How Best To Dry Out A Damp Morta?

[MisterBadger]

A week ago I managed to lose my Chris Askwith Canadian morta, somewhere on the farm. Miraculously, Mrs. Badger found it today, half hidden in damp grass and leaves where, presumably, it had fallen from my pocket. I rejoice, but... it's rained a couple or three times this past week, and the pipe has clearly gotten wet. At present it's damp and the morta has expanded so that the tenon of the (briar) mouthpiece is a very loose fit.

Clearly I shouldn't subject it to a sudden high temperature, so I've simply stuffed the bowl with absorbent tissue paper and wrapped the outside with ditto, and placed it in the drawer I keep my pipes in. At this time of year the room in question has an ambient temperature of 50-65ºF. I was thinking of checking it regularly by feel and tenon fit, and certainly not smoking it for at least a month to be on the safe side? Is there anything else I should be doing, or doing differently?

 

[dd57chevy]

JMO , but if it were mine , I'd put it in the refrigerator for a couple of days .

 

[wyfbane]

Put it in a bag of dry rice. Will get that moisture right out.

 

[MisterBadger]

JMO , but if it were mine , I'd put it in the refrigerator for a couple of days .

Interesting. What's the physics behind that?

 

[dd57chevy]

Interesting. What's the physics behind that?

I don't have any science; I just know my fridge dries things out & cold tends to shrink things .

 

[TheIronMonkey]

Ditto on the rice. If phones or cameras get dunked, packing in rice will usually draw any moisture out in a week’s time. Seems like a sound application for this pipe.

 

[tbradsim1]

if you have a refrigerator place pipe at the outside btm, warm air will dry it out, wife puts her tennis shoes there air is warm not hot and it will slowly dry, slowly is the key.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Morta is one of those materials that should no longer be wood, but not fully mineralized into stone. Wood doesn't absorb water, especially briar. I wouldn't think it would really absorb enough water to worry about. Wipe it down and set it on the rack.

 

[Sigmund]

Dont put pipes in the fridge. Cosmic has it right. If you have concerns set it in a normal space and forget it for a few days. if waiting longer makes you feel good then do that. Dont try to apply treatments, you may do more damage than good.

 

[Zamora]

Silica packets might also work, nowadays that's generally recommended for electronics over rice

 

[MisterBadger]

Thank you, all, for your time and your thoughts... it seems to me that while briar, though once a root, is very close-grained and has been boiled, dried and cured to dehydrate it and minimise its absorbency, morta - despite having had a much longer, natural curing - is still more absorbent than briar. Would the briar mouthpiece have become loose in the mortice of the shank if the morta had not expanded slightly, following some reintroduction to moisture (unless the mouthpiece itself had shrunk instead, which seems unlikely to me)?

Tennis shoes I'm sure dry out fine in the refrigerator but they are not then subjected to high internal temperatures the way a pipe is when smoked. Morta, unlike canvas and rubber, is not flexible either and so cracking is a possible problem if stresses build up between areas of different heat-refractive potential (as, for example, when you have too much carbon cake in a pipe chamber).

Having weighed all these suggestions - for which I am grateful - what I've done is put the pipe back in the bag it came with, and filled the bag with Italian arborio rice (which I notice from making risotto, sucks up liquids like no other cereal known), where I shall leave it for a week. (I tried this expedient, because I don't have any silica packs).

Hopefully I shall find that the mortice and tenon then fit snugly again (if not, I'll leave it in the rice a bit longer). Then I shall smoke it slowly and carefully, and hope no cracking occurs. I'll report back in due course.

Look out for my next Agony Aunt question: How do you remove swollen rice grains from the stem of a pipe?

 

[Sigmund]

It will probably work out fine. The likely reason for a more loose fit would be long term exposure to cold. As it settles it will likely return to normal. Almost all my pipe stems, while not loose, move a bit more freely in the winter.

 

[hoosierpipeguy]

I'd let it sit for a week or 2, perhaps near a register where there is some airflow. I haven't found Morta to be all that terribly absorbent. After it's clearly had time to dry, if you're still having issues with the stem, have a new one made.

 

[tbradsim1]

No No, outside the refergrator where the compressor blows out the air over the coils, most reefers blow this out at btm of it towards the front. Cosmic is right Morta is more mineral than wood, so absorbion Should be miminal

 

[VDL_Piper]

Tupperware container and rice and let it sit, non invasive and the rice is very hydroscopic

 

[OzPiper]

Having weighed all these suggestions - for which I am grateful - what I've done is put the pipe back in the bag it came with, and filled the bag with Italian arborio rice (which I notice from making risotto, sucks up liquids like no other cereal known), where I shall leave it for a week. ly and carefully, and hope no cracking occurs. I'll report back in due course.

I was taught by a chef to store truffles (the mushroom kind) in a container of rice
Keeps the truffle from going mouldy.
And the rice absorbs the aroma of the truffles
Win. Win

Once your morta has dried out, you can then turn the arborio into a tobacco infused risotto

 

[NookersTheCat]

Wood doesn't absorb water

Umm... as a citizen of this planet/general observer of natural phenomenon, I must respectfully disagree with this assertion

Briar is def a tighter grain that doesn't absorb as readily.. but it's still porous.

 

[NookersTheCat]

Def the rice is the way to go imo.. as an electronics engineer anyway I can state there's nothing better for slowly and gently absorbing moisture from tight, sensitive places (grow up, now ) you don't want it to be except maybe silicone beads but they're 100x the price.
Plus it's that time of year rn where 2/3s of the country could probably just dry it out using the ambient humidity due to the heating of the home space...
The main thing to remember is slow and steady.. the rice actually may help as a buffer in this as well.

 

[craig61a]

I guess I would go with rice as well…

I have read that when Morta is harvested, it is exceedingly waterlogged. It takes months or years to dry it down to the point where it is workable. Drying has to be carefully controlled so as not to induce cracking. Even so, a quantity of the harvested wood is unusable due to cracking.

It will burn, and it’s not like petrified wood. It’s absorbed minerals and will dull tooling faster than briar. However there’s still plenty of organic material left. It’s been underwater and deprived of oxygen for several thousand years, whereas petrified wood has been undergoing that process for millions of years.

 

[MisterBadger]

Well, friends, I just took the morta out of a bag or arboria rice after an 8-day immersion, and it's dry as a bone and the mouthpiece fits the shank just as snugly as it used to before its week's wetting. Thank you to all who offered me their time and thoughts on this. I shall be giving it a careful smoke with something slow burning later today.