Maori pipe and a Stone Age twist.

Picked up this old Maori pipe the other day. Old, broken and repaired, tired and dirty but oh so cool. I enjoy pipes and have brought many back to life that were destined for the trash heap. This one definitely needs some TLC. Here are some before pics. I’ll post some more after I freshen it up a bit. Thanks for taking a look.

[ Edited by uncle trav on 2022-07-10 04:56:16 ]

Here’s the pipe all spiffed up and ready for display in the bar. I don’t plan on smoking this pipe so I didn’t do a total restoration but more of a conservation. I cleaned and treated the exterior of the pipe. I then reamed and sanded the bowl to remove the old cake buildup. Then I started on the badly oxidized stem. I worked my way with micro mesh sanding pads starting with 1,800 grit all the way up to 12,000 grit and did a finish polish. I also polished the silver bad. A fun little find.

Damn that looks great!

My dad used to use one of those cigarette holders in the fifties.

And I did buy a corn cob pipe but that is for the snowman I will build one day.

UT- wow, nice find and great restoration! U sure made it all purdy!

Jon

Thanks guys. I find these old pipes in my junk hunting travels. They are like small pieces of portable art.

During our pandemic lockdown I was going a bit crazy and needed to get out. I started a new hobby of looking for arrowheads. Social distancing couldn’t be any more easy than walking alone in a cornfield. So on the subject of pipes I was lucky enough to find a Native American disc pipe in the cornfield one day. I was absolutely blown away. The Reed stem had turned to dust long ago but the stone body of the pipe remained. The stories this pipe would tell if it could only talk.

[ Edited by uncle trav on 2022-07-10 05:32:59 ]

Kinda derailed my own thread🤣

That's even cooler than the Moari pipe! I'd love to find something like that in a local cornfield. Any idea how old it is? Probably carved from Minnesota soapstone.

[ Edited by MrBaliHai on 2022-07-10 10:58:44 ]

Thanks Mr. B. It’s classified as a Mississippian Culture disc or flange pipe. Dates range between 700 and 1,000 years old. Made of carved Catlinite which you are correct is most likely traded in as raw material from Minnesota. I have found many arrowheads and small stone tools on the same site.

"The stories this pipe would tell if it could only talk."

It would probably say "inowata heyna hetw whatta hee who ha" And you would be like "damn I don't speak Indian"

But it would be cool to try to make that stem part that is missing.

You are a cool stuff magnet these days.

I tell my wife if she finds any Indian stuff here where we live to not tell anybody as they might come in and claim our land as an old Indian burial site like they did on the Waltons.

We live close to the Scioto River and there must have been people living here way back when. Indians, settlers? who knows but in our deed legend it says the lands here were given to soldiers as payment for fighting.

BUT where my wife grew up an old treaty came to the date where the land that the homes where on in New York went back to the tribe there and the owners of the house that sat on that land had to pay rent to the tribe for the land that their house sat on.

So, I guess the tribe could say get your house off our land one day.

There was a whole area with no tax gas and cigarettes plus fireworks like our laws do not apply there.

I told one of the guys outside of the Indian casino there that the hail a cab that job would be cool and asked if you had to be a member of the tribe to work there and he said "the people form the tribe would not take this job it does not pay enough for them as they get money from the casino"

My dad loved the whole Indian thing and would have left it all to become a mountain man if he could.

Very cool find, and very, very cool restoration!!