Pictures of the Bertram

I've been wanting to take some photos of the Bertram for some time now, and I finally got around to buying a decent digital camera, so here they are. I've mentioned this pipe before, and posted some old "before & after" photos when I was refurbishing it, but I never posted any photos of it with its new stem.  You can see that I've smoked it a few times--it has some lip marks which I should clean off, I guess.

For more info about this pipe, just click on "Bertram" under the labels in the sidebar.

The Bertram is back!

Although I am not currently able to take any new photos of this pipe, you can see my previous posts and some pictures of it here and here. This was a pipe that I rescued from an eBay lot of estate pipes and did some serious refurbishing/refinishing on. However, the previous owner had badly bitten through the stem and it needed a replacement stem. Quite some time ago, I took it to a local area shop to have the stem replaced.

And then I forgot about it. Today I was working in the neighborhood just behind where that shop is located, and I remembered it. So I looked through my glove compartment and found the old receipt still there and drove around to the shop to see what was up. I told him that I had left it there a long time ago and then forgotten about it, but they had never called me to let me know that it was ready either, and did they know what had become of it. It took the guy only a few seconds to step into the back room with my receipt and return with the pipe. He said there was no price recorded for it, nor any record they had ever called me about it, and since it had been such a long time he just let me take it for no charge.

The new stem is tapered a little differently from the original, but in this case, that's a good thing. The old stem had a very diagonal taper and holding it in the teeth caused it to slowly (or sometimes not so slowly) squeeze out of the mouth. The new stem has a more curved taper so that by the time it gets to the bit, it's almost flat and much easier to hold in the mouth.

This pipe is unusually large. It has the largest bowl volume of any pipe I have, not including the Oom Paul. It's also heavy and hard to smoke without hand support, but I am puffing on it right now and I think it's going to be a great pipe once it gets seasoned.

To see pictures of two other large Bertrams that I have yet to refurbish, just click on the Bertram label on the sidebar.

UPDATE: One hour and 15 minutes. One pipe. Yow.

Yet another Bertram

When I posted about the last Bertram stummel, I kept thinking I had a third one somewhere, and I found it. Somehow it got dropped into my "finished" box instead of my "work on" box. This one is a big bent billiard that shows some nice grain.

Plenty of cake and rim tar on this one, but the physical condition of this rim is much better than the other two. It looks like it got some paint or something on it (those white specks), so that might be a problem.

Here's a bottom shot. I took lots of pictures for practice. There's a nick on the bottom of the shank but it's nothing serious. Unfortunately, this one has the same big problem in common with the other two: the stem is a total loss. It looks like it was smoked by a beaver.

All three of these Bertrams are big pipes, and I recently found some info on Bertrams at the my-pipes.com forum. After I get a chance to study it and compare these pipes to what I find, I'll post additional info on all three if I can glean anything pertinent.

The other Bertram

Here's a photo of the other Bertram in my work box--this one a big straight Dublin. If I'm not mistaken, that's some mighty fine straight grain on that pipe. The rim has some nicks, but not nearly as bad as the other one did. I'm pretty sure I still have the stem for this one, but it's a complete loss and will have to be replaced.

Revisiting the Bertram

I did some pipe work today, cleaning up the unidentified lovat and another Kaywoodie (also a lovat). I'll post about them later. In one of my pipe boxes I discovered that I still had the stem that came with the refinished Bertram, so I thought I'd clean it up and see how the pipe looks with a stem.

The stem was badly oxidized and took a good long bleach bath, followed by diligent buffing with tripoli. After further waxing, it didn't look too bad. However, I'm not sure this is the original stem. The tenon is slightly too long and it doesn't fit flush against the shank (might need to sand the tip of the tenon off just a little). Also, I think the taper stem is a mistake on this pipe. It is a big hunk of briar and is quite heavy. The tapered bit and all that weight causes it to slide right down to the button (the bulgy part on the end of the bit). What you can't see in this photo is that there is a big hole on the bottom of the bit from bite-through. I'm even more convinced now that my previous idea of putting a saddle bit on this pipe is correct. It would be flatter and should be easier to hold in the mouth.

No matter what kind of bit goes on it, it's still going to need some hand support. It's just big. Here are some dimensions.

Outer bowl diameter: 1 5/8 inches
Inner bowl diameter: 1 inch. One full (holy cow) inch. The bowl walls are a solid quarter-inch thick.
Bowl depth: 1 1/2 inches.
The stummel alone weighs just a hair less than 2 ounces. I have a small digital scale that use to weigh various small items. I had never thought of weighing pipes before, but now that I've done it, I think I'll have to do it more often. That will be interesting. For me, anyway.

I still plan on getting a new stem for this pipe because of that big bite-through hole, but I think I might have to try it out as is tonight.

UPDATE: What a fantastic pipe! This bowl is so cavernous that I could hear echoes as I trickled the tobacco in. Definitely not a writer's pipe, unless that writer chooses this pipe to take a break from writing. But wow, what a pipe!

Bertram billiard

Previously...



I should add that the other side that I didn't take a picture of had a worse scratch than that.

And now...

At first I was worried that the stain I used was too dark. It made this stately stummel look like a dark blob. But the buff & wax turned it into a real jewel. I just need to sandpaper the inside of the bowl to make the cake smooth. I'm looking forward to getting a stem on this one.