I have become a slave to white gold and have been obsessing over coloring my pipes. I've been doing a bunch of research on waxing as I have never done it before. From my understanding, the wax seeps onto the surface of the meer, into its pourous caverns and draws tar, ash, nicotine, etc. out to the surface which results in color. I have heard many people mentioning that doing so will add color to the pipe. It seems to me that all it does is add a yellow sheen rather than actually darken the color to an amber brown. Is waxing an actual way of coloring a meer to a nice dark brown or is it just sort of an old codgers tale to keep your pipe shiny?
Is waxing meerschaum to help pull out color a old codgers tale?
- Thread starter fishmansf
- Start date
No. I did it on my apple meerschaum and it made the color show better.
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Depending on the type of meerschaum pipe you have the only guaranteed way to color the pipe is to smoke the cr*p out of the pipe. If you have one of those African meerschaums they tend not to color whilst the Turkish meerschaum will given enough effort. The color is created by the absorption of the tars and cr*p from the tobacco. If you wish to accelerate the process put a 'restrictor' in the bottom of the bowl like a metal button so that moisture will collect in the heel of the bowl. I write about this on my infrequently updated blog 'allthingscutty' and if you read through some of @Chasing Embers posts on the subject you will find some first rate commentary on meerschaum coloring that dispels a lot of the wives tales on the subject with real time worked examples. As to adding wax my default response is nah!
Embers seems like a ridiculously knowledgeable guy. For the coin, would a cleaned and drills dime/nickle/over some pressed tobacco at the bottom work?
If you heat the wax too much it will turn it brown, you can make a new meerschaum look heavily smoked by hitting it with a heat gun. Meerschaum will color without wax and even the carvers will tell you that the wax is primarily there to protect the soft meerschaum from scratches. If you want it to color, smoke it many hundreds of times.
I had the scientist from the PipeDen explain it simply as the wax changes the way light refracts on the pipe. It was on a Zoom group and he did an interesting demonstration.
The way it was done traditionally was with a silver three penny piece with three holes drilled into it. The Chasing Embers method is an improvement on the Victorian method. In the Victorian method you had a space below the restrictor that allowed tar and moister to collect to be absorbed by the heal in a manner not dissimilar to a 'coloring bowl' as sold with modern Turkish pipes. The Embers method relies on a silver disc and in my opinion the tobacco below acts as a wick but the results are pretty impressive.
Good to know, I have a couple aluminum washers lying around, I wonder if those would work or only speed up my clock for meeting my Maker lol
So, just so I get this right, put a pinch of tobacco at the bottom to act as a plug and throw an aluminum washer on top and let that sit for several days/a week and then swap out the tobacco?
Fuming a Rim
@jpberg I bet you have an XRF than can look at metals etc. We could powder some burned and un-burned meerschaum at different temperatures and stick the XRF on them. The lab is at your disposal.
pipesmokersdens.com
As long as the metal isn't toxic, it'll create more condensation for the pipe to absorb. I just like to be fancy.
There it is folks. If it was on Zoom it has to be true. Pictures are worth a thousand words, remember?
Meerschaum works like a sponge, no magic about it, no complicated science. Any semi-liquid material it comes in contact with, it will absorb.
The silver three penny piece was traditional and some wazzocks back in the 19th century thought that silver played a role in the process. Anything that is non toxic will work like the metal Levi shirt buttons which I have had occasion to dig out of ancient pipes. The one Euro ¢ coin works pretty well but I am sure the aluminum washer will be more than adequate. What is the diameter of the bowl?
