Buff Much? Casualties of EBay

[shaintiques]

Also a lot of guys sand down old stems to remove deoxidation this can lead to what you are posting about. I prefer to just clean them rather than sand to avoid the wear.

 

[georged]

Also a lot of guys sand down old stems to remove deoxidation this can lead to what you are posting about. I prefer to just clean them rather than sand to avoid the wear.

For some reason this fire never goes out.
Oxidized material---whether the red rust of ferrous metal, the white powder of aluminum, or the "green" of vulcanite---IS NO LONGER WHAT IT ONCE WAS AT THE ATOMIC LEVEL. It must be mechanically removed. It can NOT be changed back.
Meaning there are no chemical processes/tricks to "clean" vulcanite, or dissolve the green off the surface like it's something Mother Nature added. It's not an additional layer like paint.
The result? All "polishing" is just superfine sanding. In every case, once you're "back to black", the piece of material is dimensionally smaller than it originally was.
The only difficulty is not leaving visual clues that the material removal/dimensional shrinkage occurred.

 

[zack24]

I use two compounds and two buffs that I picked up from SEM in Germany for stemwork and refurbs. (Also mainly for pipe finishing, I use two other soft wheels for carnauba and a final buff with clean buff.) SEM recommends using the brown compound after sanding stems to 600 grit, followed by the yellow compound on a soft buff- very pricey compounds and buffs that cost over $200, but they work great. I throw in an extra step of wet sanding a stem at 1200 before buffing again with the yellow compound. The yellow is an incredibly hard and fine compound- you can take scorch marks off a rim without cutting through all the shellac(assuming it’s not burned too badly). Also works well for polishing out extremely fine scratches in an estate pipe. The key on any of these is a very light touch...

 

[hawky454]

Hmmm I use Tripoli, White Diamond and Carnauba Wax all of the time. I've never had a problem with Tripoli. Granted, my work is nowhere near as professional and good looking as Anthony's but I've never ruined a pipe. You do want to be very careful when buffing near the nomenclature as well as where the stem connects to the stummel to not screw that up but other than that I've found Tripoli to be of great use!
What is a good site to learn more about refurbishing pipes? I would like to dig deeper into the craft.