Question on stem fit

Brothers of Briar

Help Support Brothers of Briar:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Puffer Mark

Puffer Mark

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 14, 2014
Messages
169
Reaction score
0
Greeting brothers.

An appeal to your greater experience:

Being of necessity a buyer of estates, it sometimes happens that I purchase a pipe which does not have a perfectly flush stem fit. By this I mean that when held up to the light either side on or from above or below, there appears a small wedge of light between stem and shank, either above, below or on either side.

Any suggested remedies?
 
Most of my pipes show light if held up and tilted just so. We're talking about a hair's breadth, right? I'm tempted to say all my pipes have a tiny gap, but I'm not going to test every one just to make a point. I looked at my Dunhills and Castellos; that should be good enough for a generalization.

If we're talking something more serious, I believe fixing it requires a special tool, technique, and skill. I could go on, but it would soon become evident that I'm a blowhard who doesn't know what he's talking about.
 
Yeah, Richard, I hear ya. Probably just my anal retentiveness coming to the fore. Just though there may a be quick fix.

Thanks.
 
Puffer Mark":beuqtdmq said:
it sometimes happens that I purchase a pipe which does not have  a perfectly flush stem fit. By this I mean that when held up to the light either side on or from above or below, there appears a small wedge of light between stem and shank, either above, below or on either side.

Any suggested remedies?
Click to expand...
Happens many times with the "italian" Stanwell pipes, they can not compared with the old Danish pipes.There is no only one thing that you must do, depends from the situation: you have to work on the stem face or inside the shank or "pump" the tenon.
 
You'll find this with a lot of non-hand made pipes and even some lower end hand mades.
What you can do is.............oh hell! It's so much simpler to just give me a call and I'll tell you over the phone instead of typing a dang paragraph what I could say in 2-3 minutes how to do it.
PM me and I'll give ya my number. ;)

Oops! your across the big pond. :fpalm:
 
A simple DIY approach to true up the face of the stem is to drill a tenon-sized hole in a flat piece of hardwood (or aluminum stock if you prefer). Clamp a piece of sandpaper to the stock and use a sharp knife to trim out the excess sandpaper from your tenon hole.

Then just slip the tenon through the sandpaper and hole in the stock and hold the face of the stem flat to the paper as you give it a few twists. This will square up the face without messing up the tenon.

Of course, this also assumes that the shank end is still square on your estate pipe. :D You could always make up a "male" version of the sanding jig to square the shank end by gluing an appropriately sized dowel into the sandpaper-board.
 
Thank you so much for all your inputs, gents. Thanks to your generosity and helpfulness, I now have a few options to weigh up.

Mark.
 
Top