How do you guys shine up old estate pipes?

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excav8tor

Can't Leave
Aug 28, 2010
447
2
South Devon, England
Wall, for $20 I'd get it. However, I'd use it for cleaning stems on one polishing wheel (with green tripoli) and the other polishing wheel for White tripoli (for burnishing wood).

2950rpm is too high for a deep shine using carnauba wax. I have a bench grinder that I have converted to the above, but I use an adjustable speed drill for the final finish (low rpm).

If you are going to do lots and lots of estate pipes.....get the bench grinder....it's a good price.

 

excav8tor

Can't Leave
Aug 28, 2010
447
2
South Devon, England
850 rpm is a little on the low side. It needs to be about 1000 to 1500 rpm.
The bench gringer, although high rpm, will give a reasonable shine to it using one of the polishing wheels just to burnish the briar, but for a really deep shine, you need to use carnauba wax (or Halcyon II & Paragon).
If it was me, I'd go for the bench grinder, and then get the Halcyon & Paragon to finish it off.
I am mindful of the cost by the way.

 

mlaug

Part of the Furniture Now
May 23, 2010
908
2
Iowa
With that many pipes...using Pledge will be the cheapest bang for your buck, Wallbright.
The two waxes Chuck mention, Paragon and Halcyon II, are great to use if you want a true wax.
Even so, you won't need a buffer.

 

wallbright

Part of the Furniture Now
Aug 22, 2010
845
2
I mainly needed the buffer for the stems and to buff out dings and such. The pipes I get need alot of outside work done and I would rather invest $30-$40 total and then get it done quicker than to have to do it all by hand. I mainly do this just as a hobby so profit doesn't really matter as long as I break even and make enough profit to buy more.

 

excav8tor

Can't Leave
Aug 28, 2010
447
2
South Devon, England
Doing stems on a bench grinder, with a polishing wheel is so much easier and less time consuming. I now don't even need to put the stem in bleach first to remove the brown gunk on the outside. It gets cleaned with alcohol first, to remove the gunk on the inside, and then it goes straight onto the bench grinder buffer to do the outside. A 10 minute job.

Once cleaned inside and out, it gets the 15 minute in luke-warm water + mild disinfectant treatment, followed by a quick dry off and then a final polish on the low rpm buffer.

 

unclearthur

Lifer
Mar 9, 2010
6,875
5
Right now I have an experiment in progress. I ran across a reference on another forum to soaking nasty stems in "Simple Green" that sounded both logical and ecological. First one soaked was a fairly cruddy Whitehall. Slick as a whistle after a lightning fast trip to visit Mr Buffer. The real plus was that the soak had on adverse effects on the logo. Came out nice and white with no loss at all. Now I have a far worse looking one in the soak. I will keep you updated.

 

unclearthur

Lifer
Mar 9, 2010
6,875
5
A couple hours in the Simple Green a quick going over with 0000 steel wool and maybe a minute or two on the buffer. Looks like new.

 

mluyckx

Lifer
Dec 5, 2011
1,958
3
Texas
Bump for newbies.
Uncle Arthur,

I think my wife's got some different things from Simple Green. Multi-purpose, hard surface and glass.

Do you recall which one you used ?

 

ssjones

Moderator
Staff member
May 11, 2011
18,317
11,068
Maryland
postimg.cc
I'm a micro-mesh fan, before hitting the buffing wheel. I tried the foam-backed pads, but have now switched to the 6"x2" sheets, larger, easier to work with and hold up better. There's a thread here somewhere, just search for micro-mesh vendor.

 

mluyckx

Lifer
Dec 5, 2011
1,958
3
Texas
Al,

Thanks for the tip.
I've used the Magic Eraser with really good success on one of the estates I bought. But, believe it or not, I am about to get in about a dozen estates. Some are in really bad shape, some are good. But hey, I might just as well give pipe cleaning / restoring a bit of a go. I figure, since I smoke outside or in the garage, I'm usually reading or surfing the web. I may just as well clean some pipes while smoking one ;-)
And for the price of the new Peterson I had in mind, I have now 9 pipes coming in. So I have a feeling I'd like to get into a bit more of "motor powered assisted cleaning" or "MoPAC". :rofl:

 
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