This is one of the last pipes from my first estate lot purchase to hit my work table. It’s in the top right corner of the pipe lot pic below. Even from this poor shot, you can see that the stem needs some tweaking.

The pipe appeared to be in halfway decent condition when I pulled it from the refurb box – a bit of rim tars and surface grime on the stummel, but nothing major. The stem turned out to be a replacement, well fitted to the military-style mortise, but still showing the lines up the sides from the molding process. The amount of tooth chatter on the stem points to a DIY repair job – it was as if whoever had done the repair was only interested in making the pipe functional again, and left the stem in mostly its raw state. It can’t have been that comfortable…