DIY

For Father’s Day this year I decided to take my Dad’s favorite pipe, a Late Republic sandblast 301 System, give it refurb and smoke it with his favorite tobacco—MacBaren’s Scottish Mixture (also one of my regulars). He passed away in 2019 just a few months before the Peterson book was published. While it sits on my desk where I can look at it every day, it reminds me of my past with him instead of my present and future. And since I don’t go more than a few days without thinking of him, it seemed like the best way to sustain our relationship right now is to get it fixed up and back on the road. As I’ve said in earlier posts, Poppa Tom (what my wife always calls him) was very much a smoker of his generation. While he appreciated what pipes can bring, he did so very much in the style of his peers, so that his first rule concerning pipe care was be sure to knock out the old tobacco before putting in new. There were a few more. The second rule was if it’s clogged, use your penknife to get it unclogged. I never worried when I got to his house if I'd forgotten pipe cleaners, because I could be sure to find the same pack he’d had for the last three or four years. That being said, he did have his favorite smokers, and this was one of them. I know I told you he accidentally bounced it on the garage floor (while hot) and then left off smoking it, thinking he’d cracked the bowl. So I thought I’d set about seeing what could be done to bring it back to life. The first thing was to determine whether it does, indeed, have a serious crack. Turns out it doesn’t. I’ve seen this kind of hairline rupture on several estates—in fact, I’ve even bought great-looking ones only to discover this kind of problem afterwards. But it’s the kind of split that only goes down a few centimeters and isn’t going anywhere.   THE STEM Next up was the condition of the button. In fact, the whole restoration pretty much hinges for me on whether I can recover the stem without a cyanoacrylate (CY) glue patch. I understand why refurbers like to use this, as it’s a way to forgo throwing away the stem and possibly the whole pipe. But for me as the years go by, I just don’t want to do it. My teeth can feel the glassy slickness of the glue and after smoking a pipe with a stem repaired in this way, I can see the patch, which is just too much of an ugly spot to endure. I used to occasionally sell an estate restored with CY, but it’s kind of like not telling your bride you’ve got an artificial leg before the wedding night. Most retailers who accept estates on trade won’t even take a patched stem.  All this being…