Polishing a Falcon stem

While visiting NJ last weekend my wife and I made our ritual flea market visit, and amongst a few other pipes, picked up two Falcons. This post is in the very preliminary stages, but I wanted to share my experience polishing the nylon Falcon Stems and see how my results compare to others. I know conventional wisdom says that its not a good idea to polish the stems because they will get fuzzy. Taking caution to the wind, I thought I would give it a try. I assumed that the biggest issue creating the fuzziness what overheating during sanding; at a small scale, the temperatures can be VERY hot. I figured I would do the sanding wet, in a bowl of ice water to keep things cool. I guess that helped (not sure), I went through 600, 1000, 2000, and 3000, I got it smoothed out, except for the worst parts that were in depressions… but it still didn't look great. I was reading that nylon absorbs a fair amount of moisture which makes it more flexible, causes it to expand, and I think softens it some. Machinists will bake it in the oven to get rid of this moisture making it easer to machine. At this point I thought I should try the heat gun; prior to the heat gun, but after the sanding I gave the Brebbia pipe stem polish a go, it helped, but not much. I had already tried a lighter to heat the plastic hoping it would melt and create a smooth surface, that didn't seem to help either. So I got out the heat gun and went to town, moving the stem around to heat it evenly without burning, this had no effect, but I figured it should drive out some of the moisture, possibly making it harder and therefor easier to polish. While still warm, I went after it with the stem polish and it really seemed to be working. I repeated the cycle 2 more times and I think the results were fairly good. As is often the case, it looks better in real life. Its not perfect, but much better; I also think that after the heat gun the Brebbia took out larger scratches that the sandpaper could not touch. At this point I'm not sure if it was the polish on a warm surface, or the actually loss of water in the nylon that made the difference, is was not the heat or the Brebbia alone without a doubt, I should have let the stem fully cool to have tested that. I thought I would share the results, but, these are very preliminary, following then could wreck your pipe… -David

The pipes

Very sad and smelly Falcons


Does anyone know what the different marking mean?



Stem as bought

After 2000 grit paper


The final result, I really does look better in person....

Now now now, Will, your the material scientist, Olive is just a temp fix.... -David

The olive oil will help hide some of the small scratches; I ended up not needing any on that stem. I'm just glad the heat didn't fry the plastic..... I wouldn't try it on anything that you would be heartbroken if it got wrecked...... -David

Thanks! I did soak those two Falcon bowls in near 100% (lab grade) alcohol.

They were really dirty, nasty, and ghosted with something horrid so I figured I would give it a try - not knowing if it was a good idea or not (I tend to try something first and then decide whether or not is was a good idea.....). I didn't have enough alcohol to cover them so I let them soak and periodically gave them a stir and went after the threads with a toothbrush; they were reamed first. The alcohol did seem to harm them, other than removing the wax (I don't recall if I needed to re-stain them or not . I soaked one other normal briar in alcohol and it seemed to do OK as well. I was willing to risk these bowls/pipes so I wasn't too worried and nothing bad seems to have happened, that said, it could be very risky with some pipes and I would not recommend it to someone who was not willing to accept risk. Luckily, most of the pipes that I have cleaned up didn't need anything so drastic! -David

They were fine, although one of them was used for my M79 smoke test..... it's now in lockdown -David

The Golden Nugget in Lambertville, it's a decent flea market. -David