12/20/2025
I stumbled upon this property three or four years ago when I threw my own soapstone bowl into the camp fire to clean it out, a practice I'd done many times before with clay pipes. The result was as noted in the article, a much harder bowl, though in the process the blackened, soot and beeswax based finish I had put on the bowl was burned off and replaced with an interesting sort of swirly pattern embedded in the grain of the stone, put there by the smoke from the fire. I liked the pattern so much I never bothered to try and re-blacken the stone.
Since then I've occasionally and haphazardly sold pipes with fire hardened soapstone bowls off my table, but this year I'm going to start offering them regularly to the extent my customers appreciate and call for them. To everyone else that buys or has in the past bought a regular soapstone bowl from me I offer this tip for hardening their bowl if they so desire.
950° C will morph steatite to enstatite.
(950° C = 1742° F)
The temperature of orange flames in a campfire ranges from 1800°-2100° F. Blue flames are even hotter. (Coals only get from 600°-1100° F, so firing the stone in a brazier won't cut it.)
Thermal shock is not a huge issue with steatite, but if you want to play it safe preheat the bowl before putting directly in the fire, either next to the fire or in an oven.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1A1PSAobpy/
A guest blog on the well-attested stone known as steatite from experimental technologist Matt Szafran… Steatite, sometimes called ‘soapstone’, is a green/grey/brown coloured metamorphic rock …
