Anyways, still been working on meerschaums (including occasionally getting Turkish meer with stems from suppliers on those rare occasions that "Turkish-legal" meer is available--and yes, it's a dream to work with at times
), and also been doing a bit of research on things too.Nowadays, most people finish meers with beeswax (due, in part, to the general unavailability of spermaceti which is of course not available on the market anymore) and people have complained that Turkish meers don't "colour like they used to".
I also tend to do candlemaking as a side hobby and known people who make their own hand cremes and such, and (in my research) found the following interesting things:
a) Spermaceti actually has quite a bit of a lower melting point than beeswax (around 47-50 degrees C--around 120 degrees F--as compared to beeswax's melting point around 70 degrees C or 160ish degrees F)
b) Cosmetics makers (who were one of the major users of spermaceti) use stuff other than beeswax as substitutes--namely, jojoba wax (which, whilst not identical, has very similar properties to spermaceti) and cetyl esters of coconut origin (which *is* pretty much an exact substitute both chemically and property-wise).
As a result of this, I've begun a new experiment--instead of using beeswax, I am using cetyl esters (obtained from a cosmetics company) to finish meerschaums with. (One pipe of mine which I had originally finished with beeswax and was *starting* to colour got de-beeswaxed (by melting off as much as I could) and refinished with cetyl esters--it's colouring quite a bit quicker and more impressively now. There is also a newer pipe which I only used cetyl esters on to finish, so we'll see how well that one colours in the end.)
One thing I have noticed is that wax melts quicker and cools slower, so it probably impregnates the meerschaum better than beeswax does.
If my little experiment works, this could be a *very* viable alternative in making "old fashioned" meerschaums--cetyl esters are available at rates actually cheaper than beeswax in the "make your own cosmetics" trade, are whale-friendly (they use coconut oil as the base), and may well work as well in pipe finishing as spermaceti.
For the three of you still working in meers
, figured I might pass that along as a possible handy hint.
