Tag Archives: polishing a meerschaum with micromesh pads

Breathing Life into a Classic Older Meerschaum Bulldog with a Golden Bakelite Stem

Blog by Steve Laug

The next pipe I chose to work on is a meerschaum Bulldog that Jeff picked up from an antique back in October, 2017 from Bozeman, Montana, USA. It was a classic straight Bulldog with a golden Bakelite taper stem. The finish on the bowl and rim cap were scratched and worn looking but still had a lot of charm. The twin rings separating the bowl from the rim cap are in good condition. There is some damage/chips in the rings and nicks in the bowl. There was a thick cake in the bowl and heavy lava overflow on top the rim. The meerschaum was very dirty and under the grim it seemed to be developing a patina on the shank and lightly on the bowl and rim top. The golden Bakelite stem was threaded to be turned onto the metal tenon that was firmly anchored in the shank of the pipe. The stem had deep tooth marks on the top and underside ahead of the button. I loved the shape but it was in rough condition and needed a lot of work. Jeff took photos of the pipe before he started his work on it. He took photos of the rim top and the stem to show the condition. You can see the issues on the rim top and stem as I noted above. There are also some scratches on the rim top itself that I am hoping will polish out and look much better. You can see the tooth damage on the stem surfaces on both sides ahead of the button. Jeff took photos of the side and heel of the bowl. You can see the classic lines and nicely carved bowl of the pipe. It is a great looking Bulldog carved from block meerschaum and is well made. There are a lot of scratches and nicks in the meerschaum around the sides, top and shank of the pipe. There was no stamping on the shank or pipe that identified the maker. It was clearly a no name pipe but it was quite nice. Jeff had cleaned up the pipe with his usual thoroughness. He carefully reamed the pipe with a Savinelli Fitsall Pipe Knife. He scrubbed the bowl with undiluted Murphy’s Oil Soap with a tooth brush. He rinsed it under running warm water to remove the soap and grime. He cleaned out the inside of the shank and the airway in the stem with alcohol, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners. He cleaned the stem Soft Scrub cleanser and rinsed it off with warm water. I took photos of the pipe 3 years later when I finally got around to working on it. The rim top and inner edge of the rim were in rough condition. The rim top was chipped and nicked. There was darkening on the top and both the inner and outer edges of the bowl along with some dark chips in the surface of the meerschaum.The stem surface looked very good with some tooth marks and chatter on both sides near the button. I removed the stem and took several photos of the pipe to give a sense of the whole. The tenon is anchored in the shank and is threaded metal. The golden Bakelite diamond shaped taper stem is also threaded and screws onto the tenon.I worked on the rim top and inner edge of the bowl with a folded piece of 220 grit sandpaper to remove the damage and as many of the pits and nicks as possible. It looked much better at this point in the process.I polished the smooth meerschaum with micromesh sanding pads – dry sanding with 1500-12000 grit pads. I worked on the darkening of the rim top at the same time. I wiped the bowl down after each pad with a damp cloth. The longer I polished it the more the patina came to the surface. The pipe became more beautiful with each grit of polishing pad. While I was not able to remove all of the scratching around the rim top and bowl I was able to minimize them a bit. The remainder are a part of the story of the pipe’s journey and will remain. I set the bowl aside and turned my attention to the stem. I filled in the deep tooth marks on the stem surface on both sides with clear CA glue. Once the repairs cured I sanded them smooth with 220 grit sandpaper. I started polishing the stem with 400 grit wet dry sandpaper. I polished the stem with micromesh sanding pads. I dry sanded it with 1500-12000 pads and wiped the bowl down after each pad with a cloth and Obsidian Oil. I finished polished it with Before & After Fine and Extra Fine stem polish. I wiped it down with the cloth and Obsidian Oil one final time and set aside to dry. This Classic No Name Meerschaum Straight Bulldog with a golden Bakelite stem really is a beautiful pipe. The polished meerschaum has a stunning shape. I put the stem back on the bowl and carefully buffed the pipe with a clean buffing pad. I hand buffed the pipe with a microfiber cloth to deepen the shine. The finished Meerschaum Bulldog is another pipe that fits nicely in the hand and feels great. Give the finished pipe a look in the photos below. The dimensions of the pipe are Length: 6 inches, Height: 2 inches, Outside diameter of the bowl: 1 ½ inches, Chamber diameter: 7/8 of an inch. The weight of the pipe is 59 grams/ 2.08 oz. This Meerschaum Bulldog is a real beauty and the rich amber coloured Bakelite stem just highlights the beauty. Jeff made another great find when he picked this up in Bozeman. I will be putting on the rebornpipes store in the Ceramic and Meerschaum Pipe Section. Thanks for reading this blog and my reflections on the pipe while I worked on it. There are many more to come!

Modifying an Old Meerschaum Bowl to Fit a Kirsten Pipe Barrel

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In a lot I picked up off EBay was a nice older meerschaum pipe bowl. I think it was originally made either for the WDC base that came in the lot or for a different metal or Bakelite pipe. The threads on the pedestal base were stripped out. As I was looking at it I thought, “Why not see if I can modify it to fit the Kirsten stem and barrel that I have waiting for a bowl”. In the first photo below is the lot of bowls I picked up on EBay. The Meerschaum bowl is in the bottom right corner. The base or nipple is visible in this photo.

The next series of four photos show the bowl before I began work on it I wanted to line it up and see if it would possibly work on the Kirsten. I wanted to see if it was awkward looking or would look feasible. I took photos of the bowl and pipe from different angles to get a feel for the look of the bowl on the pipe.

I decided to try the same process I use in topping a bowl to remove the nipple or base. I set up my sandpaper on a flat board and sanded the nipple to flatten it out. It seemed like it was going to take a long time to remove it so I took it to my Dremel and quickly removed most of it and then came back to the sanding board to finish it up. The next three photos show the process of removing the meer nipple.

Now the bowl needed to be cleaned up and shaped to fit the barrel of the Kirsten. I sanded the bowl with a medium grit sanding sponge to remove the tar and finish of the bowl. Since I was going to reshape the bowl bottom I wanted to remove the old patina and dents as much as possible to make matching the bowl bottom simpler. The next three photos show the sanding of the bowl.

After sanding the bowl surface I used my Dremel to remove the material from the bottom of the bowl and to reshape the bowl to fit the Kirsten. It was a slow and repetitive process as one thing I have learned it you can always remove more material but you cannot put it back. I wanted to shape the bowl with a more rounded bottom on it and give the overall look of a brandy shape. The next three photos show the new shape of the bowl after the Dremel had done its work.

The next step in the process was to open up the hole in the bottom of the bowl in order to receive the bottom plate on the outside and the hollow screw on the inside. Kirsten bowls have a brass or vulcanite bottom plate that is inserted into the bottom of the bowl. This adapter or plate is cupped so I matched the bowl bottom to the cup on the plate. I had to drill slowly with increasingly larger drill bits until I had opened the airway enough for the plate to fit. Then I needed to open the bowl bottom enough to take the screw head. This particular bowl was a bit tapered so I needed to drill it so that the bottom was more flat on the inside so that the screw head would rest evenly on the bottom of the bowl. The outside drilling was ¼ inch when finished. The inside drilling was a ½ inch to let the screw sit evenly. The next three photos give an idea of the drilling and the end product. In the last of the three photos I placed the plate/adapter and the screw in the photo so that you can see where I was going with my drilling.

After drilling the bowl to fit the pieces I put it together to see if it all worked. The first three photos below show the bottom plate and the screw attached. I tried to photograph the bowl from a variety of angles in order to show the fit and feel of the bottom plate. The top down photo shows the placement of the screw. The other two photos show the fitted bottom plate. The last photo of the three shows the view from the bottom of the bowl with the screw centered in the bottom plate and the bowl ready to place on the shank.

At this point in my work I wanted to see how the bowl fit the barrel and stem. I wanted to determine if I needed to remove more of the meerschaum to ensure a good fit with the barrel. The next four photos give you a look at the pipe bowl fit at this point. There was still much work to do in making the fit perfect but I was getting there and the finished pipe had potential that it would look very good.

The internal screw was still not sitting flat and deep enough in the bowl to ensure a good tight fit to the barrel. I rode too high in the bowl bottom to really be able to tighten the bowl snugly against the barrel. So I took it back to the drill and inserted a larger bit in the drill and carefully drilled the internal bowl bottom to let the screw seat more deeply. This process took care as I did not want to go too deep into the bottom as that would weaken the bottom of the bowl. I went slowly and checked the seating often until it was the correct fit. The next series of two photos show how I did the drilling and the finished fit of the screw in the bowl bottom.

Once the fit of the bottom plate was correct it was time to sand the meerschaum bowl. This was a very messy proposition with the dust being similar to sanding Gyprock or drywall board after it has been taped and mudded. I had no idea that the sanding would be such a messy work. The dust was very fine and permeated everything, my hands and arms were covered with the fine white powder. Even my eye sockets were filled with the dust. I used 320 grit sandpaper to begin the process and sanded out the deeper scratches left by the Dremel and also the deeper gouges in the bowl from its previous history. I then used a medium grit sanding sponge to further remove those scratches and the finer ones left by the sandpaper. The next six photos show the sanding process and the increasingly smooth surface of the reshaped bowl.

I stopped sanding at this point and put the bowl back on the barrel to make sure that the edges and bottom of the bowl sat correctly against the top of the barrel. While it was on the barrel I sanded it further with a fine grit sanding sponge. The next three photos show the look of the bowl on the barrel after sanding. The shape and finish is beginning to appear in the process.

Once the fit and feel were correct it was time to work on the finish of the meerschaum bowl. Meer is pretty unforgiving in that it shows scratches in detail and as the bowl is smoked and heated any hidden ones suddenly will appear. I figured I would have to deal with that when it happened but in the mean time I would work to minimize that effect. I sanded the bowl with micromesh sanding pads. I used 1500-12,000 grit. The eight photos below show the progressive shine that developed in the bowl after each successive grit of micromesh was used. It was fascinating to me that as I sanded and polished the bowl more of the patina seemed to come to the surface and what was almost white in the newly sanded bowl began to yellow and darken around the top and bottom edges with the polishing.

The final series of four photos show the finished bowl on the barrel and ready to use. I am very pleased with the look of this old meerschaum bowl on the newer Kirsten metal barrel. The marriage of old and new is actually quite pleasant to look at. The feel in the hand is also very nice and the bowl has a natural shine to it from sanding with the micromesh. I gave it a coat of white beeswax after the sanding and hand polished it. I will continue to give it coats of beeswax as I use it.

One thing I have learned in the process of working this meerschaum bowl to fit the barrel is that there is always a use for what appears to be a throw away bowl. I will think long and hard before I discard a pipe bowl as junk because who knows what beauty lies just beneath the surface and what a pleasant new life can be resurrected from the old pipe.