Meer Coloring Experiment That Worked

Here is a Meer that I did some coloring experiments with. Yeah I know it's cheating, but I like to tinker.

Let meknow what you think.

It started out basically white with some very mild coloration on the shank.

It looks a little darker in person with a butterscotch tint. The photos were taken by a phone camera.

I will send a follow up post to let you know how I did it.

How I did it:

First, I got some old tobacco that I did not care for and put it in a jar with water.

Then placed the jar on my grill on low heat and stirred until the mix boiled for a while and turned very dark.

Next, I lowered the heat until the boiling stopped and very carefully placed the pre-warmed pipe bowl into the hot water and tobacco mix.

I stirred the mix very carefully for about 15 minutes then removed the bowl from the jar. The bowl color had drastically changed already.

I gently wiped off the excess tobacco water mix and let the bowl dry for a several hours in front of a small fan.

After the bowl was fully dry I placed it in the oven at around 200F for about 10 minutes then waxed it with beeswax and buffed with a clean cloth. Then I smoked it for a few days.

At this point the color was fairly nice but still needed more depth.

So experiment #2:

I melted a small quantity of beeswax and mixed it with tobacco juice that I gotten hot in the microwave. I had to mix frequently or the mixture would separate.

The pipe was placed in the oven again for about 10 min same as before and the dark wax/juice mix was brushed onto the pipe. Then placed back into the oven to melt the wax and buffed with a clean cloth.

It came out looking great (in my opinion).

You guessed it Cortez. It was a cheap pipe that I had broken the stem on while trying to get better airflow. Seemed like a good candidate for tinkering.

I had suspicion that I could color the pipe, But I wasn't sure how well it would look.

After the first coloring experiment. I had Norwoods replace the stem. Then I was back to the same problem with poor draw again. So after opening up the stem, successfully this time, I continued with my coloring attempts.

Anyway it was fun and I am curious to see if it changes much with further smoking.

My problem is, I like to smoke a variety of pipes, so further coloring will advance at a snails pace.