This Isle of Man Bulldog, made by Manxman Pipes Ltd, was purchased as an estate pipe by a DadsPipes reader and sent to me for some TLC. The restoration brief included a good cleaning and polishing along with a new stem that would allow the pipe’s new steward to avoid having to work around the tooth dents left by its previous caretaker.

As this series of pics illustrates, the pipe, made from Tanzanian meerschaum, was in pretty good condition overall, though a layer of carbon cake on the rusticated rim made it difficult to determine how much of the dark coloration at the top of the bowl was dirt and how much, if any, was a factory “fumee” finish. There was also a thin layer of cake inside the tobacco chamber, and the diamond saddle stem was oxidized and, as mentioned already, somewhat chewed up.

The only markings on the…