Resting a Meerschaum Pipe for a Week
- Thread starter aspiring_sage
- Start date
SmokingPipes.com Updates
Watch for Updates Twice a Week
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
Site Sponsors
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
This is my thought. I like to watch the process from the beginning. All my own hard work!
The reason to rest a meerschaum is to prevent the screws that hold the nylon mortise joint from becoming too wet and disintegrating. You’d cry, if that happened.
Here’s the best guide I know of about the coloring and care of meerschaum pipes, from SMS pipes:
Yes that article seems accurate to me. I left my bent billiard in a hot jeep one day out of it's case, and the stem straightened out. Boiled water solved that problem. But how often do you guys change the tenon's or mortises? Is that common? I was shocked when one of mine came with a replacement.
Oh man you are really eating up the wive's tales. The only thing that will cause damage to those threads is repeated removal of the inserts.
Good to know, kinda what I figured, just got a little shocked reading that info lol
It might be an old meerschaum seller’s sales trick, and if so it was a good one.
For my thirtieth birthday my mother gave me a Beckler carved meerschaum that is smoldering right now on the table in front of me. It’s a large, beautiful pipe of the kind you smoke around company so they can admire your meerschaum pipe.
Mama reminded me the gift came with a lifetime inspection and replacement warranty on the nylon tenon, from the shop she bought in from in Springfield.
Well, I had to get my tenon inspected there the next time I was in Springfield and my, what a glorious operation they had operating there.
The distinguished and dapperly dressed silver haired shop owner remembered selling my mother my Beckler and pronounced the tenon in excellent condition. Behind him and in front of him were meerschaums displayed in glass cases, and while he had small ones for a hundred dollars and enormous, huge ones (like the one he had out all beautifully colored on an island that enclosed his elevated chair) for a thousand dollars, the vast majority of his meerschaums cost from $200 to $500, with more $300ish dollar pipes than all others.
He solemnly informed me, that he’d smoked his huge display so much, that a CAO rep came by with Beckler himself, and THE Beckler cautioned him to rest his pipe, and he saved it from damage just in time.
If a meerschaum was smoked too much, and the screws in the shank were water damaged, he showed me a pipe that had a repair with a sort of collet that was inserted to refresh the screw threads.
After that, he remarked my mother claimed I loved fine briar pipes, and would I like to see his collection of previously owned pipes for sale?
Which is how I started accumulating pre war large ball four hole stinger Kaywoodies, Stanwells, Baris, Comoy’s, etc. I also bought several lower grade Italian pipes from him new.
I suppose a meerschaum might be smoked until it was so soggy the tenon screw disintegrated, but the average owner of a big meerschaum babies his expensive bauble and wouldn’t do that anyway.
What free inspection and replacement policies for the nylon tenon did, was get customers coming back to the shop,
Lee,may I ask you how old exactly is your CAO Bekler pipe and did he signed his name on the pipe at that time?
I turned 30 in April 1988.
That store in Springfield closed about the early 2000s. I must have only visited about once or twice a year during the 90s.
The owner was distressed over the cigar boom. He had to build a humidor. The same women that would spend hundreds on a fine meerschaum got angry when they discovered their husbands were spending over a hundred dollars for a box of smelly, nasty cigars. His meerschaum pipe sales dwindled down, until finally the shop was gone
There must have been a huge mark up in meerschaum pipes, once upon a time.
But I’d guess the lions share of his customers were women buying them as gifts. Pipes and pipe tobacco pleased the ladies, while stogies stunk up their homes.
Last edited:
Cool story..Thanks for posting it!!!i am just trying to date my Bekler so this info is helpful..
maybe mine is coloring quite quickly. And I tend to smoke it a bit for a while then ignore it for a long time. And I really don't smoke that sucker all that often. Honestly it's my least favorite pipe. Mainly because it just doesn't weigh enough and that tactile aspect is apparently more important to me then I would have figured.
Not that I could attest to. Meerschaums are extremely variable though, being a natural substance.
Multiple carvers have told me the wax does nothing more than protect the surface of the pipe.
