Pre and Final Staining

The pipe makers stain of choice is Fiebings leather dye. It comes in a variety of colors and if none of those suit your fancy, you can mix them to your heart’s content. It is readily available at Fiebings own website. All it takes to apply the dye is a pipe cleaner.

Pre-staining is optional, but does lead to a finished pipe with greater grain contrast. It involves staining the whole pipe in black, or a darker dye color, and then sanding it away, with the highest grit you finished sanding at, until only the stain deeply absorbed into the grain remains.

Whether you pre-stain or not, final staining comes next. It is quick and simple. Using a pipe cleaner, stain the whole pipe with your desired color, working quickly so you don’t get a blotchy finish. One coat usually does the trick, but if you want a darker finish go for a second. Oh, and our friend Wayne Teipen would be disappointed with us if we didn’t stress the fact that you should never stain your chamber! Just stick a cork in the chamber (no joke) before you begin and then stain away. Let the pipe dry to the touch (about 10 minutes if it’s not very humid) before continuing.

Buffing

Ahhhhh you’re almost there. Now ideally you would have a benchtop buffing setup for this. We use a bench grinder with the guards and grinding stones removed, replaced with muslin and flannel buffing wheels. If you don’t have this setup, you can get miniature buffing wheels for your Dremel/rotary tool.

You’ll want to get yourself some red or brown tripoli compound and carnauba wax. Get your buffing wheels spinning and hold the tripoli compound up to the muslin wheel for just a couple of seconds to apply it to the wheel. Bring your pipe up to the wheel (steady now) and begin to buff the whole pipe. Make sure you have a firm grip on the pipe and don’t push it into the wheel too aggressively or it will rip it out of your hands and bounce it all over your shop (as Phil can attest to MANY times). Tripoli compound is actually a very very fine abrasive that removes teeny tiny scratches from the surface of the pipe.

Finally, repeat on the flannel wheel with the carnauba wax. This is when your work will really start to shine and your diligent sanding proved, because if your pipe still has scratches, this is when they will show up. But, we know you’ve done a flawless job!