My Kleen-Reem tool only gets used for new (to me) estate pipes that have serious cake build-up, as I prefer a pretty minimal cake. Plus, the hand-drill in the shank of the Kleen-Reem is very handy for truing the airway once in a while. Beyond that, reaming is something done little by little, with a pipe nail or gentleness with a pen knife, after each smoke--so I never really have to ream in the sense of
grind-grind-grind-grind dump-out-black/brown-dust grind-grind-grind-grind (etc).
Sometimes a pipe will be a bit oversmoked and develop a charred layer, often accompanied by cracks and fissures, in the briar. In older pipes, I find this is just a shrinking, heating, cooling and drying of solid briar wood over time, smoke after smoke, and isn't necessarily bad--worked on a billiard recently that was just that, certainly not abused, just old and well-smoked. The wood is solid, just needed some smoothing out with some pipe mud to fill in the gaps. On the other hand, there's the hotly-abused briar, wherein if someone were to "ream" the soft char of burnt briar, crevices and concave excavations can be made in the pipe walls. When looked into from above with a flashlight, the bottom or mid-sections of the bowl will be larger inside than at the rim.
So, over-reamed or over-smoked and THEN reamed? <img class="emojione" alt="?" title=":shrug:" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/emojione/assets/png/1f937.png?v=2.2.7"/>
Either way, as long as it ain't too bad, a careful coating of properly-mixed pipe mud be formed into a new layer once the surfaces are cleaned up (in the case of old pipe, or new abused pipe) and the bowl trued to its original shape. Gives the smoker a second chance, as well as the pipe. Working on a chubby Savinelli for another friend for just this reason.
8)
