Peterson Saint Patrick's Clone

A few weeks ago I posted this story ( http://pipesmagazine.com/forums/topic/my-saint-patricks-day-pipe ) about my attempt at making a Saint Patrick's Day green dyed pipe. Well, shortly thereafter I was honored when forum member Unkleyoda messaged me and asked me if I would give the same treatment to a Peterson pipe in his rotation. I've never worked on someone else's pipe before, and certainly not their Peterson. I was a bit apprehensive about it but he was so easygoing about the whole thing that I figured I'd give it a go. Next thing I know a box shows up at my door with a pipe in it that was much nicer than I expected. The finish was a bit dark and the stem was dull and had a little chatter, but otherwise a gorgeous pipe. So here is the starting point:



Stay tuned!

Off with the old...





There is some beautiful grain under that dark stain, and to be honest it would be really easy to chicken out at this point and just rewax it.

Here are a couple pics of the pipe dyed black. After this sets for a couple days I wet sand the excess off to get that grain to pop.

Agreed, Mike. If it were my pipe I'd have trouble not keeping this beautiful look. So purty. But green and shiny is what Unkleyoda wants, so green and shiny is what Unkleyoda will get.

I should state for the record that I am with Unkleyoda on this all the way. True, that grain is really nice, but it's not the only beautiful Peterson pipe in the world. I'll happily re-do another one for him and keep it "bright" but this is going to be very classy dyed green. What is more traditionally Irish than a green Peterson? The grain is not going to contrast as much, but it's all about subtlety with the green dye. The way the light reflects and all that.
I gotta say, though, it is a bit scary working on someone else's pipe. No-one wants this pipe to be perfect more than me! Unkleyoda is a class act and super supportive through this process.
Thanks for the compliment Neal.

Love the "Inglorious" meme.
The pics I'm posting are behind the progress, so I am actually farther along that the pics indicate. I'm super busy at work and am a slow poster.
This is an interesting pipe. High quality briar as you can see. But it is hard to get it to "take" the green dye. Much more difficult than my Dr. Grabow green pipe. I'm assuming that is because the briar is harder. The first application of dye basically came right off. For the second application I heated the briar up with a heat gun pretty hot, then wiped the dye on, then hit it with the heat gun again. This worked pretty well. My theory is that the first application of heat opened up the pores and the second application of heat evaporated the alcohol quickly, and caused the dye to "set." I sanded this coat with 1500, 2000, and 2500 grit until the copper color of the grain just began to show through. Then hit it with a magic eraser to really smooth it out, and applied another coat of green dye. It is now very green. I will sand it again with 2500 and magic eraser but this time try not to break through to the copper color. It's tricky getting it right up to that point to really get the grain to contrast without breaking through. In my experience, if you don't do it this way, the pipe ends up very dark without much contrast. It's just a solid green pipe, which is pretty, but it would be a shame to not take full advantage of this beautiful pattern.
There ya go. Stay tuned. I expect to put some minutes init this weekend.