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I was working on my first olive wood pipe this past week and have a question. I was sanding the shank with the stem in place and was having a problem with the ebonite dust coloring the olive wood. I've never had this issue with briar and was thinking this was probably due to how oily the olive wood is or maybe it's more porous?

Anyway, has anyone else ever had this problem? Any solutions? I just had to go back and very carefully sand all the black dust off the wood only without hitting the stem and without really removing any of the olive wood.

use acrylic stems.

caskwith wrote:use acrylic stems.

Are you speaking for making pipes in general or specifically for olive wood?

I think you could try and see if a solvent, such as denatured alcohol will take off the ebonite dust. I can't say I've made an olive wood pipe with a flush fit stem before, though, so I'm mostly guessing.

Strange, I've never had that problem with olive.
Although, it was years ago that I last worked with it.

JMG wrote:

caskwith wrote:use acrylic stems.

Are you speaking for making pipes in general or specifically for olive wood?

Well personally I like polyester as everyone knows but if you are having trouble with the ebonite dust, which is very dark and "stainy" then switch to acrylic which will not have this problem.

FWIW I do prefer acrylic over ebonite, I just don't like working with it, too hard for my liking.

Thanks guys.