Bristled Cleaners in Acrylic Stem

[tmgaus51]

Hey guys, can you put my mind at ease? I just got a beautiful new fully bent pipe, but it requires a bit of a twist in order to get a pipe cleaner fully through it. I decided to practice mostly with bristled cleaners, and went through about 100 or so. Any chance I did any real damage to the stem's internals?

Thanks,
Dave

 

[dmcmtk]

? Why wouldn't you just take the stem out of the pipe (when cold) to clean it? But to more answer your question, the bristles shouldn't do any harm, however, care should be taken with the "sharp" tip of the cleaner. The best way to clean a bent stem is to put a curve into the cleaner, which is very easy to do just by running your fingers along it.

 

[coming to_falling too]

I'd say you're okay unless you felt any scraping while pushing the cleaner through. That's a problem I have with bent pipes, some times I can feel the metal at the end of the pipe cleaner scraping the inside of the stem. I've gotten pretty good at doing it so it doesn't happen, though. Also I own mostly straight pipes.

 

[tmgaus51]

Yeah I get a bit of scraping occasionally when cleaning bent stems from the tip, regardless of bristled or not. Good to know the bristles aren't doing any damage.

For some reason, I really value a pipe that passes the pipe cleaner test, and it becomes more important to me the more expensive the pipe. Also, I occasionally like to be able to get a cleaner down to the shank in the middle of a smoke to grab up any moisture.

Thanks for the responses!

 

[Chasing Embers]

Yeah I get a bit of scraping occasionally when cleaning bent stems from the tip, regardless of bristled or not. Good to know the bristles aren't doing any damage.

For some reason, I really value a pipe that passes the pipe cleaner test, and it becomes more important to me the more expensive the pipe. Also, I occasionally like to be able to get a cleaner down to the shank in the middle of a smoke to grab up any moisture.

Thanks for the responses!

Just don't use a bristled pipe cleaner in the chamber of a meerschaum. It will score it up.