416. Reclaiming a 1972 “Pachyderm” XL90 Donegal Rocky
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THE HATS ARE BACK!
Yes, the New Era ball caps are back. It’s a long story which I’ll summarize at the end of this already novel-length post, but we’ve got a new vendor, an updated design (thanks to everyone’s input) with pipe smoke in excelsis coming out of the pipe on a classic 39THIRTY stretch-fit which makes ordering the right size much easier. Send the end of post to order your cap (and of course, receive the coveted Merit Badge).
Reclaiming a 1972 “Pachyderm” XL90 Donegal Rocky
It’s been a minute since I went through a DIY reclamation with you, so I pulled out all the stops to offer a tutorial for those who’d like to do more with estates and to solicit advice from those much further along the path than I. If you fall into the latter class–and there’s lots of Pete Geeks who do–please, please comment where you see something that could have been done better or faster or easier!
So not long ago I stumbled across my idea of a perfect project, the beater XL90 Donegal Sterling seen above. You know I love the Old 9BC, the chubby bent billiard based on the Patent 9, and I also adore the “Fat 9” that first saw light of day in the Éire era and has been with us to the present day as the standard shape 9 /307.
You know as well that I’ve got nothing but praise for the POY2020, seen more recently in the 9B DeLuxe System special release, which are splendid replicas (actually, the same bowl) of the Patent era 9 by K&P’s Pipe Specialist, Giacomo Penzo.
As the prophet Jeremiah once said, “Ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls” (Jer. 6:16). For me the “old paths” did not actually quite so far back as the Patent era but with the Fat 9 and the 9BC. I’ve also been collecting (egad) Donegal Sterlings for a few years–but don’t tell anyone. So as I said at the outset, when I sighted a shabby sterling XL90 Donegal Rocky, I simply couldn’t walk on by. I blame it on the Good Samaritan in me.
I’ve had to begin looking at acquiring an estate Pete as money spent to enjoy time spent in restoration rather than as a bargain. This HM “e” 1972 sterling “Donegal” Rocky XL90 was seriously overpriced, but in every other way perfect for my skill set—no over-reaming. split bowl, or gnawed button. In addition, I’d just acquired a new blog toy, an LED ring light that screws on the end of the lens for macro photography. I hoped it would allow me a better look at reservoirs on System pipes for another project and of course chambers and mortises on pipes in general, and I wasn’t disappointed.
As Steve Laug taught me many years ago, I always begin with a close preliminary exam to assess what I need to do, whether I can actually do it, and the order of operations for doing so.
PRELIMS
Taking a look at the mortise in the photos above, you can see what the LED ring light can accomplish. Fifty-two years of smoking—or however long it was actually in service—created quite a bit of sediment below the tenon line. Y
I was hoping this XL90 might be drilled for a System, but a look with the penlight didn’t prove encouraging. I inserted a pipe cleaner through, then pulled it out through the chamber, grabbing it with needle nose pliers, so that just the tip remained visible in the smoke channel. This bit of white gave me more light to see while I measured the depth of the mortise to the bottom of the smoke channel hole, a distance of 35.7mm.
The bottom of the mortise lies at 38.0mm, only 2.7 mm below the smoke hole. So the pipe was never intended to work as a Sub-System, despite the graduated bore drilling of the P-Lip stem. Given the evidence that the previous companioner really seemed to enjoy this pipe, I’ll take his word for it for now. I can always go back and perform that operation.
(N.b. Let me add that sometimes I get emails from Pete Geeks who are certain that their pipe has a reservoir, when in fact it’s just the divot from the drill bit, a matter of less than 3mm. )
When I saw this XL90 Donegal on Worthpoint, my heart sank–it was MINE. I didn’t even remember HAVING this pipe. It’s a 1991, HM “F,” from the first year of the Dublin era. Notice the rustication has retreated not a little from that of the previous decades. Still, seller’s remorse hit when I saw it–one of the tragedies of being a Smoker/Collector instead of a Collector/Smoker!
A look through the pipes at Worthpoint revealed that the XL90 I’m working on seems to predate the the XL90 most of us know–the one that looks very like the old 9BC. (Notice the Donegals of the early 1980s still featured the aluminum “inner tube” type of stinger.)
The chamber presents no visible problems—no over-reaming, no spidering (visible heat fissures), no “teardrop” smoke hole (indicative of probable charring around the smoke hole under the carbon). It should clean up easily. The bowl is dirty but otherwise in fine condition. The rim will need scrubbing, but there’s hardly any lava. The soft patina on the rest of the bowl indicates that the pipeman who companioned this pipe wiped it down down frequently but was of the previous generation when there wasn’t a lot anyone knew to do about oxidation.
The stem is seriously oxidized, but there’s next to no dental chatter. The bend, however–yuck. It’s really annoying to me. In fact, it’s a “keep it or sell it” issue. If I can’t find a more pleasing bend, I’ll return it to the O.E.M. bend before completing the job and put the pipe on eBay.
RESTORATION
Stem Bending
“A Pack of Peterson Pachyderms” from the late 1970s and early 1980s:
the new bend is seen on the XL90 at the right, still in the process of being refinished.
As I was getting out the heat gun and a bowl of water to do the bending, I remembered the “elephant trunk” or “Peterson Pachyderm Stems” in my rack, on an X220 Kildare (which I blogged about back in Post #307), a 339 Donegal Sterling (HM “p” for 1981) and a 220 Donegal Sterling (HM “l” for 1977), all from the Late Republic era. While admiring these rather atypical stems from Peterson, I thought of two other instances of “pachyderm” stems in the K&P catalog:
Waterfords (2017)
First, the Waterford. Do you remember this line from 2017 (see Post #62)? It was an ingenious idea and the stains and cumberland acrylic stem colors were beautiful. They featured upper-grade briar and some very fine grain patterns.
Peterson Patent Pachydermia (1906)
Second, the long stems of the Patent era. Not all Patent Systems had these, but when they occur they’re unforgettable.
I don’t know where Conor Palmer thought of the idea for the Waterford stem in 2017, but I’m wondering if Jimmy Nichols and Tony Dempsey during the Late Republic didn’t get it from the 1906 catalog. There were two of these catalogs at K&P during that time, one the company cut up for this reason or that, and another they preserved and used in photos like this one of Tony from a 1980 Smokeshop article:
from a 1980 Smokeshop story
Before & After bends
I surprised myself with the bending, as I sometimes do when something actually turns out right. Pleased with the stem bending, my next stop was deoxidation.
Stem Deoxidation and Restoration
Over the years I’ve come to realize that restoring a stem is always going to be a slow process if it is to be a successful one. At this point in my pilgrimage, I use LeBelleEpoque’s “Before & After” deoxidation goo ($40 for a 12 oz bottle, which will take me through about a year’s worth of pipes at my slow rate).
Deoxidized, yet notice the scaling from the treatment
You know you’ve deoxidized the stem if it’s a dark gun metal. With the Before & After, you’ve got to towel the stem down as part of the process, rubbing off the oxidation. Even with good t-shirt toweling, you’re going to get scratches if the stem was heavily oxidized, as this one was. This means you’ve got to follow up with hand-sanding using Micro Mesh pads.
(Sometimes I work on a stem that’s seems like it will be easy–just some light brown haze across the front of the stem where it’s been exposed to light—any light, I’ve decided: moonlight, starlight, fog light, doesn’t matter. If I don’t go ahead and Micromesh the button, even though it doesn’t look like it’s going to need it, about 7 times out of 10 the button will turn brown after a single smoke. So I just go ahead and Micromesh the button and often the entire stem even in cases of mild oxidation.)
I ran into my first bump here: after sanding with 1500 Micromesh, I could still see a lot of brown in the sanded grooves. And this is the problem with Micromesh pads and severely oxidated stems. Even when I dip the stem in “Before & After” or Briarville’s less potent but un-gooey solution, if after sanding the stem horizontally and vertically with 1500 grit I can see brown streaks—not gunmetal—then when I finish up with 12K, white compound and carnauba, I’m going to see brown.
So—and this is my least favorite of the steps in restoration—I go back and use a much coarser grit. I started over with 400, sanding then with 500 until the brown was gone. This means a more intense sanding process, since the micro-grooves created by coarse grit sandpaper are much more difficult to remove. To offset this a bit (whether it honestly works I can’t say) I go around the shaft of the stem from bottom to top, spiraling up as it were, bit by bit. Then I sand parallel with the shaft, being careful in both cases to pay attention to that tiny perpendicular crevice between the P-Lip’s upper shelf and the button, a place notorious for leaving a brown streak.
You can see the s gunmetal of the stem after sanding in the “Pack of Pachyderms” photo a few paraagraphs above, but notice in following two photos the difference it makes between Micro Mesh to 12K (top photo) and buffing with tripoli, rouge and white compound bottom):
It does look great here, yet . . .
. . . THIS is what we strive for: obsidian gloss.
I seem to always forget to clean the smoke channel on the stem before doing the buffing, so I had to go back and do that, wetting it with a smooth pipe cleaner soaked in isopropyl, then scrubbing with bristle pipe cleaners. Every pipe and stem are different, it seems, and this one only took about half a dozen cleaners before it was clean. So now, on to the chamber and mortise!
The Chamber and Mortise
Had this pipe been a System, I would have used a drill bit and hand-turned it into the reservoir to remove all the build up. Of course, a variable speed drill set on the screw setting would do just as well, if you’re comfortable with it. Getting some bare wood down there just means you’ve got a clean start. As it’s a Classic Range pipe, I merely used a tube brush, scrubbed the mortise and then followed up with a folded bristle pipe cleaner and then Q-Tip’s, all dipped in isopropyl.
Reaming. As for the chamber, of course everyone has his own method. Mine has changed considerably over the years. For heavy cake, I always go the first rounds with a Pip Net reamer. But if the chamber has only a light cake, as in the present case, I forego the Pip Net and simply use 120 grit sandpaper wrapped around a dowel, moving up and down around the chamber, then sideways.
In this case, most of the cake fell out easily. Looking closely, however, I saw a light ochre cake remaining, and applied a little more force. The wood grain reveals itself in this method, and the chamber is very lightly scored by the 120 grit. The light sandpaper scoring will help the precarb coat settle into the wood later on.
After reaming, I take the bowl, holding it upside down over the sink, and dab it out with water on my finger. Adam Davidson at SPC first recommended this to me, and it works to remove a lot of the ghosting as well as residual dust.
When the chamber has dried, I swab it out with isopropyl to remove even more of the vestigial ghosting.
(N.b.: If you find, on your pipe, fissures or deep carbon from scorching, you can either apply pipe mud to the fissures or sand the chamber evenly then go on to pre-carb, which will offer protection for the fissures without adding cigar flavor. Sometimes, seeing there’s going to be a problem, I simply sand the old cake evenly on those problem areas, then proceed to the pre-carb.)
Precarb. In case you’ve never done it, the K&P recipe is quite easy to make up and use:
1. You mix equal parts of food grade gum arabic (used for baking) with activated charcoal powder (which has numerous homeopathic uses and is benign). I use ¼ teaspoon of each, then mix the powders thoroughly before adding a few drops of water at a time until I have a consistency like thick paint.
2. Apply the pre-carb with a #4 flat-edged bristle brush (inexpensive—just a watercolor brush). Move up from the chamber floor around the sides of the bowl (see Post #260). You want the wood covered, but use firm strokes. No need to make it thick. Just a thin coat, brushed firmly into the wood. I place a pipe cleaner just sticking out of the air hole, then remove when I’m finished with the walls and floor and place a few dabs where bare wood is showing.
3. Dry time, depending on the humidity in the house, will take anywhere from 24-48 hours.
The advantages of the this method of preparing an estate pipe are five fold:
1. By removing all the previous cake, a greater amount of ghosting left by earlier tobaccos is removed.
2. Unlike the old salt-slush method, there’s no hint of salt taste left coating the bowl.
3. It’s a much safer than going with a bare bowl. No reason to go to all the work of restoring a pipe only to have it burn out or scorch the chamber for the sake of a fleeting taste of bare briar, which may not be sweet anyway, depending on ghosting deep in the wood.
4. The pre-carb is flavor neutral. I can sometimes detect what I think is a very slight sweet taste, but that, I think, is just the signal that the bowl is neutral in flavor.
6. If any deep ghosting remains, the pre-carb will help absorb those flavors while it also enables the carbon cake to build up the flavor of the tobaccos you do enjoy.
The Band
I don’t know why so many pipe smokers seem afraid of polishing the band. A silver polishing cloth won’t damage the hallmarks. Petes deserve to be clean and shiny when they’re smoked—as St. Benedict says, “Treat everything you touch like the sacred vessels of the altar.”
This XL90 has the most spectacular tarnish I’ve ever seen. In a difficult case, I begin with Simichrome Polish, dabbing a paste over the entire surface and letting it soak for a few minutes before wiping it off with a tissue. That will normally take off all the tarnish.
After the first Simichrome treatment (seen above) I found out why the silver was tarnished so strangely: the sterling had been clear-coated. This, Paddy Larrigan told me, was a routine practice for several years after K&P resumed hallmarking in 1969. They hoped to prevent the sterling from tarnishing, but it didn’t work well as it yellowed over time, and so they discarded the practice.
Not bad, but up close you can see the inevitable scratches
Most of the scratches can be removed, as seen here on the unhallmarked side of the band
I next polish the metal on the buffer, using white compound on the unhallmarked areas and then carefully going over the hallmarks with Fabulustre, a special jeweler’s compound that gentler than the white. Even then, “go slow like a pro” or you can damage your hallmarks. As you can see, I always tape the bowl when I polish the silver, and tape the silver when I polish the bowl. This prevents the compounds from crossing over to the wrong area.
The Bowl
Murphy’s Oil Soap is made to be diluted, not full-strength (my mistake here)
The last thing is to restore the bowl. I experienced my first setback here (ah…the suspense!). Wiping down the bowl with isopropyl is standard for me, just to remove the heavy dust and grime. Then I wiped it down with Murphy’s Oil Soap. This stuff is very strong and made to be diluted, but I just went ahead and daubed it on, scrubbed with a toothbrush, and then rinsed the bowl under water.
Oops. It’s a bit, um, faded. Not to worry, just some white compound on the buffer, followed by carnauba and, voilà!–
The bowl looks … pretty crummy.
So I thought I was finished, the photo above being the end of my labors. But something troubled me as I lay in bed trying to go sleep. I didn’t like the bowl. So about 2:30 in the a.m. I got up, fetched a glass of milk and dish of animal crackers, and took at look at the XL90 next to my other Donegal Sterlings. It stunk. It was the milky finish (white compound under the carnauba) and the color (I’d faded the stain out with the Murphy’s). So—back to work.
(I should add that for smooth finishes, buffing with white compound followed by carnauba is a wonder-worker for bringing up shine. Not so on rustication.)
The carnauba and white compound were removed with isopropyl, my reliable friend, using a cotton pad and a tooth brush. I packed the chamber with cotton balls (as it was coated with the pre-carb and I didn’t want stain dripping into it), then taped the sterling with several layers. I also covered the smooth stamping area on the bottom with petroleum jelly, as I wanted what grain and highlights are there to remain there and not become opaque with the staining.
Using Fiebing’s brown, I coated the bowl a few times, then lit it while wet with my Old Boy. And boy did it flame! This burning in seals the stain in a way that merely letting it dry won’t. In fact, if you’re new to staining, I don’t recommend flaming the bowl, as it’s hell to remove once it’s burned in. Room-dried stain works just fine and I’ve never had it come off in my hands (remember, there’s a coat of wax or compound on it after all).
I did a “speed dry” with the hot air gun on low, then hit the bowl with a cotton wheel until I could begin to see a few highlights coming through.
Once dry, I polished with Halcyon II wax (for rough finish)—which you work in by hand. I use a bristle nail brush (used for finger nails) to get down in the rustication. I followed up with a light buff of carnauba on the buffer.
Now the bowl, correctly hued, scintillates with Total Gnarliness
Road Testing
Testing a new estate always takes a bit of time. The first bowl in the XL90 revealed some unpleasant aromatic ghosting remained. So I didn’t clean the pipe when it cooled, but let the tobacco sit in the chamber overnight. I’ve done this with a number of estates, sometimes leaving them with ash and dottle a half a dozen times, to help bring the bowl around.
When I used to ask my dear friend the late Jørgen Jensen (Post #195), what he’d do when a pipe smokes sour, he’d tell me he smoked it daily until the pipe was cured to his satisfaction. I’ve never had that kind of Danish toughness (I never ate my peas when I was a boy, understand), but when you spend a lot of time restoring a pipe for your own use, you want it to be a success.
What I noticed immediately was a wet heel (moisture in the chamber floor) and a puddle in the mortise. This told me that the bowl was somewhat dehydrated (of course, after so many years), but also that as I’m a virginia smoker (same would apply if you smoke aromatics), I needed to install a reservoir and add a chamfer to the tenon to turn the XL90 into a System.
Chamfering is something most anyone can do either with a special drill bit and a hand-held drill (see Prof. John Schantz’s excellent tutorial in Post #237) or even simply by turning the bit by hand. In either case, followup with Micro Mesh pads does wonders, and a bit of a buff with rouge and white compound even more, as the photo above shows.
Here’s also a good time to pause and point out the sheer perfection of the old vulcanite P-Lips. This one measures 1.5mm at the button and 5mm precisely at the tenon. The shelves are remarkably crisp and tall, something important when a pipe gets as long as this one (6.25 in.) and has a long “moment arm,” making it feel a bit heavier than it would with a shorter stem.
It’s also interesting to see the fit at mortise, the way it has been chamfered at the tip.
.
The reservoir gave me some trouble. I couldn’t seem to get behind the smoke channel into the chamber–you can see where the first larger bit I used drilled away the smoke channel some. So I decided to go deeper rather than wider. Almost too deep. There’s still some 13.5 mm between the end of the reservoir and the outside of the bottom shank, but wow, it’s too deep for a tissue. Have to use a pipe cleaner.
I know I’m far too geeky about System engineering, but I had to smoke the pipe as soon as I’d finished the reservoir and chamfer to gauge the effect of my work. The conversion, I reiterate, makes the pipe a full System, even though it lacks the the non-Patent element of the army mount or wear-gap tenon.
As I smoked it the thought occurred to me once again that there is such a thing as a “System draw” and now the XL90 has one–before these changes, it did not. Eureka. What I mean by System draw—and you’ve experienced it whether you’ve thought about it or not—is that there is a harder felt pull than that of a pipe without a reservoir, a greater sense of “spaciousness,” for lack of a better word. This is because the tobacco vapor has room to move and to condense into the reservoir rather than being forced immediately up the airway of the stem.
Subsequent smokes, I’m happy to report, have all been delightful. No ghosting. Good “System draw.” Reservoir filling nicely. Most of all, I like the work that’s been done, which means I’ll be smoking the pipe.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll conclude by saying an original 1972 XL90 Donegal Rocky would not have a glossy finish like this. I happen to have an unsmoked Donegal on the shelf from the same period and can tell you (in case you don’t know) they were matte. But like I say, I’m happy with the work, which is all that matters when you’re doing a reclamation.
PETE GEEK SUMMER EVENT:
THE 39THIRTY NEW ERA STRETCH FIT CAP
Here’s a digital mock-up from our vendor, not the actual cap: 
Here’s the story: the first vendor stalled and stalled and then finally asked, “Is this for a team?” Well, not a sports team, we had to answer. “We only make hats for teams.” Well, that turned out all for the good, since Marie already wanted to add smoke to the pipe, I wanted to add CERTIFIED PETE GEEK to the back, and you said that a stretch fit cap would be more comfortable and easier as far as sizing went. So, that’s what we did: the low-profile 39THIRTY New Era stretch fit cap, smoked out, CPG-tagged.
If you don’t have one, you can google photographs of 39THIRTY profile and embroidery style or on the New Era site found HERE.
Deadline is Monday, September 2nd, 12 noon CST.
Price: $49.95 for US orders, including shipping, and $69.95 for overseas, including FedEx shipping.
Here’s the 39THIRTY Stretch Fit size chart from New Era:
If you sign up on the Google form below,
you’ll be invoiced through PayPal
when the caps arrive,
somewhere in the first two weeks of November.
Questions? Email me at petegeek1896@gmail.com.