eBay Pipe Cleaning

[Peacock]

eBay pickup #2: Butz-Choquin Camargue 1281 bent bulldog? I paid around $30 for this one with shipping, but I really really love the shape and fishtail bit. The acrylic bit on the tenon is beautiful too.

This one was heavily ghosted with Latakia, and since I'm not an English smoker yet - I gave it a nice long salt-alcohol treatment with lots of Everclear and cleaned up a charred rim.

Waiting on Murphy's Oil Soap, Feed N Wax and micromesh for real clean up. Still need to order Paragon wax to finish em off so what you see here is just a light soap and water cleaning. This pipe is in pretty good shape and this morning I had my first bowl of John Patton's Virginia Squire that was nice and smooth, a great smoker compared to what I currently have.

[Houtenziel]

I really love those BC Carmague series pipes. There is something about French pipes that I really like, which is funny because I completely shied away from them for ages. They also tend to use Vulcanite more frequently, use well aged briar, and can somehow crank out pipes that are 50% lighter than similar shapes of other marquees.
That one is a nice score and should clean up easy. One word of warning though - watch the paragon around the bead lines on the bowl. Once that stuff gets in there and sets up, it can be a real pain in the butt to get back out again. Generally when that happens, you have buildup that is quite a bit thicker than if you had buffed it off, so it sets up an unsightly white.

[Peacock]

I really love those BC Carmague series pipes. There is something about French pipes that I really like, which is funny because I completely shied away from them for ages. They also tend to use Vulcanite more frequently, use well aged briar, and can somehow crank out pipes that are 50% lighter than similar shapes of other marquees.
That one is a nice score and should clean up easy. One word of warning though - watch the paragon around the bead lines on the bowl. Once that stuff gets in there and sets up, it can be a real pain in the butt to get back out again. Generally when that happens, you have buildup that is quite a bit thicker than if you had buffed it off, so it sets up an unsightly white.

Good advice, thanks! Really happy with this pipe so far and can't wait to clean 'er up. Smooth and clean smoke and just the right amount of weight, not too heavy and not too light.