Cleaning/Restoring a 1962 Dunhill Shell Briar Billiard

hello welcome once again to stuff and things where i like to talk about stuff and occasionally even things i'm your good friend bradley and today i've got a problem my wonderful 1962 dunhill shell briar pipe is looking a little bedraggled there's a lot of cake buildup in the bowl the finish is looking a little dull and worn the stem has lots of oxidation is looking really dull and lifeless there are a few tooth marks in general it just needs to be cleaned up it needs to be freshened up and i think today i'm going to show you how i'm going to do that i have several tools and products that i'm going to use to try to get this pipe looking fresh and new again and i think we're just going to turn the camera around we're going to start out i think i'll start with reaming the pipe out getting all that cake out of the bowl or a lot of that cake out of the bowl we may do something about the airway we're going to see about buffing out this stem and at the end we're going to polish it all up and i'll show you how it looks okay first things first we need to ream out the bowl there is far too much cake building up in there and we need to get it out we need to open up that chamber a little bit so what we're going to use is this it is a set of pipe reamers i can't remember where i got this i think i may have gotten it off of amazon i may have gotten it off of ebay we have several different sizes here along with the handle and what we're gonna do is we're gonna get a little container like this so we can catch what we do what you do is just size up the bowl this is the smallest one i have right now and that fits easily into the bowl so that's a little too small i'll try the next size up this one looks like it may be a little better so i'm getting a little bit of resistance i'm going to use this one first and then if i need to size up again i will so i take the handle put it on the reamer and i take the pipe i'm going to actually move this out of the way for now maybe i'll just put down a paper towel all right here we go you just keep going you go nice and straight you want to make sure you're not at an angle and then you very slowly and very carefully start reaming the bowl you don't want to put too much pressure on you don't want to go too hard and every once in a while you'll take it you'll take your container and you'll dump some of that cake into that container check your work fairly regularly just make sure you don't go too far you don't want to be getting into the wood in the side of the bowl and you don't want to get into the heel and start scraping out wood you just want to be taking off cake okay i've been checking my work as i go i'm pretty happy with the smaller size i have moved up to a larger size now this is the second largest this is as big as i'm going to go i'm just going to clean it out a little bit more just remember that the sides of the bowl are not completely parallel there's a gradation there and so if you start with the really big one first you're going to end up eating into the side of the bowl so you just want to slowly work your way up start with the smallest size that actually makes any sort of difference and then if you need to you can move up to the bigger ones so i'm just going to use this one a little bit and then i think i will be happy with the reaming i have done all right i think i'm pretty happy let me just check yeah i'm thinking that looks pretty good see if i can get the light in there for you to see a little bit probably going to blow it out with the exposure so you want to remove the cake because too much cake can actually cause too much pressure on the bowl it can actually cause your bowl to crack you want a bit of cake to protect the virgin wood but too much is a problem so you need to ream your pipes every once in a while i'm happy with that we're going to move on to something else now now i don't think the airway is too bad in this i don't think it's too restricted but i am going to take a normal sized pipe cleaner now that i've reamed the bowl out it's a good idea just to shove it in there get any of the powdered cake that you had in there take it out just get the pipe as clean as you can now if i want to i can take the stem off that could use a little bit of cleaning and i'm just going to take a look inside and it looks like i could really get in there and clean out the shank if you'll be able to tell but there is a bit of residue in there and what i'm also going to do is take this now be very careful if you're going to be doing something like this what i have here is a set with a handle and then a 5 30 seconds drill bit on the end this is the right size for this pipe if you're going to do this if you want to clean out your airway now occasionally you're going to end up as you smoke the pipe you're going to get tar you're going to get oils they're going to build up in there even if you're using a pipe cleaner occasionally you may want to use something like this to clean out that airway what you don't want to do is drill through wood so you need to be very careful you don't want to force it so i'm just going to very slowly and very carefully place the end of this drill bit and i'm going to very slowly and very carefully move it and i'm looking inside to see when i reach the end this is when my flashlight would be useful not there yet very carefully don't force it and still not quite there if you hear a crunching sound that's not good okay i think we're breaking through here we are so there's a good amount of tar and extra cake and everything if i can show that to you maybe you can see in there but then if you've gotten through you've cleared your airway you just back it up slowly and carefully you can see a lot of the residue on the tip of this thing that's what we're getting out of that shank and i'm just going to run a pipe cleaner through there again and then i might take a little bit of rubbing alcohol and put it on the inside of the shank and use a pipe cleaner or a paper towel or something and get out a little bit more of that residue now this is what my pipe cleaner looks like after putting a little alcohol on the end and rubbing it up and down inside that shank nasty i'm going to try a little bit more and then i think we'll have this cleaned out enough for my liking just make sure you don't get alcohol on the finish of the pipe because that will take the finish off still getting quite a bit of stuff off that but i think that's probably clean a lot clean enough let me just take a look with my light yeah that is a thousand times better and then i'm just gonna rub a pipe cleaner through here one more time to sop up any of that extra alcohol and then of course you're not going to want to smoke this pipe for a while give it several days to completely dry out because that will not taste good all right i'd say the stummel is pretty good we're going to put this to the side we'll probably put some wax on it at the end shine it up a little bit but for now we need to deal with the stem and the stem is pretty nasty so i have a little container of water here i have my stem i have some 800 grit sandpaper and then i also have a little bit of thousand and then i've got these buffing pads that are actually made for fountain pen nibs but they go from 1 500 all the way up to 12 000. we're not going to need to get that crazy with it but the orange one is a 1 500 and then we may even get to the 24 which is let's see where is that one it is black and this one here so those are the two buffing pads we may use to finish it off and then at the very end i may even use some liquid polish ideally i'd be using a buffing wheel and some buffing compound for this i don't have access to this right now and then it'd be really nice to be able to finish it off with some carnauba wax on a buffing wheel but for now we're just going to have to make do with what we've got i'm going to cut off a piece of the sandpaper a piece about that size but i'm not going to actually sand the stem without it being attached to the pipe you want to be careful of that because if you do you could sand the stem down and then end up going far too deep and then you have a ridge between the shank and the stem so what i'm actually going to do is take some of this blue tape and i'm going to wrap it around the shank not very thick and then that will give me a little bit of a buffer when i'm sanding and put the stem back on and now i'm going to sand i don't need to sand really too much up around here anyway because it's not too oxidized it's mostly just down towards the tip of the stem i'm going to do a wet sand so i'm going to take a little bit of this water just get it on the sandpaper and then we're going to focus on the areas where the corrosion is the worst you want to make sure when you're doing this that you don't sand over the button and just rub that nub completely off if you're going to be sanding near the button you want to sand like this so you're coming right up to the barrier of the button so i'm going to work on this for a little bit with the 800 and then we'll see where we are okay i think i've gotten most of the corrosion off there um might need to work on this little part of the stem a little bit more and then i'm going to switch to the thousand grit and i'm just going to keep going up from there i'll do wet sanding just sanding it down you can see how dull it looks right now and eventually we'll get that shine back so let me start working on that all right gang so i think i'm just about done with the stem i'm actually finishing it off with a peterson silver polishing cloth i got this for use on some of my peterson pipes it had silver accents on them and you can see now that it's looking pretty shiny not bad there's still just a tiny bit of corrosion or not corrosion a tiny bit of oxidation here and there but ideally i'd be using a buffing wheel with buffing compound and i just don't have the time to really get too crazy with this but it's a lot shinier most the oxidation is gone i ended up going all the way up to a 6000 pad i started with 800 sandpaper then went to a thousand then i went to the 1500 polishing pad then i went up to a 2400 then a 3600 and then a 6 000 and that's what we're left with there i'm going to put some polish on this afterwards we've got both halcyon wax and we have paragon wax these are each for a smooth finish or a rusticated finish and that's how we're going to finish up this little tutorial here if i can get the tape off of the stummel or off the shank here i've actually got residue you can see there from when i was sanding it's the oxidation coming off that vulcanite it smells horrible but anyway we're going to get a microfiber cloth i'm going to apply wax to both of these and we're going to wax them both up and then i'll show you how the pipe looks at the end all right gang we are almost finished we have reamed out the stummel got the bowl nice and clear got rid of a lot of that cake we have opened up the airway a little bit cleaned out the shank with some alcohol as well we have taken the stem and sanded down most of the corrosion and then with increasingly fine grits of sandpaper and polishing pads we have gotten it up to a fairly good shine and we're almost done the last thing we're going to do is use some wax we have here some halcyon wax and we also have paragon wax paragon wax is good for the smooth finishes or smooth surfaces halcyon is good for rusticated finishes what i will do is just take a little bit of this halcyon first you can see the consistency there i'm just going to get a little bit on the finger and i'm going to dab it around on this pipe this is the halcyon wax for rough finish or rusticated finish pipes and this will just shine it up a little bit and protect it a little bit i'm just going to make sure i cover all the surfaces with this maybe get a little bit more get it on the nomenclature there all right now i'm going to put this aside for a few minutes and then now i'm covered in wax hold on we will use a little bit of the paragon wax on the stem there are all sorts of different things you could use on the stem like i said ideally i'd be doing all this cleaning and polishing with a buffing wheel you can use polishing compound with the buffing wheel on the stem and that'll really get it clean and then it would be great to have some carnauba wax and use a buffing wheel to put that on the stem and on the actual stummel but like i said i don't have access to that right now so i'm just going to use some of this wax which works pretty well if you don't have a buffing wheel and i don't think most of us do so we're just going to cover the stem with this get it all over the button and then in a few minutes time once it's just slightly solidified on the surfaces we are going to polish this out with a microfiber cloth all right things are starting to feel a little tacky so it is time now to rub them out all right there's the stummel looking pretty shiny looking pretty nice we will put that aside and we will work on the stem all right not bad not bad at all ah but there is one more thing actually two more things we have to do before this pipe is completely ready the stem is a little bit loose when i put it in the shank so what i'm going to do is take a little bit of beeswax here and i'm going to use my cloth because i just got this nice and shiny and i'm just going to rub a little beeswax on the end of the stem and then i'm going to insert the stem into the shank and there you go nice and tight but not too tight and there she is i think that looks pretty good oh wait a minute the last thing the thing that always pisses everybody off i'm going to use one of these these are the bj long soft live rubber pipe bits i put them on my pipes because i like how they feel if i don't have them on my pipes it hurts my teeth to clench my pipe that did not actually open it some people get very irritated by this they think that you should not put a pipe bit on your pipe because it ruins the pipe uh well not actually physically ruining the pipe it protects the pipe it protects the stem from tooth marks but they think it ruins the aesthetics of the pipe they think it ruins how it feels when you smoke it i would rather not break my teeth so that's why i use these you smoke your pipe your way i'll smoke it my way i cannot clench a pipe without pain unless i have one of these on so that is the finishing touch if i can shove it on there a brand new pipe bit and a fairly shiny fairly nice looking 1962 dunhill shell briar pipe hopefully you found this useful thank you so much for watching until next time until we meet again i've been a good friend bradley you've been the audience this has been stuff stefan things i'll see you later you

Channel: STUFFandTHINGS

Views: 82,951

Keywords: yt:quality=high, stuff and things, stuffandthings, stuffandthings plays, pipes, sunday stuffandthings, pipe blends, #askstuffandthings, comedy, satp, stuffandthings patreon, funny video, pipe hobby, stuffandthings t-shirt, 1962 dunhill shell briar billiard, old dunhill pipe restoration, reaming a pipe, removing oxidation from pipe stem, cleaning pipe stem, sanding pipe stem, restoring old pipe, cleaning pipe, waxing pipe, polishing pipe

Id: iKUkpWuLI7c

Length: 19min 58sec (1198 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021