You showed me your 3 meers on another thread. They're all very beautiful. I know your views on waxing, but I've had different experiences. They drastically aided in the patina for my meer. I think you should give it another shot, trying this method I poorly wrote in another thread, but I think you'll be able to comprehend it. You only need a small bar of beeswax and less than an hour.
" What I do is heat up my beeswax mix on the stove along with holding my pipe above a flame to open the pores. I then rub the melted wax onto the pipe (with a bent churchwarden pipe cleaner) until it's completely covered in wax. Then, I let it sit for 15-30 minutes and heat it once again with a blow drier and wipe the excess wax off with a white 100% cotton cloth. It's not as messy or complicated as it might sound. Use a container you don't care about, because the wax is a pain in butt to get off. Also, some people apparently use olive oil in their beeswax mixture. Also, you can remove the stem and tenon if you're scared it might melt, but I had no problems. Use a cork if you're scared the wax might leak into the bowl, but again, I didn't need to."
About 75 smokes:
5-10 smokes later and rewaxed using the method above:
The dark color remained there, and the lighter, marble-like coloring faded but is still visible. The darker portion in the image above is expanding noticeably.
