Quick & Easy Way To Add a Filter to Cobs With a Forever Stem

[Skippy Piper]

Hey there folks! The Missouri Meerschaum Country Gentleman cob is possibly my all time favorite pipe, but the one thing that always bugged me about it is that if you wanted to put a Forever Stem on it you lost the ability to use a filter. Well, not anymore! Here's an easy way to modify a Country Gentleman, or any other Missouri Meerschaum cob that would normally accept a filter, so you can still use a filter with your Forever Stem.

Here's what you'll need:

The Pipe
Any Forever Stem
Vauen Dr. Perl Junior 6mm Charcoal Filters
A 1/4" Drill Bit (No drill, just the bit!)




What were going to do here is take that 1/4" drill bit and use it to enlarge the draught hole inside the shank just enough to drop the short little Vauen filter down into. The wood used for the shank is very soft so you don't need a drill for this, we can just use our hands to gently turn the bit until we enlarge the hole inside the shank enough to hold the filter.




Just stick the drill bit into the shank until you feel it meet the draught hole, then apply gentle pressure and give it a couple turns. Blow out the sawdust, drop your filter in, then put the Forever Stem on and check the fit. You want to continue slowly drilling out the draught hole to about 1/4" deep, until you can fully insert the tenon of the Forever Stem into the shank with the filter sitting snugly up against it.




Once you've got the fit the way you want it, so the filter and Forever Stem can both be fully inserted snugly but the filter still comes out easily with a gentle tap of the shank against your palm when you want to remove it, then just load up your favorite blend and enjoy! If at some point during the test fitting process you happen to get the filter stuck in the shank, just bend a pipe cleaner into a "C" shape and feed it down through the bowl and into the shank to pop the filter out, drill a little more, then test fit the filter and Forever Stem again. You'll get it just right before long!





On a final note, be aware that this modification will only work with Vauen 6mm Dr. Perl Junior charcoal filters and will not work with Dr. Grabow or Medico paper filters or Savinelli balsa filters. The Vauen charcoal filters are about half the length of the other filter options on the market so the shank of the cob can accommodate both the filter and the tenon of the Forever Stem. The other filter options on the market are simply too long to fit. The Vauen filters will tighten up the draw considerably, but they do provide excellent filtration without affecting the flavor of your tobacco.

Hope this helps some folks out!

 

[crashthegrey]

That's way too close to the heat for me. Too many people smoke too hot. I see many melted filters in the future.

 

[Skippy Piper]

That's way too close to the heat for me. Too many people smoke too hot. I see many melted filters in the future.

Thankfully your concern is without merit! As you can see the Vauen filter with the Forever Stem doesn't sit much of any deeper into the shank than a Dr. Grabow or Medico filter with a standard stem would:





The drilling of the draught hole is really just to accommodate the slightly larger width of the Vauen filters so they slide in and out easily and don't get stuck. There's also nothing to melt on Vauen filters, since they don't have any plastic coating on them anywhere and are just a cardboard tube with ceramic end caps.

Here's what the filter looked like after running two bowls of Haunted Bookshop through it, and I REALLY put the flame to the bottom 1/4 of the bowl to see if I could get the filter to become damaged:



As you can see, nothing melted or otherwise damaged.

 

[WirelessSmoke]

I don't have any forever stems, but I have seen videos on YouTube where folks drill out the end of the forever stem instead. As cheap and ugly as those amber bits are, I do find them pretty comfortable compared to acrylic.

 

[Skippy Piper]

I don't have any forever stems, but I have seen videos on YouTube where folks drill out the end of the forever stem instead. As cheap and ugly as those amber bits are, I do find them pretty comfortable compared to acrylic.

I had definitely considered trying to drill out the Forever Stems instead of my cobs, but the tenon on a Forever Stem is only 8mm thick so trying to drill it out for a 6mm filter leaves very little margin for error. It's really a task best done with a lathe and a lot of skill if you don't want to crack or chip the tenon, whereas any ol' dummy with a 1/4" drill bit and hands can modify the shank of a cob.

You are right though, even though they don't look or feel very fancy the default amber plastic bits do certainly get the job done if you want to use a filter with your cob!