Inaugural smoke for the Buescher cobwarden

I finally selected the tobaccos (plural) for the inaugural bowl in the Buescher cobwarden.  I chose to parfait three Virginia blends: H&H AJ's VaPer on the bottom, then a generous middle layer of McClelland 5100 Red Cake, topped off with a few pinches of McClelland Virginia Woods.  This corncob pipe is smoking like a champ!

enjoying my Buescher cob-watden

tamping the Buescher corncob churchwarden

One diamond in the rough

Promised a while back ago, here is one out of two "diamonds in the rough" from the estate box - a BBB Own Make.  I not only had to ream it down to bare briar in the chamber but then I had to get a small pipe knife and carefully remove cake from the rim!  Like the Wally Frank, this one cleaned up to reveal some lovely grain:

BBB Own Make bent pipe

stamped VIRGIN 995 on this side

one of two big scratches in the finish

I don't have a real "before" picture, but I do have an intermediate pic after the initial film of grime was removed:

caked rim and green-grey stem, but cleaner than I received it!

Hearth & Home Obsidian in the estate Wally Frank

I have been slowly and incrementally cleaning the estate Wally Frank more ... in between almost-daily smokes in it, of course.  I pretty much smoked an entire two ounce tin of C&D Red Odessa in it, and now that the Red Odessa has run out, I've tried C&D Odessa (original version) and Hearth & Home's Obsidian.  Since I tried a bowl of the H&H Obsidian, that is what has been loaded in it lately, and today is no exception:

estate Wally Frank pipe, with the stem closer to black

discoloration cleaned off the rim of the estate Wally Frank

The Wally Frank pipe is getting prettier as I get it cleaner, and I do love shining it up with the scrap denim and a bit of olive oil.  Oh yeah, that is my new pipe lighter - a Xikar Resource with built-in pipe tools.  Hubby wants one now too, I believe.

A couple notes about H&H Obsidian ... first of all, if you have not tried it, get some.  This is the polar opposite of my codger-style burley blends.  It's a complex blend of four black tobaccos: stoved Virginia, black cavendish, latakia, and perique cut chunky (rough) ... which makes it a bit of a botch to get lit and keep lit but that may be the point.  I get the most intense bursts of flavor the moment it goes out, so I am really not minding the many MANY relights involved in each bowlful.  While I don't have the experience to describe the tastes without looking things up, it has been educational to try to figure out what my senses are picking up.  I've smoked some straight black cavendish, so I do recognize that wonderful smoothness.  The description of stoved Virginia matches the wonderful bursts of sweetness.  Now I need to distinguish between latakia and perique as I don't seem to get the "peppery" flavor others do.  All four tobaccos work together harmoniously like my favorite Oak Ridge Boys tunes.

smoking the last bowl of Boswell No-Bite Delight in the caramel apple

Now, for the sort-of sad news: the bag of Boswell No-Bite Delight is gone.  Hubby snapped a pic of me smoking the last full bowl in the caramel apple pipe - not so much to commemorate the event but because I didn't have a picture of this pipe yet.

Larger estate corncob pipe

For one reason or another, I cannot salt-and-alcohol the ghost out of some of thee estate pipes from the first large box.  One has a meer-lined bowl, two are obviously glued, one is taped, and a couple I can't get the stems off ... and two are corncob pipes.  The smaller-bowled corncob is a Missouri Meerschaum one, but the larger is not and I am having trouble reading the sticker on the bottom of it.

Sticker on bottom of estate cob pipe

The Washington, Missouri USA part is easy to read, but the maker's name isn't.  I thought the first name was Hirschil, but Google yielded no results.  I am hoping someone recognizes the sticker and/or logo as I am curious.

For the record, this cob pipe smokes a bowl of Carter Hall so easy!  The previous owner must not have been too fond of this one, since the ghost in all his pipes only was noticeable for the initial bowl.

We gotta stay off evilBay

Not only me, but hubby also.  In fact, he said this exact phrase last week after we made an impulse bid ... and won.  We even did the "pinky-swear" - with each getting one exception - to stay off the evilBay until New Year's.  About an hour later ... hubby starts talking about what he wants to hunt for during the month of October!  Of course, this was before PipesAndCigars.com did their site-wide sale, too ...

Back to this (rare) impulse eBay bid.  Out of the seven pipes in the lot, two caught hubby's eye right away, while three caught my eye (one is on both lists).

seller's pic of 7 pipe lot

7 estate pipe lot

If anyone guessed the black pipe with the stag overlay and attached windcap ... yup!  Hubby's other choice is the Kaywoodie bulldog, while I was intrigued by the stemless JM and the bent JM.  The seller shipped FAST, so we had these pipes in hand Saturday late afternoon!  While the black BBB is still unsmoked despite its age ... the other six greatly benefited from the new pipe reamer.  The Kaywoodie bulldog had a mind-boggling amount of cake in it ... we had to start with the smallest reamer and work up to the biggest.

old Kaywoodie bulldog (seller pic)

seller pic showing discoloration and crooked stem

Given these two close-up pics from the seller, we weren't sure we'd be able to prettify this, even when holding it in our hands.  As I mentioned, this had an amazingly thick cake so we figured it had to smoke good get that much carbon build-up.  Even I was surprised at just how well this pipe cleaned up!

Kaywoodie bulldog pipe cleaned up

Kaywoodie bulldog cleaned, even the discoloration is gone

After he put his rubber teething ring on the bit, hubby loaded it up last night and proclaimed it a nice smoking pipe!  Even with the stinger still on.  An impulse bid that we won (it only had 10 minutes left on it when we found it) has resulted in an unsmoked display-case pipe with its original sock and box, and so far two very nice smoking pipes ... this morning I got two more from the lot to flambe stage so we will have two more to try out this evening.