This no-name Canadian has been a good opportunity for skills development. It had a regular height bowl when I bought it, but the rim was cracked through in several places, so I tried to get past them with the belt sander. I had to stop once I'd achieved a pot profile. But there were still cracks. 
So I decided it was time to use the meerschaum inserts I bought from Vermont Freehand. My previous efforts to use the wet were pitiful failures, so I decided to do everything with my dremel. I hogged out the bowl with a metal rasp because that's what I had, and it worked fine but not as quickly as a burr would have done. I kept trial fitting the meer plug, twisting it to make witness marks that would show me where to cut next. When the last mark was just at the bottom of the bowl, I knew the plug fit properly. A spoon would have been faster but would more likely have split the bowl, I think.
I glued the plug with lots of CA, then used the dremel and a pocket knife to open up the bowl, and.....now I don't know what to do next.
I've read about meer getting beeswaxed, but don't know whether the bowl gets that treatment. Is it ready to smoke?
I left the rim unstained because it tells the pipe's story. You can see that it'd been smoked so hot that I never reached undamaged briar, despite how closely I cut toward the outer wall.
This pipe has no monetary value but I'm sure proud of it, and assuming it will smoke well and last a few more years, I now know how to rescue other more collectible pipes.
So I decided it was time to use the meerschaum inserts I bought from Vermont Freehand. My previous efforts to use the wet were pitiful failures, so I decided to do everything with my dremel. I hogged out the bowl with a metal rasp because that's what I had, and it worked fine but not as quickly as a burr would have done. I kept trial fitting the meer plug, twisting it to make witness marks that would show me where to cut next. When the last mark was just at the bottom of the bowl, I knew the plug fit properly. A spoon would have been faster but would more likely have split the bowl, I think.
I glued the plug with lots of CA, then used the dremel and a pocket knife to open up the bowl, and.....now I don't know what to do next.
I've read about meer getting beeswaxed, but don't know whether the bowl gets that treatment. Is it ready to smoke?
I left the rim unstained because it tells the pipe's story. You can see that it'd been smoked so hot that I never reached undamaged briar, despite how closely I cut toward the outer wall.
This pipe has no monetary value but I'm sure proud of it, and assuming it will smoke well and last a few more years, I now know how to rescue other more collectible pipes.
