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I recently purchased a pipe that had a clear acrylic stem with airhole and slot that were dyed/painted black on the interior.

Once I brought it home I discovered the draw was really restricted due to the stem, so I drilled it out, thus loosing the black interior.

What is the best way to color the interor of an acrylic stem black?

Thanks for the help,
-Scott

Smoke 'em!



Tyler

Oh, and welcome to the forum Munkey! You'll find lots of useful information in here, just like may answer to this question.

In all seriousness, I have no idea what one might use stain acrylic. It is pretty impervious to such things, and whatever you use seems likely foul the smoke. If it was me, I think I'd just leave it alone. It will turn black over time. I'm sure it was stained so that it would be evenly black.


Tyler

Thanks for the welcome, Tyler. I'm looking forward to using the forums here as a reference as I tinker with pipe making/restoration/modification more and more.

-Scott

Tyler wrote:In all seriousness, I have no idea what one might use stain acrylic. It is pretty impervious to such things, and whatever you use seems likely foul the smoke.

Several pipe manufactures do this, BC, Radice, etc. even on some high end pipes, so I would expect there are ways to do this without adversely affecting the flavor.

-Scott

They may be casting a hollow rod or tube inside the acrylic. I'm guessing here, but that could be the case.

Interesting point, that would be one approach. However I doubt the stems I've seen have been done like this.

For one, the slot in the end of the BC is also black and the airhole was not a consistant diameter. Secondly, I've seen this on a radice twin-bore and highly doubt they cast around tubing that has been set up in the twin-bore configuration:



-Scott