Dunhills!

I don't own any Dunhills, but I'd be interested in seeing the before/after/progress pictures, throughout the restoration process.
 
1948! Looks really nice. Here's my baby:
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bfreebern said:
I don't own any Dunhills, but I'd be interested in seeing the before/after/progress pictures, throughout the restoration process.
Click to expand...

I didn't take many before photos, I should have! Here's one of the whole lot as they arrived from the U.K.

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Smoking the second of the two '48s tonight, this one a shape 53 with a fishtail stem. The walls of this pipe are quite a bit thicker, and it smokes a touch better than it's twin. Both rims are perfectly round, the previous owner took great care of them. Almost 70 years old! Uploaded sideways from my phone.

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Very nice. How much work is put into those? Looks like the stems are oxidized, how are the tops and the insides of the bowls?
 
Haha! It takes a few hours to restore one. I soak the stems in a water/oxyclean bath, the first round for a few hours before dumping the water and making a fresh solution, soaking them the second round for about 20 hours. I use a magic eraser to get as much of the oxidation off as possible before using micromesh pads to polish them up. They're finished on a foredom buffing wheel with white diamond, and then a few coats of wax to prevent further oxidation. The trick is to try to not remove any of the original material, so that the stem is still flush with the shank.

The bowls can be trickier. I'll ream them out just about to the wood so that I can see if there are any soft spots or burnout. I was happy to see that there were none on any of these. On the blasted pipes, a handful of qtips and elbow grease cleans the carbon buildup on the rims. On smooth pipes, it takes a more delicate hand to not remove any of the stain along with the carbon, and you're usually left with some rim darkening which can be removed with a 12000 grit micromesh pad, carefully. I can usually get it pretty clean without removing any of the original stain. Then, a buff, a few coats of wax, and it's good to go.

Here is the third from the lot, a 1948 lovat. It's hard to tell from the photo, but the rim is clean with a lot of detail.

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