Help!...kaywoodie problems...

My '57 Kaywoodie had a crooked stem also and the previous owner repaired it in a hack kind of way ... but it works ... he unscrewed the stem and put a drop of clear finger nail polish on the plastic stem (the flat surface that will mate with the wooden surface) and then screwed the stem back in leaving it in the correct position and then left it alone so the finger nail polish could dry. Once dry it essentially fixed the problem because now the stem only screws in to that thickness of the finger nail polish, until it hits the mating wood wall of the shank. I realize how hack this really sounds but when the pipe stem is screwed on you simply can't tell. The angular misalignment between shank and stem when translated to the pitch of the screw thread means the effective gap this finger nail polish filled was probably .005/.010" thick and is not noticable.

Sorry, no help on the bowl coating.

If it's misaligned so that the bowl cants toward the right when you have it in your mouth, that means it's still pretty close to new condition. Kaywoodie knew that, over time, removing and reattaching the stem would wear the threads, little by little. So they manufactured them to tilt the bowl rightwards so that as it wore it would eventually tilt the bowl more correctly straight-ish.

If it's misaligned so that the bowl cants toward the left, that means it's been used so much that the threads have been quite worn. Another way to correct a bad tilt is to carefully cut out doughnut-shaped paper shims and fit them around the stinger. It doesn't usually take a very thick shim to correct the tilt.

This ain't all that wicked hard and works like a champ. I've done it myself a couple times.

http://www.grayfoxon...

As for finish inside the bowl, sorry but I can be of little help as most of my KWs are 70-80 years old and have long since lost any finish they may have had on the inside of the bowl.

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Sorry, anywhere here's what the link said,
1. Boil some water

2. When water is at a rolling boil, insert the stinger into the boiling water for several minutes The idea here is to heat up the stinger evenly and without wharping it, to soften the bond between stinger and the bit.

3. CAREFULLY adjust stinger with needlenosed pliers. Plastic coated ones or optimum but any kind of barrier to prevent metal to metal contact is OK. Also when adjusting, the grab point on the stinger should be above the threads.

4. Which way? For over-turned stems (stem lists to the right as you're looking at it in the pipe) turn the stinger counterclockwise; for under-turned stems listing to the left turn clockwise

yeah...the stem is under-turned...such that the bowl would slant off to the right if the pipe were in my mouth...so that good...I mean everything looks pretty new...and if they dip stained to reduce production time, which would make sense...then the stuff on the inside of the bowl would completely make sense...

anyway...thanks for the help on how to fix the stem alignment problem.

Cheers,

Josh

I was having that same problem with an Estate Brewster I picked up recently. That suggestion with the boiling water worked like a charm, thanks!!

I have a Kaywoodie (actually it's Mayfair), which, as I realized now after reading this thread, is a bit worn out.

I am not sure I will try the procedure with boiling water since the problem with that pipe is more serious. The draw through the stem alone is too tight. The channel is plain too narrow. Considering that the "tenon" is made of metal there is not much I can do without risking to ruin the pipe completely.

I didn't touch this pipe for a while, now I remember why I came to conclusion that KW's are not for me.