I’m not about to saw this beautiful old Lee in two, to prove a point.
You still need to wire brush out the stummel and/or drill it out to fully remove the tar and oils. I strongly suggest and Ozone treatment as well. The stem will need a tremendous amount of cleaning inside as well. Not to mention trying to clean the metal parts where they sit inside of the wood. Then and only then will your pipe be brought back to life enough for tobacco reactions to interact with cleaned briar and produce an effect that is not soured. Ozone does wonders after a pipe is completely cleaned.
Again, all I know about pipes I had to learn on my own, and with help from my friends.
www.history.com
But what about okra?Again, all I know about pipes I had to learn on my own, and with help from my friends.
There once upon a time was an old man in Springfield Missouri, who along with his son ran a pipe shop across from Battlefield Mall. His heyday there was the late eighties to about the time of the cigar boom. His specialty was selling meerschaum pipes, mostly to Campbellite mothers, I suppose.
Springfield Missouri is home to more different Christian sects than any place on earth. It is the buckle of the Bible Belt.
OzarksWatch
thelibrary.org
My family, on both sides, were Scottish Campbellites. My mother would never say a word when she heard recitations about the Ozarks being founded by the Scots Irish, but I knew better than to lump drunken, superstitious Irishmen into the descendants of the Celtic mercenaries, so prized by the Romans they kept them them as hind guard to protect and advise Roman generals.
I had to avoid letting my mother see me wear something green on St Patrick’s Day. Campbellite mothers view St Paddy’s day as just another excuse for drunken Irishmen to drink green beer.
8 Facts About the Celts | HISTORY
The ancient Celts were a widespread group of tribes whose rich culture has been identified through burials, artifacts and language.
The old man had his shop in the same strip mall as an extremely popular hairstyling salon (beauty shop) across from Battlefield Mall.
No woman wages a battle more devotedly and successfully against the inevitable theft of her youthful beauty than a Campbellite mother. Before she needs to she’ll go to a beauty shop once a week for maintenance and repairs.
(For all of my life, I’ve never seen why other men get all stupid in the presence of beauty queens. Scottish Campbellite women look like that until they die, then another one does their hair and makeup so they are buried, beautiful.)
The old man was a quick enough merchant to cater to the next door Campbelitte queens and sell them the best grade of meerschaums they would gift to their sons, husbands, brothers and boyfriends. His tiny shop in the late 1980s was reputed to sell more dollar volume of meerschaum pipes than any other retailer on earth.
My mother bought me my Beckler carved meerschaum there, for my 30th birthday in 1988. I visited the shop soon after.
He had an entire series of those cutaway meerschaum pipes that illustrate the coloring process of meerschaum pipes.
I used to watch him show pipes to the former beauty pageant winners, now mothers, in that shop.
He said that a meerschaum boiled in beeswax colored much more quickly than one not cured in such a manner.
Meerschaum is extremely porous. The pipes are carved still wet, and boiled in beeswax. It’s not necessary to wear white gloves to smoke meerschaums, as once was thought.
Tobacco smolders at nearly a thousand degrees. Water boils at 212 at sea level.
The oil rich smoke from the burning tobacco travels though the meerschaum until it’s cool enough the beeswax traps it. Thence, the beautiful colors, are only just under the surface.
(And he’d show those mothers those cutaways)
If he ever missed a sale, I never saw it happen.
Every time I was in his shop he’d ask about Mama, and I never had the heart to tell him that he truly, didn’t want to know.
He was a widower, an extremely nice old man, and I’d watched Mama break the hearts of three husbands, at least a dozen fiancés, and beaus too numerous to count since my father died in 1971.
My mother, could play a guitar, and sing like a caroling angel.
So can Rhonda Vincent. Mama, would approve, she surely would, of Rhonda Vincent:
Last year at the age of 60, Rhonda Vincent was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry. My mother turned 62 in 1988.
But my mother, never had to dye her hair blonde. She would have, if it meant being part of the Grand Ole Opry, but she never had to, you know?
THE PRETTIEST FLOWER THERE
Rhonda Vincent
Many of us here did the same long before the internet and without knowing another pipe smoker.
Do you have any idea how derogatory that term is.?
I am so glad you chimed in on the last two points you made. A person who identifies and was raised with a certain identity ought to be able to use the terms they want. Otherwise a who genre of music needs to be tossed out the window. I did laugh at Kemosabe. @sablebrush52 's insight to add that to the phase was a great piece of modern pop culture humor. Laughter and humor. Please don't let those two sink into the sunset.
Once upon a time about 15 years ago my teenaged daughter was competing in local barrel racing contests and of course her mother and I attended every event until she was old enough to legally drive herself. After that we made most of them, just for her mother to embarrass her, if nothing else.Mr. Lee, Mr. Lee, Mr. Lee!
I challenge you to cut that piece of crap in two. If doing so proves you right, you'll have crowing credit for weeks. I'll send you the price of a new Lee Pipe.
But reality will show it's like this:
C'mon, belly up and do it.
If I cut any pipe in two, it should be the worst oil soaked of the three.
There were three oil soaked pipes from the same seller.
Don't think, just do it. This is NOT a case that can be won on rhetoric alone. Evidence, my friend. Evidence. Besides, our friendly moderator will forward you at least $9.00 for a better pipe.
There are mysteries in life that cannot be explained, but not many.
Noooooooo. You just made this up with your own set of alternative facts. That is NOT how science works.There are mysteries in life that cannot be explained, but not many.
I think I’ve solved this mystery, of why a pipe obviously colored by the oils of burning tobacco would, if cut apart, have only a thin layer of coloring on the outside and the inside, and none in the middle.
If the pipe was meerschaum, the reason is that the beeswax stops the closing from being taken through the pipe, then wiped off by cleaning.
This has been known since at least 1885, and probably much longer, as boiling meerschaum pipes in beeswax was old news, then.
Sacramento Daily Union 28 March 1885 — California Digital Newspaper Collection
California Digital Newspaper Collectioncdnc.ucr.edu
I’ve known that oils from my face will shine up a pipe since I’d see Harry Hosterman run his Grabow against his nose, going on sixty years ago.
If Harry had a meerschaum, those oils would have been a substitute for beeswax.
——
Beeswax has been used since prehistory as the first plastic, as a lubricant and waterproofing agent, in lost wax casting of metals and glass, as a polish for wood and leather, for making candles, as an ingredient in cosmetics and as an artistic medium in encaustic painting.Beeswax - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Beeswax is edible, having similarly negligible toxicity to plant waxes, and is approved for food use in most countries and in the European Union under the E number E901.
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Why, that a cut apart pipe will deceive reasonable people enough to have them deny their own eyes, that it’s been discolored by long use of burning tobacco, is quite simple to explain.
The man who smoked all three of my oil soaked pipes, loved them dearly.
He kept them oiled, perhaps waxed.
Occasionally he’d smoke one so many times the wood swelled up from trapped moisture and the shank on one even cracked.
But eventually the tobacco oils that beeswax stop in a meerschaum were stopped by the oils from his hands or face, on briar.
It takes much longer for tobacco oils to color briar than meerschaum, but the process and explanation, is the same.
