I Should Still Be Pissed Off About This Pipe, But....

About a week ago I posted a thread about getting ripped off on ebay when I won an auction for a straight billiard Brigham, and received a French made bent Rock Briar with a cracked bowl, and a non original poorly fit stem. After having no luck with the seller I got my money back from ebay and got to keep the crappy pipe.
So after fuming for a couple of days, I decided to go ahead and try to fix it up. Had to top the bowl some to get rid of some front damage, and of course fill in the crack which after reaming and cleaning the bowl showed that it went all the way through. Drilled out the shank to 5/32, and cleaned the crap out of it. The stem which was stamped Italy, would not fit all the way into the shank, and the outside diameter was larger than the shank too. Much sanding, filing, and finessing got the stem fit in the mortise and flush with the shank. Lost the Italy stamp, which didn't make much difference anyway, given the pipe is stamped France. Coated the entire inside bowl with some pipe mud, then a little staining, polishing and waxing later and the pipe didn't look half bad, even reminded me of the rustication on Custom Bilt pipes.
I ended up smoking a couple of bowls of OGS to seal the pipe mud, and much to my surprise the little bugger smoked pretty nice. Next I tried some Lane 1-Q mixed with H&H Louisiana Red, and I was getting more impressed with it. No gurgles, passes a pipe cleaner with ease, and the Italian stem was much nicer than I expected. The button is formed like some of the Dunhill fish tale buttons, kind of wide with the end of the button a concave shape, very comfortable.
So now I'm not as pissed off as I was, but I still wish I had the Brigham pipe... :|
First two are of the original condition:




Here's the pipe after the restoration:

Hey ben, I coated the entire inside of the bowl because of the cracks in it. After sanding the old cake down to the briar, I found that in addition to the large crack in the front of the bowl, there was a couple of smaller cracks that were just on the inside and top of the bowl. After filling all the cracks with super glue and briar dust I wanted to cover them with some protective cake before smoking. So I figured that covering the whole bowl would be the easiest option. I made more of a slurry rather than the thicker pipe mud, and used booze (rum) as the fluid. This dries a little quicker and leaves a little sugar behind to aid making the cake hard.
Thanks for asking though, as that's how I learned about pipe stuff too!

I've used a number of things over the years, and quite a lot has been posted here on this site about what your choices are. In this case I used a combination of cigar ash, and hookah coal ash. ( I don't smoke a hookah, but I bought the little coals to use for this purpose after reading about it here) I used Meyers Rum for the liquid this time, but I have use other fluids like distilled water or whiskey before and even added a very small amount of honey sometimes to make it a little stickier.

@jpmcwjr: Unfortunately, the crack on the front of the bowl went all the way through to the inside of the bowl. There were a couple of smaller cracks in the rear of the bowl that were only on the inside and top of the bowl. So far smoking hasn't made the cracks reappear, so fingers crossed...

4noggnsmike: I filled in the cracks on the inside just a little with some wood putty, then from the outside with CA and briar dust. I then coated the inside of the bowl with a fairly thick coat of pipe mud. I've smoked the pipe 4 times so far to help harden the pipe mud and start some cake. It seems to be working pretty good, but I don't known how well it will hold up, so far no problems. I'll post again if anything changes down the line, but the pipe is not one I'll probably be smoking regularly anyway.

I just like to experiment with these old pipes...