Originally Posted by
MickR
For starting an estate pipe off all afresh for your own choice of tobacco, I recommend the salt and whisky method. First up you can clean the inside of the stem with a pipe cleaner dipped in the spirit of your choice (hopefully you drink or have a favourite spirit :)). The next part will take a few days of patience, you need to plug up the shank with a pipe cleaner, them fill the bowl with table salt. To this you then need to apply a small amount of your spirit until the salt is wet through to the bottom of the bowl. Place the bowl on a pipe stand in a warm shaded spot in the house for a few days until the spirit has evaporated. Then you need to dig out the dried salt. It can be quite hard, but it will come out. Make sure you get it all out, because if you don't that first bowl is gonna give you salty zap at some point.
Hope that is of some help to your resto of the estate pipe mate.
Mick