Stem tightener?

[andrew]

had this idea seems like a good place to throw it out there. I fixed a shop pipe with a loose tenon with CA on q tip to coat the mortise. seemed to add a thou or two. its invisible, isn't any more exposed to the draft than the epoxy used to glue a delrin tenon in or the epoxy in a shank extension, so is this a big faux pas or a magical fix? also considered sodium silicate might have worked as well, which for the boal coating crowd would be acceptable to have in contact with the airway. I'm sure making a new stem or expanding the tenon is the proper technique, but I was thinking the water glass or ca swab maybe followed by reamer would produce a clean tighter sized mortise. is there potential issues with the fit or someone gasping that their mortise is too shiny? is this ever an acceptable fix for a mid range pipe?

Coating and reaming a mortise must be done by hand, and an off-axis result is the too-likely outcome. Then you have a whole new can of worms to deal with. (Sometimes there is no choice but to rebuild a mortise, but when, why, and how is a whole different subject.)

Coating a tenon to enlarge it will never work on Delrin (for long), and depending on the pipe will eventually deteriorate on plastic and vulcanite. Some substances work better than others, and the solution is fine as a quick way to return a tobacco access device back to service, but a band-aid approach isn't a proper pipe repair, imo.

you can coat a mortise to improve the stem shank junction or what other repair calls for that? Seems like some serious pipe repair Kung fu I'm curious. also using a lot of delrin lately so if there's a loose tenon I take blame with morise and assume something moved or there was runout or vibration drilling the mortise, so my initial reaction is to blame the mortise for being oversized.. which would have me looking at the heat gun to change the delrin and then looking a the ca or the sodium silicate and thinking this stem feels like it needs about one or two thou to make I tight enough. seriously I understand that making a new tenon is the proper pproach, but if you really want to use delrin is it better to try and expand it? probably less of a consideration in a proper repair job, as a new pipe maker who likes to experiment when a flaw or mistake appears I would tend to fix it by changing the pipe like redrilling the mortise even making the shank shorter and refacing. is the coated mortise really just off the table for good results?

You can resize delrin, but not reliably. Its finicky when hot enought to melt. Don't do it.