buffing pipe stems

Erik asked a few weeks ago for advice from everyone on keeping his Peterson vulcanite mouthpieces black and shiny. In the following post I share my own methods, but everyone has a recipe and it would be great if you would share what works for you in the comments section below. There are three parts to consider, and your answer to any or all will be much appreciated by both Eric and myself:  How do you keep a new vulcanite mouthpiece and button black and shiny? If a mouthpiece or button is discolored or sun faded, what do you do to bring it back to black? If you’ve got a button with dental chatter, how do you remove it? The mouthpieces chosen for this post are from the 2005 Antique Collection, seen here after their restoration. They're not Systems but what Charles Peterson called "Peterson Patent Lip" pipes and are the best Peterson army mounts I've ever smoked. The mouthpieces are replicas of the Patent-era design, seen in the graceful expansion of the truly graduated mouthpiece as it travels toward the mortise. These were made by Gawith-Hoggarth, one of Peterson's mouthpiece outsourcers, c. 2005-2010. There is nothing more comfortable for a pipe smoker than a vulcanite mouthpiece. Amber? Beautiful, expensive and hard as glass. Dental marks easy to make and impossible to remove. Acrylic? Slippery and difficult to clench, not as hard as amber. Artisan-grade hand-poured acrylic is easily chipped by your teeth. The only thing better than vulcanite is a well-made vulcanite P-Lip. Pete Freeks know it and we don’t care about those who “can’t stand it” because that leaves more estate pipes for us, right? It’s true that oxidation is and always has been the downside to vulcanite, but in recent years it has become much easier to control and remedy, which probably explains why the “acrylic-is-the greatest” craze seems to be coming to an end, especially for those who want versatility and comfort in their pipes and not just a hand-held showpiece. I remember when there wasn’t much you could do about oxidation except take your pipe to the brick & mortar and ask them if they could buff it for you. At mine they’d do it, but it usually took a week or two and when I got the pipe back the green button might be (mostly) gone, but in no way did the mouthpiece look obsidian-black, as-new. Not too many years into my journey as a pipeman someone told me I could apply toothpaste on the button to remove the nasty, sour-tasting green and gray patch. It worked, somewhat, but left the button discolored. As for sun fading? Not much to do about it but try to shine the mouthpiece up to a brown & shiny. Fast forward 40 years and there’s pipe smokers who get seriously upset if there’s even a touch of discoloration on the button. They remind me of the “white spot” fellows A. A. Milne (author of Winnie the Pooh and…