An estate pipe can be a lovely and thoughtful gift for new and experienced pipe smokers alike, but sometimes estate pieces need a bit of TLC before they can be added to a pipe lover’s rack and rotation. Such is the case with this Peterson’s Kapruf, which, as you can see in this initial series of images, arrived in a somewhat neglected state.

Overall in good estate condition, the pipe certainly needed a good cleaning – the chamber carried a fairly thick layer of carbon cake, the rim was almost completely covered with a crust of carbon “lava”, but not quite enough to hide the battered leading edge of the bowl, and the stem was lightly oxidized with a rather chewed up button.

In addition to the many tooth marks and missing chunks of Vulcanite, the stem was very loose in the shank mortise, so much so that it would…