GBD 9438 Tapestry – Stem Repair

Al Jones

Well, I fell prey to yet another GBD 9438 in Tapestry finish on Ebay. Yes, another chair leg stem, my fourth this year. However, this time I made a somewhat foolish offer on this particular pipe using my Ebay Android phone app. Using the phone, I completely missed that the seller stated a piece was missing from the stem and the large detailed photograph of the damaged area.

When the pipe arrived, the briar looked in great shape but the damage loomed large. In the ad, the seller offers that he could do the repair for an additional $15. I was skeptical, but curious as to how he might accomplish this feat. The seller replied that Walker Briarworks did his repair work. I did contacted Dave Wolfe at Walker and was not surprised to learn a $15 repair was not an option. Unfortunately, neither was getting a new stem made and transferring the brass rondell. Dave told me that vulcanite stock in that diameter (22 mm) was no longer available.

So, it appeared the repair was left to my own hands. I considered trying to patch it with Superglue, but as you can see, the missing piece was quite large. I didn’t think it could be done nor be durable enough.

I decided the best way to repair the pipe was to cut off the broken button and reshape a new one. I made the cut with a hobby saw and there was no turning back.

Using a small, flat blade needle file, I made a cut on both sides of the stem for the crease. Than, using a heavier metal file I carefully carved out a new button. I went back to the flat needle file to remove some of the heavier file marks. I used both files to shape the button into a “football” shape. additional flat, tapered shape needle files were used to open up the stem hole.

Using some 600 grit wet paper, I sanded out the file marks from the stem. Next the stem was polished with increasingly finer grades of wet sand paper, advancing from 800>1000>1500 and 2000 grit papers. I then polished the stem on the buffer with some Tripoli rouge. I used the final two grades of micro-mesh (8000 and 12000) to bring up the shine. The last steps were to buff the stem with White Diamond rouge followed with a final polish using automotive plastic polish.

The bowl was soaked with Everclear and sea salt and the shank cleaned with alcohol and bristle pipe cleaners. I buffed the bowl with Tripoli, White Diamond and then several coats of carnuba wax. The briar was also polished by hand with Paragon wax.

The finished pipe came looks great and should offer many more years of service.