Polishing a Pipe and Its Stem

I use carnauba wood wax for the bowl, as well as the stem. If the stem is pretty old and has alot of oxidation follow these instructions.
Find a glass that will hold the entire stem, drop the stem in and then fill the glass with chlorine. Yes, the household cleaning type chlorine. Let the stem stay submerged overnight. It will bubble a bit, but don’t worry. It’s supposed to. Get a good night’s sleep.
By morning, the process is finished. Pour off the chlorine and rinse the stem in cold water. It will appear rough on the surface and have a coal grey appearance. It is now clean. Both inside and out.
Now you will have to do some sanding. Very gently and with a paper with 1000 grit or higher, sand the stem until it is smooth to the touch. Do not sand the tenon (the bit that connects stem to stummel) as that would only make the stem loose in the pipe.
Once the stem is smooth again you can start the polishing process. If you have a buffer, then things will get done quickly. Start with a slightly abrasive wax. These are usually red in colour and are impregnated with jeweller’s rouge. Keep the stem moving against the wheel and you will see the stem slowly returning to it’s former black glory. Continue polishing until you have a smooth, polished and deeply black stem.

Change wheels and give a final polish either with carnauba or some other fine polishing wax.

mrmccarthy, on a week to week basis, you can probably do all the maintenance you need with a clean cloth.

The best time to polish a pipe is while it's still warm from smoking but after you have emptied the ash, cleaned out the bowl

with a tissue, blown out any loose tobacco, and run a pipe cleaner through the airway. If you polish the bowl, shank,

and stem, this will keep things in pretty good shape. Then as the pipes get more wear, you can apply the wax, stem

cleaner, etc. But a little elbow grease will go a long way toward keeping pipes in good shape.

Anyone use a dremmel to buff out the stem?

Every restorer with whom I've discussed stem restoration says the same thing. Never use bleach. It destroys vulcanite. BTW, don't take my word for it. Go on the Walker Briars site and see what they say on the subject - bleach destroys vulcanite. There are other alternatives that will get you a black glass-like finish. If the oxidation is slight, you can use a metal polish, like Simi Chrome Polish, to remove slight oxidation and polish the vulcanite. For tougher jobs, buy a set of micromesh pads and sand off the oxidation. As you go to successively finer grits you will end up with a clean glossy stem. You can also use a buffer but you must take care to avoid wearing down the button or rounding the edges of the stem where it meets the shank. There are also some good stem polishing kits available as well. My preferred method is to use the micromesh pads. It affords me the best level of control and does the least damage. Once the stem is clean and glossy, you can polish it with carnuba wax using a buffer after re-attaching it to the bowl.

If you have a slow speed buffer you can apply carnuba wax to the bowl, shank and stem. Just be sure that you avoid using too much pressure. Keep the application feather light. I used buffers professionally for jewelry fabrication and restoration of museum pieces for many years so I can say that using a buffer properly takes some practice. The plethora of buffed down lumps that were once pipes attests to this. If you don't have a buffer, an excellent polish can be achieved using either Paragon or Halcyon waxes. That's my preferred method of applying wax. I like my estates to keep their crisp lines and defined stampings.

In my opinion, there is a tendency by new pipe smokers to overdo cleaning and maintenance. If you regularly

clean a pipe with a pipe tool, tissue, and pipe cleaner after each smoke, and buff off the bowl and stem with

a cloth, you may not have to do much more for months or years at a time, depending on how much you smoke

and how many pipes you accumulate. Once you have more than twenty pipes, you aren't going to be working

any of them too hard on a month-to-month basis. If you do all the cleaning, especially wiping out the bowl

every time, and smoothing out the carbon layer that way, you may never have to ream at all. However, if you

itch to get into more rigorous cleaning and upkeep, you may want to get into estate pipe restoration. There's

plenty of information and expertise on that here at Forums. Members do some beautiful work. In that case,

all these skills of reaming pipes, reviving stems, and the rest of it, come into play. And if you can find some

$5 pipes at garage and yard sales and flea markets, you can practice with little risk of expensive harm. You

can maintain your new pipes with light but regular cleaning.