Hi,
I've made two pipes with Walnut stummels/maple stems. They smoke great and I often prefer them over my traditional briar pipes. To me, the maple stems are more comfortable in my teeth and can actually take a lot of abuse.
NathanA wrote:I don't have an answer to this question but I have a related question of my own. With a wood stem how would you keep saliva from soaking and warping the wood right at the mouthpiece?
Hey Nathan, I was curious about the same thing, so with my 2nd maple stemmed pipe, I did a little finishing experiment. With my first pipe (not shown here), I only dry sanded to 600 and I've noticed the stem has some more teeth marks than on my second pipe and soaks up more saliva (it still has held up pretty well, though, and I smoke it fairly regularly).
On my second walnut/maple pipe (here is a pic of the 2nd pipe):
I wet sanded to 2000 grit and made a homemade slurry consisting of a tiny bit of shellac and mostly "fff" or very fine grade pumice and denatured alcohol (I worked that into the wood with each grit from 600 up, sanding with each grit twice, e.g. 600 grit with slurry, wipe off extra slurry, followed by 600 grit alone, repeating the same procedure with 800, 1000, 1200, 1500 and 2000 grits).
The slurry (and sanding to 2000 grit) has made the maple stem much harder than the maple bit on my first pipe and so far, it is holding up pretty well to this chomper. So far, no teeth marks and although the saliva makes the wax finish a little foggy after some use, I've buffed it out again and it shines right up again really nicely and, it is still much more comfortable than a traditional bit.
Here is a close up of the maple stem:
You can see more pics of my 2nd pipe in the gallery under "New Pipe Maker - 2nd pipe"