Bought a TWC "lockmount" off ebay for 99 cents a month or two back. Stinger pipe, plenty good smoker, but also plenty rough around the edges. I decided to utilize it for some experimentation on refinishing.
Here is what she looked like with a basic cleaning job (olive oil and that is about it):
So, I decided to do pretty much a quick and experimental restoration of the finish. Didn't spend tons of time on it, wasn't looking for some sort of "like new" quality. Just wanted to familiarize myself with the process and maybe spruce up the pipe a bit in the end.
The initial idea was to soak the bowl in Everclear to remove the finish. That idea did not work.
In the future, a grain alcohol soak may be in order to clean the pipe and sweeten it, but it did little or nothing to remove the finish off the pipe. Possibly a longer soaking would work better, but my assumption is that alcohol impacts the wax coating, or possibly a varnish to some degree, but not completely. Actually taking off the finish, at least on this pipe, required a bit of acetone and some light sandpaper.
Now, I did not spend a lot of time on the sanding, and it was all done manually. The acetone was just a light rub, and possibly not truly necessary. The picture above shows maybe a total of 5-6 minutes of sanding.
I then cleaned it off by dumping it back in Everclear, wiping it, and letting it dry. I then applied a coat of "acorn brown" leather dye. It takes very little dye. A small $5 container of the dye looks like it may color well over 20 pipes. Possibly quite a bit more. So, now it looked so:
After that, it was pure caranuba wax, purchased from the auto parts store. I simply applied it, rubbed it in, and gave it a very light dry buff. And this is the end result:
All of the flat and dull spots on the finish are gone. The graining of the pipe was not spectacularly impressive, but what is there now shows well, and the pipe certainly looks cosmetically better. Taking more time to sand, and more time in buffing would almost certainly have yielded better results, But, as noted, this was a quick walkthrough for me.
Here is what she looked like with a basic cleaning job (olive oil and that is about it):
So, I decided to do pretty much a quick and experimental restoration of the finish. Didn't spend tons of time on it, wasn't looking for some sort of "like new" quality. Just wanted to familiarize myself with the process and maybe spruce up the pipe a bit in the end.
The initial idea was to soak the bowl in Everclear to remove the finish. That idea did not work.
In the future, a grain alcohol soak may be in order to clean the pipe and sweeten it, but it did little or nothing to remove the finish off the pipe. Possibly a longer soaking would work better, but my assumption is that alcohol impacts the wax coating, or possibly a varnish to some degree, but not completely. Actually taking off the finish, at least on this pipe, required a bit of acetone and some light sandpaper.
Now, I did not spend a lot of time on the sanding, and it was all done manually. The acetone was just a light rub, and possibly not truly necessary. The picture above shows maybe a total of 5-6 minutes of sanding.
I then cleaned it off by dumping it back in Everclear, wiping it, and letting it dry. I then applied a coat of "acorn brown" leather dye. It takes very little dye. A small $5 container of the dye looks like it may color well over 20 pipes. Possibly quite a bit more. So, now it looked so:
After that, it was pure caranuba wax, purchased from the auto parts store. I simply applied it, rubbed it in, and gave it a very light dry buff. And this is the end result:
All of the flat and dull spots on the finish are gone. The graining of the pipe was not spectacularly impressive, but what is there now shows well, and the pipe certainly looks cosmetically better. Taking more time to sand, and more time in buffing would almost certainly have yielded better results, But, as noted, this was a quick walkthrough for me.
