It was bound to happen. I dropped my pipe and the stem broke at the tenon. To make matters worse the tenon was stuck in the mortise. However, I was able to remove the tenon from the mortise and reattach it to the stem; but not without some difficulty.
To remove the mortise, I simply screwed in a wood drywall screw by hand and used a pair of pliers to yank that bad boy out. Reattaching the tenon to the stem was a bit more tricky. Initially I thought it would be an easy fix because it was a fairly clean break. I applied some super glue, let it cure for more than a day, attached it to the pipe, and SNAP, off it came! No worries. Let's do this again. Cleaned off the super glue from the damaged pieces with wifey's nail polish remover, reapplied, yadda, yadda, yadda, and SNAP! Happened again. "This is getting frustrating!"
I decided to look for answers online and found information on how to bend vulcanite stems using heat. Apparently the heat softens the stems making them easy to bend. I figures this should work with reapplying the tenon as well. So, to make an already long story short, it worked and my pipe is back and in full effect. My wife was so happy I didn't have to buy a replacement. Good thing because I saw a beauty on smokingpipes.com!
Sam
To remove the mortise, I simply screwed in a wood drywall screw by hand and used a pair of pliers to yank that bad boy out. Reattaching the tenon to the stem was a bit more tricky. Initially I thought it would be an easy fix because it was a fairly clean break. I applied some super glue, let it cure for more than a day, attached it to the pipe, and SNAP, off it came! No worries. Let's do this again. Cleaned off the super glue from the damaged pieces with wifey's nail polish remover, reapplied, yadda, yadda, yadda, and SNAP! Happened again. "This is getting frustrating!"
I decided to look for answers online and found information on how to bend vulcanite stems using heat. Apparently the heat softens the stems making them easy to bend. I figures this should work with reapplying the tenon as well. So, to make an already long story short, it worked and my pipe is back and in full effect. My wife was so happy I didn't have to buy a replacement. Good thing because I saw a beauty on smokingpipes.com!
Sam
