Meerschaum, a soft whitish mineral, has been used to make smoking pipes since the early 1700s. It is easy to carve, will not burn, and, with time and use, turns from white to a rich, dark red/brown. On the down side, meerschaum is fragile – easily chipped, cracked or otherwise damaged – and due to its porous nature, stains easily as it absorbs any liquid that comes into contact with it.
Meerschaum is also notoriously difficult to repair. Again because of its porosity, traditional glues have a hard time bonding two pieces of meerschaum, and any excess adhesive will get absorbed into the upper layers of meerschaum, leading to an uneven finish. In particularly bad cases, glues will seal the surface of the meerschaum, leaving white patches on an otherwise coloured pipe.
For all of these reasons, I’m always both excited and a bit trepidatious when a meerschaum pipe arrives in the shop for repair. Many older meerschaum pipes have suffered unsuccessful DIY repair attempts, which need undoing before a proper repair can be made.
The pipe on the bench today is a large bent meerschaum, featuring a mushroom shaped rim and a carved frieze of an armoured knight attacking a castle, executed as a band around the middle portion of the stummel. It arrived in the shop in as-found condition: very dirty, with dust, grease and wax jammed into the carved areas. There was an smear of grimy beeswax spread across the surface of the stummel, making the pipe sticky and slightly uncomfortable to hold.
The stummel was also fitted with a shank cap, and accompanied by a rather short, curved faux Amber stem with a bone screw tenon. I say “accompanied by” the stem, as it quickly became clear that the stem did not belong to this pipe. The threaded bone tenon was to small to engage the end of the shank cap, but too large to fit the airway in the end of the meerschaum shank. My only conclusion is that the stem was put with the pipe when it was listed for sale to provide at least the illusion of completeness.
This initial series of images shows the stage of the union when the pipe arrived at the shop. Unfortunately, there are no markings anywhere on the pipe, so its age and origins remain a mystery.
This close-up shot of the stem that came with the pipe clearly shows a seam running up the middle of both sides. This stem was molded in two halves, then sealed together. Clearly, it is not an original Amber stem, and far too short for the pipe.
Notice anything odd about the mortise here?
It is completely hollow! The shank cap extends about 5/8″ beyond the end of the meerschaum shank, so there is literally no mortise, threaded or otherwise, into which to mount a stem. This pic shows the shank after removing the shank cap, which was loose.
My best guess is that the end of the shank was broken off the pipe at some point long ago. The meerschaum has been waxed since that break, and, I suspect, someone attempted to glue the broken end back on before giving up on the project. The line running around the shank at the end of the shank cap indicates that the cap has been on the pipe for a long time, though I can’t say if it is original to the pipe or added after the shank broke.
While I debated the best course of action to repair the pipe, I set about cleaning the stummel. As I mentioned, meerschaum readily absorbs liquids, so it’s really not a good idea to immerse a meerschaum pipe in water to clean it. Instead, I used a damp toothbrush and gentle scrubbing to loosen and remove years of dirt, dust and grime form the surface of the stummel, paying close attention to make sure I got the brush into all the crevices and crannies of the carved frieze.
The tiny amount of water used is just enough to loosen the dirt layer, and I make sure to dry the stummel with a clean, soft towel immediately after this initial cleaning. As you can see in these pictures, a gentle cleaning made visible improvements in short order.
Reaming a meerschaum pipe with a conventional pipe reamer is a bad idea – the reamer can easily cut beyond any carbon cake built up in the chamber to gouge out the chamber walls, or undercut the chamber floor. In the worst cases, a reamer head can jam up in the chamber and crack the bowl.
To avoid these potential pitfalls, I used sandpaper wrapped around a dowel to remove a light amount of carbon cake and smooth out the chamber walls and floor.
A few pipe cleaners lightly dipped in 99% alcohol removed the accumulated tars and dirt from the shank and airway. Again, it is important not to saturate the meerschaum with alcohol, as the stummel can become too soft to handle safely.
As it turned out, this meerschaum stummel has a non-standard airway drilling. The angle and diameter of the shank did not allow the carver to drill a straight airway from mortise to chamber, so the drilling was competed in two steps – one long drilling from shank face to a transitional area in the heel between bowl and shank, and a second drilling from the chamber on a downward angle to meet up with the first airway.
This results in a V-shaped airway through the stummel which does not allow a pipe cleaner to pass from shank to bowl. Keeping this pipe’s airway clean and open will be a constant maintenance task for its new steward.
After a bit of back and forth with the pipe’s steward, the decision was taken to rebuild the pipe’s shank with a Delrin extension shaped to fill the void under the shank cap and secured into the end of the meerschaum shank with both epoxy and a screw tenon for the strongest possible bond. The shank cap could then be glued over the Delrin extension and original shank, hiding the repair completely.
The extension was made in-house, using solid Delrin rod shaped on the lathe. This image shows the finished shank extension with its screw tenon, sitting next to the pipe shank and shank cap. What is not shown is the 7mm mortise drilled into the larger end of the Delrin extension. This would eventually hold the tenon on a new Tortoise Acrylic stem.
After a test fit to make sure everything sat where and as it should, I mixed up some two-part epoxy and applied it to the mating surfaces of both the Delrin extension and the meerschaum shank. I screwed the tenon into matching threads tapped into the shank mortise, spreading the epoxy evenly as I seated the shank extension firmly against the shank face. A bit more epoxy also bonded the shank cap in place over the Delrin and meerschaum sandwich.
I set the pipe aside at this point to rest overnight to give the epoxy time to cure completely before fitting the new stem. Acrylic tenons can break easily, especially when cut to smaller sizes, so I decided to use a Delrin tenon, which is much stronger.
This pic shows the new tenon after being cut to diameter and length and test fit in the shank mortise. Happy with the fit, I roughed up the stem end of the tenon to help the epoxy grab hold of the somewhat slippery Delrin. This mechanical bond will strengthen the hold of the tenon in the face of the Acrylic stem.
To prepare the stem for glue-up, I turned it in the lathe to just slightly larger than final dimensions to reduce the amount of hand work required, and drilled a mortise for the tenon to fit into. After applying more two-part epoxy to the tenon and the stem mortise, I slipped the parts together, lined them up properly, then used a bit of masking tape to hold the stem in position while the epoxy took hold. Note the padded vise used here to protect the delicate meerschaum carvings.
The keen-eyes among you will also have noticed a change to the appearance of the meerschaum stummel in the pic below. This is due to a quick re-waxing of the meerschaum using hot beeswax. For smaller stummels, I prefer to immerse meerschaum in a small crock pot of melted beeswax for a few minutes. This allows the meerschaum to absorb as much of the hot wax as it can hold in a fairly short period of time.
This meerschaum stummel was too big to fit in my wax pot, so I waxed it by warming the stummel with my heat gun until the existing wax on the surface of the meerschaum liquified and was absorbed into the meer. A bit of fresh melted beeswax mopped onto the surface ensured an even distribution of wax.
When the meerschaum stopped absorbing more wax, I set the stummel aside to cool enough to handle, then hand buffed it with a clean soft towel to remove the excess wax. The result is shown in the images below.
The stem needed some work to finish off this repair project. Turning it to diameter on the lathe left little wings of excess Acrylic on both sides of the stem. I used an array of files to remove the excess material and shape the stem to a more elegant profile. When the files had done their rougher work, I switched to sandpaper, sanding the Acrylic from 220 to 2000 grit to prepare it for final buffing.
Before taking the stem to the wheel, I took a moment to introduce the required bend. A pipe cleaner slipped through the stem helps prevent the airway from kinking while the stem is heated and bent to the required shape. A quick cool-down under running water set the new stem shape.
Finally, it was time to take the pipe to the wheel, where the stem, and to a lesser degree, the nickel shank cap, enjoyed a buffing on the Red Tripoli and White Diamond wheels. Acrylic stems don’t require Carnauba wax to achieve their glass-like shine, but I tend to apply a thin layer of wax anyway out of habit. If nothing else, it adds a touch of protection against casual staining and UV light.
The finished pipe is a little hard to recognize as the grimy, broken meerschaum that had arrived on the bench with its almost comically short stem just a few days earlier. The stummel is clean, fresh and smells faintly of honey thanks to the fresh beeswax, while the shank is once again structurally sound and more than capable of supporting the new Tortoise Acrylic stem for many more years of smoking companionship.
This was a slightly complicated restoration, but well worth the extra effort to return this unique meerschaum pipe to useful service. I hope you enjoyed following along as I navigated the many pitfalls of working with vintage meerschaum.
Until next time, Happy Piping! Here’s the finished pipe.
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