“Pipe by Lee” 3-Star (5-pt) Dublin-ish Cleanup

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Parsimonious Piper

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Oct 12, 2019
324
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Looked for a Lee Dublin a long time before being gifted one by a forum member. Then last week I picked up this banged up Dublin—not quite a billiard, but not as much forward cant as I expect of a Dubli—for $14 incl. s/h. The rim was charred and chipped pretty badly, stem fully oxidized…it even came with the ashes and dottle of whatever was last smoked in it. Lovely.
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First thing after dumping the ash was a long salt/alcohol bath and an oxy soak for the stem. Removed the stinger, and the stem wouldn’t pass a soft cleaner, so out came the bristles and alcohol. Unbelievable how much crud was inside that stem. It took a bunch of bristled and soft cleaners to get one out clean. Same thing on the stummel—couldn’t even get a bristled cleaner through to the bowl at first, but with enough cleaners and alcohol it finally came clear.

After a couple hours in the OxyClean, the oxidation actually came off pretty easily with just 1500-12000 grit micromesh. Before cleaning, I couldn’t find the hallmark Pipe by Lee stars at all, so I went really light. After cleaning, I still couldn’t see any stars, so I held it up to a bright light and rotated the stem back and forth…bingo! Just faintly visible—they likely won’t survive another polish—are the remains of three stamped stars, marking this as a later (1960-70ish) make.

But boy was the rim rough. Not much lava—the blackening was mostly char. I topped it with 240-600 grit sandpaper, but that left the deep nicks on the front of the bowl. Decided to sand it out to prevent further chipping, but that left the rim uneven, so I bit the bullet and sanded a small bevel around the rim to provide some semblance of uniformity. Finished the whole stummel off with micromesh followed by a light rubdown with olive oil. Came out surprisingly well.

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Just visible in that last pic are the stars. I rubbed a little wax into them to highlight the remaining points.

I was afraid there might be ghosts, so I loaded up with C&D Star of the East flake. No worries. Perfect Latakia exorcism.
 
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