Photographed and written by
John M. Young
I worked on several meerschaum pipes last summer. I wanted to improve my skill set by branching out from briar pipe. They were fun and produced some fine smoking pipes. You may be familiar with the saying, “use it or lose it”. I felt the need to work with meerschaum again. I am more than certain that what I know about the mineral would hardly fill a tobacco chamber so when I saw this lovely carved meer I had to bid. Winning it for under $17 was a bonus I hadn’t planned for. The pipe headed south from Cokato, Minnesota to the tropics of southeast Nebraska where the current temperature is 14° F (-10 c). I am sure it’s warmer here than in Cokato as they are about 350 miles north. The pipe was free of any markings or stamps. The style and early stages of coloring indicate that this is a Turkish made meerschaum pipe. The photos below show the pipe as it appeared before any work.
The pipe was in very good condition. It had been smoked but not a great deal. There was a light cake built up in the tobacco chamber and there were telltale signs of smoking residue and tar in the stem. There was a small crack along the back side of the bowl but this did not appear to be anything more than superficial. The pipe had begun to color something that I hoped to work on developing. The beeswax coating on the pipe was in good condition and there did not appear to be any “dry” looking spots to the meerschaum.
Background
I have pretty much told you all that I know about this pipe and I admit that a good deal of that is hypothetical. I think this is a Turkish made meerschaum pipe made from Turkish meerschaum. That sounds like there may be a woodchuck chucking nearby. Turkish meerschaum is known to be the best quality meerschaum and Turkish craftsmen have honed their skills well. According to Google’s Artificial Intelligence (AI)I when posed with the question “where is the highest quality meerschaum mined?”, “The highest quality meerschaum is mined in the region around Eskisehir, Turkey. This is considered the only place in the world where the purest and best quality meerschaum blocks are found, primarily in the Sarisu mines located within Eskisehir.” The below map was screenshot with a search asking for “sarisu meerschaum mines eskisehir turkey”. Thank you AI. I am trying to be nice and polite to the AI as I hope it will remember those who were kind to it when it unleashes the Terminators.
On a more serious notethere is a very nice article on meerschaum at, https://www.smokingpipes.com/smokingpipesblog/single.cfm/post/the-history-meerschaum-pipes. Great information and even some chemistry to warm the heart of an old chemistry teacher.
The Restoration
As usual I began with a cleanish piece of denim on the workbench.
The reaming tools were just scrapers and sandpaper on a stick as I did not want to cause any additional torsion to the reaming process with a reading tool.
The Scraping did a good job of removing the cake deposits.
Below is a photo of the tobacco chamber after being sanded. No interior damage was observed.
The ri had some lava which was removed with 95% ethyl alcohol on cotton swabs.
The stem was gunked up much worse than I originally thought. This required a good deal of scraping with the dental pick and numerous alcohol dipped cotton swabs.
A shank brush with alcohol was also used with numerous bristle pipe cleaners.
To improve the polish of the airway and remove the traces of dark tar I used a churchwarden pipe cleaner and some whitening toothpaste. The toothpaste was applied to the pipe cleaner.
One end was clamped into a tabletop vice. The stem was then threaded onto the pipe cleaner. The stem was moved up and down the length of the pipe cleaner allowing the toothpaste to scrub the airway.
The stummel was then taken to the sink for a scrub with warm water, no soap, and a nylon scrub brush. The stummel was dried with a cotton hand towel.
Back and the workbench the airway of the stummel was cleaned using a number of bristle pipe cleaners dipped in 95% ethyl alcohol. At one point I thought that the airway was too constricted so I used a 532 inch drill bit, by hand, through the nylon tenon and into the meerschaum. I blew out the meerschaum dust and continued cleaning.
When the airway was finally clean I bega heating the beeswax in a small glass jelly jar. I placed the jar into water in a pan. This allowed the beeswax to melt in the jar using the hot water to melt it. This serves a couple of purposes; one, the hot water keeps the wax hot longer than hot wax alone and two, it keeps the wax from vaporizing. Vaporizing wax over a propane stove burner sounds like a bad idea to me.
Below is what I call the beeswaxing kit: A heat gun, an aluminum catch tin to collect dripping beeswax, the always needed paper towels and the pipe.
The stummel was heated with the heat gun prior to brushing on the liquid beeswax. Once hot, I started applying the beeswax starting at the shankend. The stummel was constantly moved around heating it from all sides. Excess melted wax accumulated in the catch tin.
Once I finished applying the beeswax I continued to move the stummel around in the hot air stream until it quit dripping. I put on a glove to protect my hand and wiped the surface of the pipe with a paper towel. The pipe was returned to the workbench and allowed to cool.
The stem on this pipe looked good so no sanding was done. I did give it a light buffing with white buffing compound with the white flannel wheel. The stem also received several coats of carnauba wax from the buffer. The stummel did not receive any carnauba due it having just gotten a nes coat of beeswax. The entire pipe was hand buffed with a microfiber polishing cloth to rain the shine.
Well there it is another learning experience of working with meerschaum and completing a lovely Carved Meerschaum Apple. I am still learning camera settings and photo editing for the white background. Feel free to comment on background preferences. As for the pipe, I think it turned out nicely. I can report that it is a fine smoking pipe. I am generally not a fan of carved pipes but the grapes, leaves and vines gave this piece a feel of the Mediterranean and seemed quite fitting. Besides, I am a sucker for a nice apple shape. The pipe looks very good with the new beeswax and it did seem to draw out more color. The pipe feels great in hand and is my perfect size chamber. The crack in the meerschaum does not appear to be an issue so I did nothing with it. If it fails in the future then I will have gained even more knowledge about meerschaums. The dimensions of the Carved Meerschaum Apple areas follows:
Length: 6.22 in./ 158.00 mm.
Weight: 1.44 oz./ 40.80 g.
Bowl Height: 1.88 in./ 47.75 mm.
Chamber Depth: 1.65 in./ 41.91 mm.
Chamber Diameter: 0.78 in./ 19.81 mm.
Outside Diameter: 1.60 in./ 40.64 mm.
I do hope that you have found something here useful to your own pipe care, maintenance or restorations. If you like this sort of thing, please click the like and subscribe buttons. Thank you for reading the ramblings of an old pipe lover.
Below are some photos of the finished Carved Meerschaum Apple.
NebraskaPeteGeek 