Author: Mark Irwin

I really, really love the look of an unrestored vintage Pete “well-beloved,” especially with the patina on the silver looks like it’s spent a hundred years or so at the bottom of the sea.  Not a Franken Pete, not some woe-be-gone undead thing that might or might not have been a Peterson, but a genuinely beautiful old pipe with a great patina on the metal, an oxidized yet substantially undamaged (I almost wrote “undamned”) P-Lip, some lava on the rim but nothing to indicate the the bowl would need topping.

Once again I paid too much an estate simply because I was looking for a good restoration project.  While nothing is so much fun as working on my favorite shape, the 4 / 309, I should have paid more attention to the photos. If I had, I’d have seen the button was chewed on too much to make it much of a clencher in future.  Be that as it may—and the point was driven home by seeing a very similar Pete just two weeks later that was restored for the same price!—I bought it. And my headaches began.

The first one was simply seeing how chewed the button was and wondering if I could remove all the dental abrasions without sanding through to the smoke channel.

Second was a frozen bone tenon.  That one grew into a migraine proportions.  If a vulcanite tenon is frozen, a night in the freezer will almost always allow you to unseat it. This is the second time that a bone tenon—threaded—refused to budge, which meant I had to drill it out. Only this time the pieces didn’t fall out.  They remained, stubbornly fused to the vulcanite.

Third was a deadline: my part of the 1906 catalog was becoming seriously past due, so the mess I’d created was sitting there on the bench every time I walked into the studio. This may have been the biggest one, as there is nothing quite so irksome as wanting to do something then immediately realizing you’ve got a wall of work separating you from the thing you’d much rather be doing.

At that point I was ready to toss the pipe into the fireplace and forget about it.  Instead, I talked to my friend Gary Hamilton, who kindly suggested I send it to him.  I was boxing it up before we finished our conversation, and what you see is his incredible work.

Here’s what he did:

• rethreaded stem for condenser
• made correct length condenser
• deep cleaned mortise / reservoir
• clean & polish stummel
• bowl coating
• removed dents from silver mount

“The 309 did challenge me on the ‘should I or shouldn’t I’ aspect of the P-Lip.  I so much wanted to reshape and sharpen that button, but as Mark noted, it is very thin and there is not much meat left on the bone to work with.  Reshaping and accidentally cutting an opening into the draft hole would have been devastating.  After much hand wringing, I decided the best thing to do was to clean and polish as best I could without any material removal.

“I used my small alcohol burner to generate a small flame of concentrated heat to help lift most of the deeper bite indentations, so very little sanding / polishing would be needed to get the stem and button in a little more presentable shape.

“The silver work went very well, the mount removed easily with a bit of heat and I was able to get the big dent pretty much smoothed out.  I tried to give an overall smooth look to the mount but I didn’t want to take it to as-new pristine likeness, because I could see a theme developing for this pipe.  With the wear to the stem, the silver mount being just a little bit blemished, the front rim of the bowl showing a little deformation from dottle knocking, etc. this pipe was going to be refinished as a well-worn and well-used trusted companion that had gone everywhere with its prior care taker and shows the wear consistent with its age.

I think it turned out to be exactly what I was aiming for.”

One thing Gary didn’t initially mention, because he’s become so expert in executing these, is the amazing “Hamilton Super Condenser” he created for the broken bone tenon.  I asked him about it:

“The threading for the 309 used the largest thread tap / die set I’ve had to use so far in fitting Super Condensers.  The existing threading, what was left of it, on the tenon end of the steam was just so wallowed out I had to go to this size to clean it all up and make it look right.  The interesting thing is that it all matched up in that the diameter through the bore of the super condenser pretty much matches up with the draft hole diameter in the stem where the super condenser threads into the tenon.  So for performance issues it should not induce any turbulence as it’s pretty much the same diameter going from the super condenser and into the stem where the taper starts.

“And speaking of taper, draft hole diameter, etc., this stem falls in line with one of my old premises that the bore through the stems has gotten smaller over time. If you compare the size of the tapered draft hole through the stem on your recently restored 309 to a new production 309 you’ll immediately see the the draft hole sizes are very different.  That’s a dilemma for another day, but I’ve seen this on other Systems and one has to ask how and why this happened and whether it might not be advisable to go back to the earlier practice.”

Now that it’s back and has already proven its worth as an amazing smoker, I want to draw your attention to two more features.

First, just a word about the sterling ferrule, because it’s the ferrule on this now brilliantly restored 309 Premier that first drew me in.  Between the Early Republic and the end of the Dublin era, silver System ferrules and mounts were shortened. I don’t know whether this was something done all at once or gradually, nor why except to economize. But if you line up the same System DeLuxe or Premier shape over the decades, you’ll see it’s so.  The trend has stabilized and may even have slightly reversed itself in some cases since 2018. I don’t know if it’s worth a blog post or not, but it’s interesting to line up the same System shape over the decades for comparisons. It seems like the shortening began as early as the 1960s and then hit its shortest around 2010-2015 or so, but that’s just a feeling.

My preference (yes, you already know what I’m going to write) is always for the old ways.  I love the longer version on this 309.  It adds charm, substance, noncommerical value and precludes any possibility of it being reductively dismissed as a “cap.”  Our eye tells us it’s important to the pipe’s engineering and general well-being, even if we don’t know (which we do) that it’s there as a strengthening partner for the seating and unseating of the stem.  And if such operations should cause tiny splits or cracks at the mortise, the ferrule is there to hold everything together.

Second, notice how easily the pipe sits.  As you’re thinking about that, you remember that it can sit because an area has been sanded off the bottom of the shank to allow for the shank stamps.  At some points in earlier Peterson history, this smooth area was toward the front lower side of the shank so as not to remove too much material beneath the reservoir / sump.  When the shank stamping area is placed on the bottom, however, the pipe can balance on it and the button.

A Dunmore Premier 79

And now think to yourself, “Hmmm… I wonder where Paddy Larrigan got the idea for the Dunmore Premier Systems”?  When you puzzle that one out, award yourself a Peterson Pipe Notes No-Prize, a Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, or whatever reward you believe compatible with this intellectual feat of daring-do.

Self-Serve No Prize

On Monday the 24th, the Rosslare Classic Spigots dropped and there was no Special Bulletin with a drop party reminder.  My apologies for that.  I had just come off about 15 days non-stop on the 1906 catalog reproduction book and was about as exhausted as I’ve ever remembered being.  Most folks, I know, are social media users, and of course I have Trent to help me out. But I just totally forgot to ask Laudisi for help, and I’m sorry, because if you’d seen how incredibly gorgeous these are in daylight, you’d have been even more in love with them than perhaps you already are.  For my part, I couldn’t have resisted after seeing these photos.

As Charles Peterson knew back in the Patent era, and as Glen Whelan once said to me, there’s something magic about the amber color stem combined with a rich briar stain and sterling that simply gladdens the heart of every pipe smoker.  I hope everyone who wanted one found the shape they were looking for, and if you didn’t, these were not a Smokingpipes only release, so look around now and in the next few weeks and you may be able to find the shape you want.

Thanks to Andy Wike @ Laudisi!

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