Stanwell bowl coating

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mark

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My new Stanwell 124 Revival just arrived. I'm pretty impressed (my first Stanwell), no fills and a great high luster finish. However the bowl has a heavy charcoal coating I'm not wild about. Before I stoke it up I'd like some opinions on this coating. I'm leaning towards sanding it out and starting from scratch.
 
mark":8rh6e8vw said:
My new Stanwell 124 Revival just arrived. I'm pretty impressed (my first Stanwell), no fills and a great high luster finish. However the bowl has a heavy charcoal coating I'm not wild about. Before I stoke it up I'd like some opinions on this coating. I'm leaning towards sanding it out and starting from scratch.
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I just got my first Stanwell too a 126 Majestic which does have a few small fills. It has the bowl coating as well, which I decided to leave for now. I have smoked it three times trying to build the cake and I notice with each bowl full I get less of what I perceive to be this coating's flavor. Several months ago I got a new Savinelli with a coating in the bowl that was so disgusting at the first bowl I sanded it out. It's smoked excellent since. I wanted to leave it in the Stan. just to see how well it does, for future purchases.
 
My Stanwell Nanna Ivarsson had an excessive bowl coating, I just grabbed some paper towels and vigorously rubbed out as much as I could. Firmly wadded up dry paper towel followed by a very quick wipe with alcohol dampened towel, then more dry paper towel. Most of the material came out with the first round of dry paper towel. Let it dry a couple hours, experienced no issues or off tastes. (Be careful not to let any alcohol touch the exterior finish).

I really wish makers would stop with the bowl coatings, they suck and are not necessary.
 
I'm an avid Stanwell fan. Coating doesn't bother me. However a good many times bowl coating can cover inner bowl flaws not easily sanded away.

Dave
 
I don't think the Stanwell coating is bad, but it doesn't add anything. I've had stanwells that took about 30 smokes before I could taste anything, so maybe that's the coating...
 
The thing about their current bowl coating, it's a dry powder that rubs right off on your finger and wipes out pretty easily. At least if you don't want it, it's not hard to get rid of.
 
Puff Daddy wrote:

Stanwell Nanna Ivarsson had an excessive bowl coating, I just grabbed some paper towels and vigorously rubbed out as much as I could. Firmly wadded up dry paper towel followed by a very quick wipe with alcohol dampened towel, then more dry paper towel. Most of the material came out with the first round of dry paper towel. Let it dry a couple hours, experienced no issues or off tastes. (Be careful not to let any alcohol touch the exterior finish).

I scored an awesome pipe this week off eBay on the cheap, a Ferndown REO. I tried the technique above and found out that it wasn't a bowl coating but instead burgundy stain. However, in so doing, using a wadded piece of paper towel, I could get nothing out from inside the bowl. I then used a medicine dropper, in moderation, to apply grain alcohol to the towel, and that's when I discovered that this was stain, not bowl coating. Although I got some out, I found that in so doing I'd already managed to remove some of the good stain on the inner lip of the bowl.

My question is, how do I keep the alcohol away from the rim while successfully getting the stain out?
 
alfredo_buscatti":7bb14sod said:
My question is, how do I keep the alcohol away from the rim while successfully getting the stain out?
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If you have some pipe-polishing wax (like Paragon) you can wax up the rim of the bowl and let it dry a bit. It's not a perfect alcohol-proof seal, but it's something, and you'll wipe away to a nice polished rim, too.
 
alfredo_buscatti":j8m3rduc said:
My question is, how do I keep the alcohol away from the rim while successfully getting the stain out?
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A small wooden dowel, chopstick, or pencil with a bit of sandpaper rolled around it. Works every time.
 
As far as the Stanwell coatings, I have 2 majestics and a Golden Danish (63, 191 & 113 respectively) in which the coatings were not a problem whatsoever and I left it in. All broke in just fine in a relatively short period of time. I also have a Stanwell Nanna which had a ridiculous amount of the powdery coating in the bowl. A finger dipped in it came out mostly black. I cleared most of it out with a paper towel before the first smoke, and it also broke in relatively quickly and is one of my favorite pipes to boot! It seems as if a different coating was used on the lower end ones than on the Stanna.
 
Mark,
My Stans Smoke just fine with the coating. I found they break in real well. Not sure if it is the coating or the wood or both. They all had a weird taste to start with which very quickly disappeared.
Congats on your score and smoke well!
 
Thanks everyone for coming to my aid. I've never had to deal with stain inside the bowl. So, with pencil wrapped with Evercleared paper towel, and beeswax on the rim, I shall endeavor to persevere, in the words of Chief Dan George in "The Outlaw Josey Wales," today.

Haven't y'all heard about never leaving the bowl coating in-but which in my case is stain, not a coating-but whatever the material, that doing so impedes the briar from getting that long-term seasoning that really adds to the taste of the pipe? Old Brit wood was used as an example, Dunnies, Comoys and Charatans from the 30s-50s were selected for praise in this regard. It was said that leaving it in and smoking it fused the coating/stain into the wood, forever preventing this type of seasoning.
 
I cannot begin to imagine that such a renowned label as Ferndown would ever put stain inside a bowl. If it takes an ~hour more to apply it to the exterior bowl and not get it in the interior bowl, so what? How could this practice ever become a way to shave time off making a pipe, and to continue to sell it competitively, while just getting a little more money?

If I had run into this practice on a Pete or Stanwell, I would understand, but on a Ferndown?

I was about to get to work with sandpaper and dowel when I remembered the cotton ball/Everclear method of eliminating unwelcome, remnant tobacco-tastes. As reactive as the interior bowl was to a bit of Everclear yesterday, I'm hoping that this broadside will save me a lot of sanding work.

(For any who would like to try this technique, use an egg carton and rip off the top, then pull pieces of an egg compartment divider so that when the pipe is left to soak, the bowl rests in one egg hole and the shank can tilt upward more gradually, where you tore off a bit of the divider, preventing the alcohol from entering the shank).
 
Here's the kicker: if dunk stained, the stain is in the shank. I sand bowls of dunk stained pipes and then go the alcohol and bristle cleaner route for the shank.

Buddy
 
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