How Do You Restore A Smoking Pipe?

After cleaning, leave the pipe for a day or so before lighting it to allow the alcohol to evaporate completely. If you have peeled most or all of your rosehip pipes in one go, now is a good time to smoke out some neglected seafoam and corn cobs. Sometimes you will need to clean your tobacco pipes more thoroughly than just cleaning the stem after smoking. You can also thoroughly clean the bar nozzle by periodically cleaning it with an alcohol-soaked brush or pipe sweetener. 

I then proceeded to standard internal cleaning of the stem and abutment with EverClear, hard/soft brushes, slot/stem brushes, cotton balls, and cotton tips, scrubbing until my last brush popped out as soon as it entered. As soon as the dirt solidified in the crack, I cleaned off the excess from the chamber with a rag. I mixed a batch of pipe dirt using cigar ash and some water and placed it against the camera with my finger, pushing it into small slots. 

Then I mixed some cigar ash and water to make pipe mud to fill in the crack, applied it with my finger, and let it dry. After removing the tubing shaft, I filled a bowl with activated charcoal granules purchased from a local aquarium store. When the pipe was finally removed and the charcoal was emptied, there was absolutely no trace of its previous scent ... After the pipe had cooled down overnight, the shaft was reassembled, the bowl was filled with a favorite mixture, delicate enough to leave any remaining flavor from the pipe so that clearly manifested itself. Before each smoke, run a pipe brush, bristle or regular, through the shaft to remove any ash and dots, and gently tap the pipe against the cork head or palm to remove these obstructions from the bowl. 

After about a dozen rinses, remove the retort and clean the tube with a bristle or nylon brush. Remove and twist it or use another pipe cleaner, repeating this process until the pipe cleaners are clean. This removes stubborn oxidation from the remaining toothpaste and leaves a beautiful shine in its place. Then I take a paper towel and soak it in warm water to remove any dirt that may be in the bowls. Once the coating has hardened for a few days, is dry to the touch, and non-greasy (if it gets dirty and looks damp again, repeat step 3 and let it dry), I will remove the brush, blow off any remaining dust and wait a minute. Another week before packing and tightening. 

After an hour in the bleach, I brush the inside of the stem with a bristle brush, then soak some more and brush again later. Oftentimes, when you have a pipe with a metal "tip" installed, it gets stuck in place and is difficult to remove. Use Qtips (cotton swabs), pipe cleaners, and rubbing alcohol to clean the stem. Clean the inside again until the pipe cleaners and cotton swabs are discolored as they pass through the shaft. 

Once the item is ready, reassemble the pipe and dry it with a soft cloth dampened with olive oil. Using a cotton swab or stem brush, clean the groove, the part of the tube where the stem attaches to the bowl. To begin this cleaning, carefully lift the tube shaft out of the bowl and place the two pieces on a paper towel. First, remove the rod from the tube and insert the brush into the rod so that it barely reaches the end of the spike (this is necessary in order not to break the air hole). 

This works in the vast majority of cases; however, if the rod is still too difficult to remove, light the pipe, let it cool, and try removing the rod again. This will loosen the stem fit and may result in stem breakage or pipe spike. 

By repeatedly heating and cooling the retort, you can flush the tube several times with boiling alcohol. When the retort cools down, alcohol will be drawn from the tube into the retort. For non-believers, clean one of your pipes with a sweetener, and then try the method of boiling alcohol on that "clean" pipe. You would do the same with this, but make sure no alcohol or acetone gets into the tube afterward. 

Use a curved tubing brush to clean the inside of the bowl and catch any alcohol that might get into the bowl after cleaning the stem. At this point, I leave the bowls for another 24 hours, just to make sure that every 91% ISO particle has evaporated and exited the bowl. Then I go along all the edges, stripes, and bowl. I use pipe cleaners to clean the gap at the end of the button bar and remove any deposits in this area. 

This method will work on most smooth-coated pipes as long as you don't remove too much wood. Most importantly, always remove the mouthpiece from the tube before transporting it. I saw some of the stems cracking when mailing because the stems were left in the pipe. Often the tube will have scratches and dents around the neck of the bowl. 

In any case, if the crack does end up in the pipe, you may have trouble smoking in the future until you make a cake out of it. I have pipes with cracked rims and for white, they weren't big smokers. But the more the crust covers this crack, the more smoke it will emit as if the crack