Use This Instead of Whale Oil or Beeswax

[jpmcwjr]

Best of all is from a White Whale.

 

[taazen]

Hi there. Would love to hear how it goes with the jojoba oil. I bought a bottle of it myself. Also, i got in contact with 2 beekeepers and got some nice beewax. One light yellow and the other almost light green. Different flora in different erea i guess. Anyway, the way i do it is, first i put on some jojoba oil with a q-tip, then i lid up the pipe and add beewax. The best way for me to put on beewax is that i use a cheese ore vegetable rasp, and just rasp the beewax over a paper towel and spreading it evenly. Then i melt it with a heat gun ore a hair dryer and i just hold it around my pipe and let it soake in. Continuing heating up and putting on as much needed. Im now thinking of experimenting with one of my meerschaum pipe. Want to use beewax on the upper part of the bowl, since it gets warmest there, and i can just put it straight on without melting it on the paper first. Then use jojoba oil at the lower part. The shank i want to let untouched. Just pure, clean meerschaum.You must excuse my poor English since I'm from Norway.) Greatings

 

[bigpond]

The fastest and easiest way to color a meer is with smoke. Put your pipe in a sealed jar. Blow pipe smoke in to the jar on occasion and keep the lid sealed. The pipe while color evenly and quickly. Beyond this, just put some tobacco in the bloody thing and go to town. Meer pipes are at their most dull when fully colored anyway. There's beauty in the wabi sabi nature of coloring your own pipe the old fashioned way imo.

 

[warren]

Don't you have to remove the wax first with the jar trick? Otherwise you just have old smoke sitting in the wax shell. So you are coloring the wax, not the meerschaum, right?

 

[gnesiohamartolos]

What is specifically illegal in the United States is transacting in spermaceti, the oil from the nasal cavity of sperm whales. This is the specific oil that the old masters used along with beeswax and other more dubious substances like beef suet to finish their pipes. The late French pipe carver, Philippe Bargiel, the same one who insisted on applying spermaceti to meerschaum, found jojoba oil to be chemically identical to spermaceti. Before he died, Fred Bass and I briefly discussed the use of jojoba esters instead of oil. White filtered (not chemically bleached) beeswax, jojoba oil and esters are all available on the Internet. I have experimented with beeswax melted with jojoba oil but have not tried esters.

The address below is for a set of pictures of a 19th century Ulmer variant and the rapid coloration induced by a beeswax-jojoba paste. The pipe has to be around 120 years old. The stummel was therefore filled with tobacco combustion byproducts. Apparently, the previous owner allowed the original wax coating to wear off so when I refinished it, the resulting coloration was drastic and swift.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/41273109@N02/16067109323/in/album-72157632472761650/

 

[mawnansmiff]

I'm still waiting for matey to answer Warren's question of how applying oil or wax to the bowl brings the tobacco tars and juices to the outer surface as if said oil or wax has magnetic properties :crazy:
As he quite rightly states, it's totally illogical.
Regards,
Jay.

 

[jpmcwjr]

I don't wax my meers, and have never seen a convincing post that shows it is in fact effective. I don't think it is.
But, rinsing the bowl in hot water right after a smoke does bring out some color, temporarily. Kinda a preview, methinks, of what it's going to look like in x number of additional smokes.

 

[cortezattic]

Jay, perhaps you should evaluate the ideas expressed in "Slave To The White Goddess", by Fred Bass. No proof is offered for the hypotheses, but I think the conjecture is reasonable. From my own experience I have witnessed how the color in a meer emerged as I was applying hot bee's wax to the surface. Magic!

 

[nevadablue]

I read (I think in the 'dad's pipe blog', that the wax acts as a solvent for the tars and oils that color the meerschaum. That stuff is permeated through the clay (meerschaum) and is drawn to the surface by the 'solvent' that you apply. That does make sense to me. Both of my poor old meerschaums need to be refurbished and neither have much color at the surface. Guess I will see.

 

[warren]

Unless the hard nax shell is removed before "waxing", you are simply putting wax on top of wax. Are you folks who wax meers removing the original wax? If the pipe shell is hard and smooth you would need to remove that shell before your wax could possible have any affect on the coloring process. Meerschaum is soft and porous, check the inner bowl on your pipe. I suspect most of you are simply putting wax on the original coating and the softly colored residues of the wax you are applying is giving you the idea that you are effecting the process. Bless you hearts! Have fun.

 

[akfilm]

Well warren, if they are Servi-Meers or cheaper, they are probably barely waxed as it is. I've had to rewax servi's to keep them from falling apart. Now, my vintage CAO I'm going nice and slow, I'm using a coloring bowl to establish a base, soon I'll start smoking from the pipe itself. More than one way to skin a bear.

Oh, I need to practice with a new cinema camera, if you are off shooting this fall and want a smoking and shooting partner, let me know!

 

[saintpeter]

Interesting thread. This one was smoked and waxed a couple times. The chocolate came and the chocolate went.

Unless the hard nax shell is removed before "waxing", you are simply putting wax on top of wax.

if they are Servi-Meers or cheaper, they are probably barely waxed as it is.

The Servi I am messing with is well waxed. However it does seem to have a hard shell under it that has crazed. Has not had any effect on the smoke. Impossible to know what it has on it as it was an un-smoked estate and who knows what the original owner put on it (if anything). I will say after two weeks of 5 bowls a day the shank is yellowing.
I am not using beeswax, paraffin or 10w-40 on it. Whale oil?
SAVE THE WHALES! COLLECT THE WHOLE SET!