I bid on this one knowing full well that it was going to take a lot of work to get it back to some semblance of beauty and functionality. When I found it on EBay I thought it might be worth the effort but let it sit for awhile and then before the bidding ended I put in my bid. I honestly think I was the only bidder so I got it for a pittance.

When it arrived it was more rough than the EBay pictures intimated. The front edge of the bowl and rim looked like it had been used as a hammer. Not only were there dents and holes on the front of the bowl but the rim was chewed up like it had been hammered out on a piece of concrete. The finish was absolutely gone. The surface of the bowl was permeated with oils and grease from dirty hands and from looked like having been laid on its side in a full ashtray! At least the bowl was still semi-round and there were no burn marks. The other remarkable thing to me was that the stem was virtually unchewed. That surprised me actually given the overall state of the pipe. It was very oxidized and a deep brown colour.

I reamed and cleaned the bowl and shank to remove the grime and tars. It took a lot of pipe cleaners and isopropyl alcohol to clean things up. I dropped the bowl in the alcohol bath and the stem in a bath of Oxyclean for a while and went about other work that I had going. I believe it soaked overnight before I got back to it. When I did I removed it from the bath, dried it off and went to work on the damaged rim and bowl. I used some medium grit emery cloth to reshape the rim. The tricky part here was to keep the angles even on all sides of the bowl. The front edge was heavily damaged and the rim itself was also badly chewed up. After the emery cloth I used 240 grit sandpaper to smooth the scratches out and then 400 and 600 grit wet dry sandpaper to finish the shaping. The series of three photos below show the progression of the shaping.

Once the top was smooth and the shape retained I wiped the bowl down with an alcohol soaked cloth to remove any dust from the sanding. I also used a dental pick to clean out the rings around the bowl to prepare them for staining. I find that those collect a lot of grit and grime and can almost be smooth due to the buildup. I then stained the bowl with a medium brown aniline stain and flamed it to set the stain. I took it to the buffer and gave it a light buff with Tripoli to remove the excess stain and also give it a slight polish. Then took it back to the work table to work on the stem and to sand the bowl with micromesh to smooth the surface and bring the grain to the front. The pictures below show the stem after the soak in Oxyclean and then light sanding with 400 grit wet dry sand paper to remove the oxidation that was softened. The stem still needed more work to get out some of the stubborn places but it was getting close.

I used micromesh pads 1500-6000 grit on the bowl and the stem to finish the smoothing and restoration. Once it was done and shining I gave the whole pipe a buff with White Diamond to polish it and then gave it multiple coats of carnauba wax and buffed it with a clean soft flannel buff to polish.