Acrylic Filtered Stems For M.M.’s

[AroEnglish]

Is drilling out the forever stems difficult?

I’d suggest getting input from @RustiePyles CPG

 

[RustiePyles CPG]

It’s a materials issue. The shank of a MM is relatively small diameter, thus having a fairly narrow mortise. If you were to drill out an acrylic tenon of that diameter for a 6mm filter it would have a very thin wall and break off immediately. The thermoplastic that MM uses is ok at that wall thickness but acrylic is much harder and thus more brittle. So now that means you need to use delrin. Delrin is notoriously difficult to glue to acrylic and most stem makers don’t want to fool with it. Some will tell you they can get it to stick but modern science says otherwise, most delrin tenons will pull out at some point.

You can thread delrin tenons into acrylic and glue them and this works ok, but the limited mortise size of a MM prohibits this.

 

[Bassman65]

It’s a materials issue. The shank of a MM is relatively small diameter, thus having a fairly narrow mortise. If you were to drill out an acrylic tenon of that diameter for a 6mm filter it would have a very thin wall and break off immediately. The thermoplastic that MM uses is ok at that wall thickness but acrylic is much harder and thus more brittle. So now that means you need to use delrin. Delrin is notoriously difficult to glue to acrylic and most stem makers don’t want to fool with it. Some will tell you they can get it to stick but modern science says otherwise, most delrin tenons will pull out at some point.

You can thread delrin tenons into acrylic and glue them and this works ok, but the limited mortise size of a MM prohibits this.

Ah. So in other words, no acrylic . Thanks for the info.

 

[midcentry]

Does anyone know of another maker of Forever Stems other than Vermont Freehand?