Help Please Stanwell Selected Briar

I've seen a lot of you on here do some rim repairs that are not to invasive on old pipes. I have this Stanwell Selected Briar on the bench right now.



This thing has some nice grain on it. It's almost a chimney stack.

The first issue I came across is some rim char that extends into the briar around the rim.



This rim photo was taken after several applications in coffee grounds to soften up and clean off the old carbon layers. I took off what I could and was hoping to get to some fairly clean wood. That's not the case here. The darkening is a little deeper than I expected and there is also a bit of charred wood. Not much but enough to get me worried because I would prefer not to sand it down. Sanding would lead to matching color later down the line. I'm not very good at color matching.

I have all the dyes to stain a pipe with. If worse comes to worse I have that option available. However, I'm wondering if there is a way to get a little deeper through the carbon layer without sanding it off. I'd like to not get down to bare briar if possible. Maybe with some sort of solvent, so later I can just do a wash with color instead of attempting to match the color on the rim with the color that's on the pipe already. Any ideas?

I wound up working on this pipe over the weekend and finishing it up.



The rim charring went pretty deep so I ended up having to top and sand the entire stummel. Here is what it looked like after sanding.


This is after the first stain for bringing out the grain.


After sanding off the excess stain with 1000 grit sand paper, a lighter color was applied.


And my finished smoker after buffing and wax.

Many thanks. I've been putting it through its paces today. Three bowls of Five Brothers and a bowl of Old Gowerie with few years of age. Smokes great. A fine addition to the collection.