Ideas for a Meer Lined Grabow

[Woodrow1953]

i did a trade with a Brigham collector for a bag of old pipes. I wanted to make some vulcanite and briar dust for refurb. I found a couple of pipes that had promise.

One is a old meer lined Grabow. The liner had failed a long time ago. The pipe was thick with varnish, and the stummel was unusually heavy. There’s a lot of wood to work with.
With a good alcohol soak I got lucky and the liner fell away from the pipe.

The varnish was very heavy. Tough to take off, and I wanted to lighten the pipe a bit. I had work to do.
One problem is the size of the bowl with the missing liner. It’s immense! Im going to swab a little JB weld in the walls of the pipe and add a coating on top of the pipe. Not sure what else I could do.
Im going to dye the pipe a light brown, but I’m not sure whether to work on the pipe surface and remove all the black divots or not.






What do you think pipers? I’ve added before and after pics to show where I’m at.

[Wildcat]

I believe @Thelonious monkfish has a KW Meer lined with missing meer my dad smoked for a very short while. I believe it was a hand-me-down to my dad from my Papa Jim. I reamed it down to wood and it was a dust collecting piece of my childhood but with no real sentimental value so I moved it on.

All that said, maybe Alex has plans for it, he's quite the
pipe restorer!!

[Silver]

You could rusticate the big, open area on the sides of the bowl and blend it into what's left of the existing.

[kschatey]

Know a local potter? Maybe a clay bowl insert could be made.

[Wildcat]

Know a local potter? Maybe a clay bowl insert could be made.

That sounds kinda cool actually!!

[Piping Abe]

I would think you could leave it as is and smoke it without the Meer liner since it is briar. I think the rustication is very unique.

[kschatey]

Know a local potter? Maybe a clay bowl insert could be made.

That sounds kinda cool actually!!

Yeah, seems like it would be pretty easy to press something into the pipe to get an impression to make a mold, then use that to make the bowl add the hole, fire it, and then set the liner bowl back into the pipe.

[Woodrow1953]

How do you think I could reduce the size of the bowl. I’ve already added a thin layer of JB Weld. I’m just concerned how a bowl this big would actually smoke.

[Piping Abe]

I think the consesus is that anything over and inch and a quarter is too big for burn characteristics. Under that, your good.

[Ronv69]

JB Weld is an epoxy, great for fixing engine blocks, but I would not like to smoke it. I would really hate trying to remove it from the pipe too. It's a decorative piece now.