LL
Well-known member
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2007
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Consider this a PipeWorld Public Service Announcement. :lol:
I just worked on a customer's pipe who had forwarded it from a well known retailer of new and estate pipes. Meaning it got under the radar of some experienced cleaner-upper dudes. It's a higher end piece worth a fair chunk of change, too, not the sort of pipe you'd expect to have been messed with by someone who's truly clueless, which adds to the sneak attack feel.
Why do I say clueless? This "refurbisher" is not only coating pipes with boat epoxy, he's doing it without first cleaning them. Either because he doesn't know how to remove the grime from the crevices of a sandblast or simply doesn't care, he just leaves it.
Here's a close up of the result (the gray areas are little pockets of dirt):
The Gotcha is that because you don't expect to find such a thing, you aren't looking for it. I've seen & cleaned up/refinished countless dirty sandblasts that had been hastily coated with conventional shellac, varnish, or lacquer for resale, so thought nothing of it, and since boat epoxy is designed as a wood finish it goes on quite thin and looks decent. (In retrospect, it did feel slightly more "hard shell like" than usual, but it was subtle.) It wasn't until an hour later, after nothing had touched the stuff including solvents that would remove polyurethane, that I realized what it was.
The point? If a well-known reseller got fooled, and I got fooled, you're gonna get fooled.
And make no mistake... it's there to stay forever. I doubt even re-sandblasting is an option because of the vast difference in hardness between wood and this sort of epoxy. The instant briar showed through in some areas and not others weird things would happen, I expect. (Any of you carver guys with a booth care to speculate?)
I just worked on a customer's pipe who had forwarded it from a well known retailer of new and estate pipes. Meaning it got under the radar of some experienced cleaner-upper dudes. It's a higher end piece worth a fair chunk of change, too, not the sort of pipe you'd expect to have been messed with by someone who's truly clueless, which adds to the sneak attack feel.
Why do I say clueless? This "refurbisher" is not only coating pipes with boat epoxy, he's doing it without first cleaning them. Either because he doesn't know how to remove the grime from the crevices of a sandblast or simply doesn't care, he just leaves it.
Here's a close up of the result (the gray areas are little pockets of dirt):
The Gotcha is that because you don't expect to find such a thing, you aren't looking for it. I've seen & cleaned up/refinished countless dirty sandblasts that had been hastily coated with conventional shellac, varnish, or lacquer for resale, so thought nothing of it, and since boat epoxy is designed as a wood finish it goes on quite thin and looks decent. (In retrospect, it did feel slightly more "hard shell like" than usual, but it was subtle.) It wasn't until an hour later, after nothing had touched the stuff including solvents that would remove polyurethane, that I realized what it was.
The point? If a well-known reseller got fooled, and I got fooled, you're gonna get fooled.
And make no mistake... it's there to stay forever. I doubt even re-sandblasting is an option because of the vast difference in hardness between wood and this sort of epoxy. The instant briar showed through in some areas and not others weird things would happen, I expect. (Any of you carver guys with a booth care to speculate?)
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