An instructive tale.

My first time in the Dunhill factory was April 1980 (the old factory before they merged with the Parker facility). Bernie Knighton handed me a pipe and asked how pieces it had. Two, I said. No, thirteen and Bernie proceeded to unscrew the pipe like it was a Rubik Cube and he laid out the pieces.

Bernie explained that it was an overly loved and badly abused Dunhill Root LB, (large billiard - duh), with carbon cake boiling over the rim, visible rim cracks and a three burnouts showing on the bowl. The stem was chewed through and had a broken tenon (hard to chew through those old Dunhill stems!).

Bernie drilled the burnout at the bottom of the pipe until he had clean wood on all sides, then screw threaded the hole. He cut and threaded a briar plug, screwed and glued it into place. The other repairs were variations but when he was finished he had it lightly sanded, touched it up with some hand carving and had it refinished and stamped as a Dunhill (not LB). Freakin' brilliant!

The moral of the story is that you can get pretty carried away with repairing your pipes.

Pete