First Antique Store Project

Went for a little antiquing today before meeting my wife for lunch. Went into a shop I have seen several pipes at previously. She had a Nice looking sandblasted lovat in the rack today. This pipe is a Ranga made in London England. Best I could find it's a GBD Second. Fnord had a thread on here at one time with one he had picked up. The pipe looks quite nice to me, briar is light as a feather, had been lightly smoked, an little chatter. It took hardly any time at all to ream what little cake existed, soaked the stem in bleach, and worked through all of the oxidation. Just need a few hours with micromesh now to finish it out. Also worked on the stummel with alcohol and steel wool to take a lot of stain off. Letft quite a bit of dark stain in

The deeper areas. Going to use a medium Brown on what I removed and see how it turns out.
I looked it over a lot. The drilling is perfect, stem fits nicely, and briar appears to be high end. The second pic shows the only thing I can assume caused this to become a "second". A swirl in the grain that caused it to blast just a little deeper there. All in all I though I would risk my $14 to try to restore it and see how she smokes.

B

Couldn't help myself this afternoon, and I had to begin the project. Cracked open a bottle of malbec and set forth. Finished up the stem, and it turned out quite nice. It had a lot of oxidation to start with.

Decided to take to stummel back to this point and let it dry a couple days. Going to start with a layer of medium brown and see what my opinion of the contrast is before I take all of the stain off.

Thanks for an honest opinion Jim. My main goal for this pipe is going to be fishing and hunting. I have a cobwarden for those long sits in a deer stand, but was needing another hunting pipe. I often carry that Comoy's author I got from you for fishing. Just needed another briar so I can smoke a couple bowls. Not a fan of carrying my nice pipes out to the river or field. Glad to know you are still enjoying the Luciano, as you can tell from what I just said the ones I received from you are still seeing service.
I added a heavy coat of stain tonight and am liking the results so far. Going to hae to research wax for a bit. No buffer, or experience with a blast. So going to take the time here. The medium brown stain I mixed up did just about as I hoped it would.

B

That's what I was planning to ise Jim. Just hated to add the shipping cost and end up with that much invested in this pipe. An artisan that I emailed auggested a light coat of Kinnser spray shellac. I'm going to see if I can find this locally to cut cost down. After all, it's only a fishing/hunting pipe. If I cannot get it locally I'll likely order a small jar from fine pipes.

B