Seeing these pictures, I really agree with Java: if it's still smelling like stale smoke, hit it with the salt treatment and focus on cleaning the stem.It looks like it was reamed to bare briar.Nice looking pipe. I would say that it could have picked up the smell of the person that sold it if they were pipe smoker. In most cases when a pipe is cleaned down to briar and Salt treated the smell of tobacco isn't there after. Can you get a picture of the bowl? It maybe that the person only reamed it down to a thin coat of cake. Does the shank and stem smell like tobacco? If so it was from a smoker that cleaned and smoked in same room, This is my thoughts anyway.The Starfire Zulu arrived today. Nice looking pipe... The bowl is a little small. I might use this pipe for flake tobacco. Should the pipe still smell of tobacco even after being restored and sanitized?
James
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