This old Rutledge pipe is the one that came with the Beuchner Ashtray Reamer that I wrote about in an earlier blog post. I have not found a lot of information about the brand or the maker of this pipe so it is a mystery that remains for me. However, the author shape is one that I particularly like so it finally got the attention needed to clean it up. You can see from the first two pictures the state of the pipe. The stem was badly oxidized and needed some work. The bowl was clean but dusty and even had a cobweb or two in it. The rim had some tar build up but was not dented or dinged. When I removed the stem – a screw mount stem – I found that it had originally had a KW stinger that had been clipped. It was fairly oxidized as well and the aluminum on the threads was pitted and darkened with tars and oils.

I unscrewed the stem and cleaned it out and used 0000 steel wool on that to clean the tenon and remove the oxidation and grime. I also used it to smooth out the pitting. One it was clean I dropped it in a bath of Oxyclean and warm water to soak while I worked on the bowl. I gave the bowl a light reaming and scrubbed the rim with a soft cloth and some Murphy’s Oil Soap. I wiped the entirety down with a cotton pad and some acetone and then buffed the bowl on my buffer with White Diamond and Carnauba wax. The metal band at the end of the shank made this quite easy to do without the stem attached. I never do that with a regular shank as it can round the edges and ruin smoothness of the shank stem junction. With the bowl finished I took the stem out of the Oxyclean bath and began to work it over with micromesh sanding pads from 1500-12,000 grit. I polished the stem with plastic polish after that and reattached it to bowl and gave the whole pipe several coats of carnauba wax and buffed with a clean flannel buffing pad to polish it.