So the first bowl or two in this pipe were great, everything was nasty after. I noticed the mortise had some tear-out where they drilled it. I'm thinking stuff got trapped in there from the first smokes.
Cleaned the mortise really well with alcohol yesterday. Then earlier today I took a dowel rod and carefully cut a slit in it into which I put fine grain sand paper, then wrapped around just right to barely fit in the mortise part and carefully sanded it down just enough to smooth the tear-out from where they drilled it, taking as little as possible.
Cleaned it out after sanding as best I could. Pics are after addressing the mortise (I should've taken a shot before I sanded it) as well as a shot of the bowl before loading, showing where whatever bowl coating they used just wiped out after one gentle run of a paper towel in the bowl post smoking. She's definitely getting another alcohol treatment in the depths of the mortise after this.