” because its from Charles Peterson’s original 3 shape groups, and not a “bent aple.”  I call the the 268 a kaffir and not a yachtsman or zulu because it was so called in the 1906 catalog.  This particular version is really fantastic–notice the forward-canted bowl and gradual expansion of the lines from the mortise to the rim–wholly absent in the version currently being made.

Michael Mikropoulous CPG.

Michael writes, “Although it doesn’t have a number engraved on it, I think it’s the 744, right?  In fact, it also has the bead of my beloved Dunmores, although it’s actually stamped a Flame Grain.
Mark: Michael is correct; it’s the 744. This pipe and a handful of other shapes in the 700 line were shown in an Iwan Reis catalog in the 1970s. As Michael says, these pipes all featured the Dunmore beading—which was used also on the Iwan Reis / Peterson “Dunmoor” collaboration at about the same time (these would morph into the Dunmore we know and love). I’m hoping James Walsh may be able to show us all of those at some point in the future.

In this second pic, all my 700s (Kapet Special 721, Dublin & London Special 722, Special 727, Flame Grain 744).

James Ravenwood CPG. James does so many things well that it’s not surprising he’s a master still life photographer. The lighting on the Peterson box–just amazing. See how he got the “Peterson” darkened?  And the background.  His 2025 Carroll of Carrollton fully justifies the treatment!

PPN will return in two weeks.