Meerschaum Guidance?

Wash your hands before you smoke it. Pipe cleaner or paper towel / napkin inside the bowl after each smoke. Pipe cleaners down the stem after each smoke (mine does not go thru to the bowl so I separate the stem from the bowl after 15 - 30 minutes). After all of the above is done I return it to its case.

I do a bees wax treatment every early winter or when the temp gets too cold outside to smoke it. This is when I get the ah hah moment as the colors from spring, summer and fall smokes pop out.  I have a thread around here that I will continue to post pics each time I do the bees wax treamtn.

All good advice.

I've only ever wiped the bowl and the chamber with unscented baby wipes. I run a bristle pipe cleaner down the stem, but never in the chamber as it can cause some major scoring.

Question for the experts out there.  I am smoking my meerschaum poker at least 4-6 times a week, for 8 weeks now.  I what point should I start to see any coloring appear? As of yet there as been no coloring at all. 

I got it off ebay from a seller with good ratings.  The posting said it was block meerschaum but I am not sure how else to tell. 

+1

I have a full bend Dublin from Tekin that is the same. Smoked it for years and it's only slightly changing color. No spotting at all anywhere. 

My other Meers have colored up pretty quickly in general. 

Thanks just finished reading it. Guess I am going to need to pick up some beeswax

I have a number of Meerschaums and really enjoy them. You can smoke back to back bowls in them, jump from an aro to a Virginia with no ghosting (though I'm not really an aro fan I do imbibe on rare occasions). I have three from the same carver in Turkey and they color up at different rates. How fast it darkens and how dark it gets is really pretty random.

First forum post - I just want to mention how I clean the outside of the bowls. I have a lot of estate meers - many in very abused condition. For smooth bowls (or aboriginals) I generally dampen a soft cotton cloth with 70% isopropyl alcohol, wipe the outside of the bowl as many times as necessary to get the look I want, then polish with Clapham's Beeswax polish. I have also used Ren wax, and it works nicely. The only issue I've had with Everclear, as I've used it some on the inside of bowls (first time cleaning only, after reaming), is that if you get it on the top of the rim before you have all the carbon cleaned off, it's going to simply dilute and fade it and the result might not be what you want; also, the resulting nasty liquid can drip down the side of the bowl if you are not careful.

That's my two cents. After smoking I wipe the inside of the bowl clean with a wadded up paper towel. No issues - my estate meers are great smokers.

This thread (and writing out a response to it) got me thinking about the process I use - perhaps I had forgotten something. So I took out an abused, heavily-colored meer and began cleaning it. The bowl was horrid and even the rim was caked with carbon - I was flicking off chunks with my 'oyster knife' reamer. After scraping the top down to the original level and cleaning the inside of the bowl, I thought I was just going to wipe it down with alcohol a few times, then polish with beeswax, but it didn't work out that way.

The alcohol took some stuff off, but not enough, so I began scrubbing diligently with pure Murphy's Oil, rinsing with water, drying immediately, repeating. I did this three times. At that point it was nice and clean. Time to wax.
The last time I used Clapham's beeswax on an old heavily colored meeer, I put on too much and it was very stickly and difficult to polish. Not so in this case. The meer absorbed the Clapham's immediately and continued to do so each time I rubbed on a coat. I found myself just rubbing beeswax into the meerschaum until the color started coming back (it would initially be colorful, then would fade as it dried). The pipe ended up gorgeous, but it was a little nerve-wracking at times.

okay, all done. I won't bother you with 'before and after' pics now, but will do so at some point in the future if I become an accepted respectable forum member.

“ if I become an accepted respectable forum member.”

We are all learning from one another here.
Thanks for your contributions, I always pick up a thing or two, and that is the case in this thread.

I have one inexpensive meerschaum that I've done nothing more to than wipe out the bowl after I'm done. This means that I have "gasp" touched it with my fingers lots of times. The more expensive two I have been careful to smoke only while wearing a glove or other cover in order to avoid darkening from skin oils. I suspect that this is either a snobbish affectation or based on something I read once. Truthfully, though, the big "consenting adult" 'schaum has been handled very carefully and smokes very well. I have hopes that certain spots will darken before others...LOL...but realistically I would just be happy if it hit the golden brown hue that so many loved meerschaums seem to have.