I bought a couple estate pipes today at a local antique shop. I reamed them, buffed them, and sterilized the bits. The final step was to perform the salt and alcohol treatment to the bowls and shanks/stem. After several hours everything looked OK, then the salt in one of the pipe's shanks/stem turned purple, not brown! I cleaned the salt out of that shank, put in fresh salt, and again purple!
Any ideas? The other pipe looks normal.
Any ideas? The other pipe looks normal.