I need to run some tests with hot water for cleaning. I've been fairly aggressively cleaning my pipes with alcohol but I know there's a small passionate camp out there which advises against constantly throwing high proof alcohol into pipes-- The pipes which I've exposed to alcohol also smoke fairly wet, which could be my fault since my cadence is fast, but I can't help to think that perhaps they're onto something and maybe alcohol isn't as good for briar as I thought. These are estates of course which have the potential to have been ghosted and gunked and some may even be poorly engineered pipes, and my sample size is small, so I'm certainly not in any position to make conclusions. One of them *ought* to be a great smoker, a Savinelli Punto Oro straight apple which was heavily smoked with Captain Black Cherry-- I did two salt+alcohols on it, and scrubbed the shank with bristle and 192 proof until they came out clean-- smokes wet as hell and I don't know why... could the captain black gunk be so deep in the briar it prevents a dry smoke? Could the alcohol have hindered the briar? I just do not know...
Very interested in this hot water method though, will give it a shot.
When it comes to cobs, the wooden insert shank peice does tend to get fairly grimey and would probably benefit from this method every hundred or so bowls, but the cob itself will probably need a longer drying time since they suck up moisture like sponges-- that's my only intuiton there. Will try it on both briar and cob in the near future and post my findings in this thread if I can remember.
