Not every man's Comoy Everyman (Estate, Refurb, Pics)

Today I decided to work on a Comoy's Everyman Pipe (prince shape).
Reaming, sanding and salt-alcohol treatment:


The pipe had some beautiful grain, unfortunately the light brown stain on its own did a very bad job highlighting the bird's eye and straight grain on the outside. I figured it's time to try a contrast staining technique I read about a while ago - using Tannic Acid and Iron Acetate to get an "Eltang" like contrast stain.
Sanding, Imbuing tannic acid on heated stummeld, Covering with Iron Acetate, Turns jet black after 60 seconds


I let the blackening reaction go on for about 40 minutes to soak into the grain and buff it out with Tripoli Brown.

Before & After


A final top-stain of Fiebings Tan with a little bit of oxblood to get orange, buffing, waxing.

Final result:


Overall I'm pretty happy how it came out. I think next time though I will carefully sand with 600 grit to take off a bit more of the dark stain before buffing off with brown tripoli. Should give a slightly lighter overall tone.

Hehe, well... first off, you need to know that the black coloration comes from a chemical reaction in the wood. Usual stains are mostly alcohol based colors that don't really soak in very far into the wood they mostly stay on the surface. With this technique, the coloration penetrates quite deeply into the grain and turns it dark. You then carefully remove the surface layer of the wood to get back the natural briar color but the black in the grain will stay.
Preparation:

You will need two chemical components for this to work. Fortunately they are non-toxic and you can easily make them at home.
Ingredient #1 is called "Tannic Acid". You can basically go to your homebrewing supplies store and buy 'tannin' that you'd put as a clearing agent into wine. Briar wood has almost no tannin as opposed to for example oak, so we will need to mix up some tannin in hot water and saturate the briar with the mix.
Ingredient #2 is called "Iron Acetate". You can create this by yourself, by putting some fluffed up 0000 steel wool into a mason jar and covering it in distilled white vinegar (use the one with 7% acetate, should say on the label - most are 5%). You let the vinegar dissolve the steel wool for about 5 days. You can tell the mixture is ready when you shake it, it turns black, but clears out after 30 minutes. Filter the mix through a paper towel into another mason jar to remove all traces of steel wool.
Process:
The actual contrasting is straight forward. First clean off the briar surface with acetone to remove the original finish and stain, then clean well with alcohol and let dry. After, you heat the stummel with a heat gun on medium setting until it is hot to the touch (when your finger starts to ouchy it's ready!). You then take a cotton ball, soak up some of the tannic acid and generously apply to the heated stummel. The heat will open the pores of the wood and the tannins will penetrate deeply. I kept applying 4 or 5 coats of tannin, then let it dry in for about 15 minutes.
After 15 minutes, I soak a pipe cleaner turned into a "U" in the iron acetate solution and apply it over the stummel. You will instantly see the chemical reaction happening - after 5 seconds it starts to turn black. After about 2 minutes they whole stummel should be jet black - like a Dunhill dress pipe. It give it 2-3 coats and make sure its evenly distributed, then let dry for 45 minutes.
Buffing:

After 45 minutes to an hour, the stummel should be dry to the touch and your fingers won't color black when you touch it. Then it's ready to be buffed off. I took it to my buffings wheels loaded with Brown Tripoli compound which is about an 800 grit sandpaper equivalent. Firmly buff off the top layer of the wood - the grain will stay black and the rest will go back to briar color. Go over the stummel 3-4 times to make sure you have it buffed out well and evenly. At this part, I need to experiment a bit more - I feel like sanding off with 400 grit might give better results in taking of just a tad more of the top layer of the wood.
Top Staining:

We have the grain black now, but the natural briar color is a bit too boring for my taste. I used a Fiebings tan alcohol stain and mixed just a drip of Fiebings oxblood stain in to give an orangy/yellow color. It creates this little bit of a "glow" effect in the contrast stain. Apply, flame in, buff out with a cotton cloth , let dry for a few hours.
Finishing:

Finish on the buffing wheels as usual with a White Diamond polish and 3-4 coats of Carnauba wax.
Again, this is the first time I've done this technique, so I still have tons to learn, but at least to me it's much easier than a contrast stain using Fiebings alone - I always have a hard time to get the under stain penetrate deep enough to survive buffing out. While it's still far away from being anywhere close of what some of the great pipemakers produce, it's still a very nice effect which dramatically highlights grain and gives the pipe a little bit of uniqueness to it.

Fnford,
without a buffer, working with tripoli brown, white diamond and carnauba is near to impossible. Even with a buffing machine, I found that the right wheels (I use the Beall system) make a huge difference over what you can buy from the home hardware store.
I guess you could sand off the surface layer with 600 or 800 grit sandpaper to reveal the natural briar but you have to be pretty careful to make it even and not go too deep.
I did heat the stummel with a heat gun on medium settings. But some people also microwave, or smoke a bowl to warm it up.
Putting the tannic acid on was just with a cotton ball. The iron acetate I didn't want to touch so I used a pipe cleaner shaped in a "U" to rub it all over.

Gee, thanks everyone for the overwhelmingly kind comments!
By the way - the pipe smokes like a champ. Just had some McClelland No 27 in it, and it was absolutely delicious.
While sipping on the bowl my mind wandered and wondered: how much of a smoking experience is actually due to eye candy? Does the same tobacco from a beautiful, aesthetically pleasing pipe taste better than from the plastic fantastic basket briar? Maybe that's actually one of the biggest PAD factors for me: the mind-made up illusion that any tobacco I own would taste so much better if only smoked in this new, shiny yet-to-buy beauty waiting for me to pull the trigger...