Yeah, it's hard for me to tell if the mortise is tapered. The stem looks tapered. There's still a missing detail.If they're both tapered, taking a bit off the tenon might make it fit. Not sure from the photo that they're tapered though...
PS Like your kitty in your avatar (they like padded guitar cases)
I think you should contact the seller/maker before you do anything. I know I would want to know ifSo, it doesn't seem like the tenon is bottoming out. The width of the tenon (11.6 mm) vs the mortise (11 mm) seems to be the issue. And neither is perfectly round. I shall ponder more after some sleep!
Thank you, I did contact him and he asked for a photo. I think I'll make a gif or short video to show the looseness. It's very unstable.I think you should contact the seller/maker before you do anything. I know I would want to know if
a pipe of mine had problems and would want to rectify it quickly. They may not even want you to send it back and
just send you a another one. But, without letting them know you'll never know what they may want to do about it.
If after contacting them you get no satisfaction then just put a little clear finger polish inside the mortise and see what happens. There are much better ways to tighten this up but, none that I would want a customer to try on his own.
Ya can't ask for more then that sir, I hope he does the right thing, wish you the best sir.Thank you, I did contact him and he asked for a photo. I think I'll make a gif or short video to show the looseness. It's very unstable.
This ^^^^Is the tenon tapered? Maybe you can grind/sand a bit off the end so it will fit deeper (& thus tighter) in the mortise? Looks like the mortise isn't very deep before you hit the meerschaum shank.
This may be the answer. I didn't believe so at first because the stem did not seem to bottom out according to my measurements. But those measurements were only taken at a few points, and were within a mm or so.This ^^^^