Meer lined pipe bowl prob

[deithial]

Got an estate pipe off the ebay. The bowl is meer lined and upon inspection once recieved the bottom of the bowl the meer is cracked badly. Gave it a little once over bowl cleaning and sure enough the all the meer at the bottom crumbled out. So the top half is still meer.
My repair question: should I try mixing up some pipe mud to fill in the bottom of the bowl?

 

[shawn622]

Wow man, that bites. I have no idea, but I'm sure someone here will. Good luck!!!

 

[topd]

I agree with rothnh. If it 'crumbled' out, it was most likely pressed meerschaum, and wouldn't do

what meerschaum is supposed to do anyway. I'd send it back.

 

[schmitzbitz]

From my understanding, most meer lined bowls are pressed; simply because colouration isn't really a factor (the briar hides any patina that could develop) and cost is. I have a couple of meer-lined pieces, one of which was suffering from the problem you described. I chose to simply remove the insert entirely, then prepared the bowl with pipe-mud to provide some extra protection against burnout/build up the bottom of the tobacco chamber. I won't say it's the best smoker in my rotation, but it performs admirably as a knock-around pipe with a massive chamber to keep me puffing for hours on end.

 

[deithial]

Thanks for all the tips guys. I decided to go with Roth & Schmitz idea since I payed less than $10 for the pipe. I removed all of the meer from the inside of the bowl. Gonna hit it with some pipe mud and then its gonna be a PA pipe til its get some good cake build up.
Was saddened to have to do this but the "pro" of all this as Schmitzbitz pointed out is it has a huge bowl on it now. Heres what it looked like b4. I'll see about uploading a present pic ltr.
Thx again gents.
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