This is one I wish that I had remembered to take a picture of before I started working on. But I did not. Sometimes when I am in a hurry I forget to take the photos and this was one of those cases. I was on my way out the door so I took this pipe out of my box of pipes to refurbish, quickly reamed the bowl and threw the stummel in the alcohol bath and the stem in a bath of Oxyclean. You will have to take my word for it – it was a mess. Probably the worst looking mess I had in the box. The bowl was caked with a dark, tarry cake that smelled like roses. The blast was so clogged with grit and grime that you could not feel texture anymore. It was smooth and muddy black looking in colour. The rim was thick with tars and lava build up and the stem was a dark and deep brown from the heavy oxidation. I pretty much figured I would be working on this one for a while to clean it up. After I dropped it in the bath I went off to work and promptly forgot about the pipe altogether. In fact it was two days before I remembered I had left it there.

I went to my work table and took both jars that held the baths. I opened the lid not sure of what I would find when I removed the pipe parts. I took the bowl out first and dried it off with a cotton cloth I have here. Then I took the stem out of the Oxyclean bath. The water had grown cold and dark tea coloured and I wondered what I would find. I dried off the stem with a cotton cloth and put them both on the work table. I was amazed at the work the baths had done to both of them. I reamed the bowl back to bare wood so start over and then wiped the bowl down with acetone on cotton pads. The first four pictures below show the bowl and stem after the bath and the reaming. I then went to work on the inside of the shank and bowl and the inside of the stem. I used both cotton swabs as pictured below and also a series of shank brush, bristle pipe cleaners and regular pipe cleaners all dipped in isopropyl to clean out the shank and stem. I went through quite a pile of both to clean out all the dark tars and oils from inside the shank and stem. The aromatic that had been smoked in this one still survived the two + days in the alcohol and Oxyclean baths and the floral scent remained – not a Lakeland like floral more of a Mixture 79 floral smell. Once the swabs and cleaners were coming out white the smell was gone from the stem and shank.

I scrubbed the exterior of the bowl one last time with a soft bristled brass tire brush to clean out any remaining grit in the sandblast finish. Once it was clean I wiped it down one last time with acetone before I was ready to stain it. I used a dark brown aniline stain to cover the bowl. I flamed it to set the stain and gave it a second coat, flamed it again and then took it to the buffer and buffed it with a Tripoli buff. The stain was still too dark to my liking and also too opaque (though they are dark photos 1-3 below give a pretty accurate picture of the colour of the pipe after staining and buffing). I took it back to my work table and wipe the bowl down with acetone on a cotton pad to lighten the stain. The fourth photo below showing the underside of the bowl gives you an idea of what the stain looked like when I was finished with the wipe down.

I worked on the scratches and tooth marks on the stem with emery cloth (medium grit) first. I worked until they were gone and then used a medium grit sanding pad and a fine grit sanding pad to remove the scratches left behind. I switched to 240 grit sandpaper and took out the rest of the scratches and marks. I buffed the stem with Tripoli and White Diamond and then used micromesh pads on it. I started with the 1500 and 1800 grit sanding pads and then applied a coat of Obsidian Oil. I let it soak in and then rubbed it down with a soft cloth. I then used the rest of my micromesh pads from 2400-12,000 grit to finish sanding the stem. I rubbed in some plastic polish and wiped it off and then buffed the stem with some Blue polishing compound on my buffing wheel. The finished pipe was given multiple coats of Halcyon II wax on the bowl and carnauba on the stem. The colour of the bowl is precisely what I was aiming for and the stem just glows. I am not sure my photos capture the reflective quality of the buff but it is pretty amazing in person.