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Mar 1, 2014
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First off, you might be wondering what on earth you're looking at.

This Cob is a Natural Finish Missouri Meerschaum MacArthur Five Star Corn Cob Pipe.

It has been coated with honey, had the honey boiled off with a propane torch, coated again, and the process repeated three or four times (I forget how many but it took about five hours).

The result is a Cob with an exterior that can withstand direct flame of over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit for about half a second (the torch was running as low as it could). Basically my definition of it being "done" was when it was sufficiently black and honey stopped boiling out when you apply heat. Most of the process was just me sitting there holding the Cob at funny angles while chasing boiling sugar across the surface with the propane torch. Yes it dripped on me once, it hurt a lot, and the burn is mostly healed now.

I'm actually surprised at how well it resists heat while still being so full of holes. I guess that's the insulating effect of air at work.

You do have to be especially careful around the shank. I did a much better job with this Cob than the Wizard.

The thin part of the rim at the top is the only place I expect the coating to make any difference to the functionality of the cob. It's hard to say how deep the honey penetrated, but in one of the pictures above you can see a spongy spot inside the bowl and it's safe to say it will still burn out if I don't break it in very carefully.

Regardless, rim charring is virtually impossible, and reckless application of a butane torch will now qualify as "touching up the finish" rather than catastrophic abuse.

The bowl is bored out to just over 1" and is probably my widest bore pipe now.
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Here's two "Retired General" Cobs.

One has the carbon finish and the other was an experiment with plaster (which is how Missouri Meerschaum accomplishes their smooth finish).

Technically it's a sitting cob, but since the MacArthur Cob is the only one you can really accomplish this shape with it would make sense to call it by its model name, but calling it a "Sitting MacArthur" doesn't sound very respectful to the name, and neither does "Lazy" or "Sleeping". I'm going to assume that General MacArthur had no time to rest until he was retired, thus, the Retired General.
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This pipe was another experiment with plaster. I took a Natural Finish MacArthur Classic and turned it into a smooth pipe. Missouri Meerschaum seems to have a standard shape they carve their smooth finishes to so this one is a bit bigger than normal, affording a 7/8" bowl diameter (to about 2" deep, not the full 3" of the default chamber. I couldn't get my carving burr any farther down).
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This is my first successful slot in a successfully drilled Pipe Makers Emporium pre-formed bit. I can't make the overall shape myself but I'm getting the hang of the drilling. These stems are great practice.
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This is a normal Wizard Cobwarden with the chamber expanded to 1" at the top, I will have to be more careful with the rim on this one. The walls are still 10mm thick though, which is standard for most other Cobs.

I actually chose this stem for this pipe because the tenon fit perfectly without any adjustments. Some Wizard Cobwardens have different size tenons, or at least the ones that I have are different sizes, and the stock stems from Pipe Makers Emporium vary in size by just enough that this stem and pipe fit perfectly out of the box.
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And lastly we have the Carbon Cobwarden. Prototype #1 for coating a Cob in honey and burning it to a crisp.

This bowl is also bored 1" wide but that's cutting it really close here, the other Cobs are bigger. I'm really counting on the coating to hold the rim together, but it gives it a nice aesthetic. Even if I do have to top it a bit that should be fine, there's more chamber here than I'll ever need.

The worst part about this project was that the shank shrank from all the heating, so the original stem had to be sanded down to fit again. Unfortunately when I tried to bore out the stem to 1/8" it broke the button and I had to carve an impromptu button part way back. Those molded Vulcanite Churchwarden stems get very thin. This actually doesn't feel too bad compared Missouri Meerschaum's stock plastic stem and the draw is decent.

People used pipes with round stems for hundreds of years anyway so this is just a little more "period correct" for the 18th century (except that it's made of Vulcanite), and at 8" long it's just that little bit more compact. Which can be nice.

 
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