Okay, so here's the story...
For Christmas this year, a dear friend gifted me a wonderful little Rattray's The Good Deal #206 pipe. This is a fantastic, and fantastically small, excellent smoking little bent stem pipe; with a slightly larger than golf ball sized apple-shaped bowl - think about it in terms of a golf ball sized cannon ball type pipe.
I don't use filters on my pipes, and was not even aware that these pipes ship from the factory with a 9mm filter already loaded inside. And, in this case, whomever it was that put this pipe together at the factory must have really jammed the filter cartridge inside the pipe stem barrel with their thumb - or something - because that baby was really stuffed in there.
Totally oblivious to it's existence inside the pipe, I smoked the heck out of that little pipe; really enjoying the performance and novelty of this dwarf-sized version of it's big-boy sized counterpart.
And, so it came to pass that I was eventually forced to clean the little pipe for the first time - they don't call me Sherm "Dirty Pipes" Natman, for nothing!
Upon opening the pipe to clean it, to my amazement, there was this funky-looking, nasty, brown/black, soaking wet cartridge filter inside!
This explained to me just how I was able to get so many great smokes out of the little pipe before getting juice climbing up the stem and into my mouth - my "usual sign" that it's high-time to clean.
However, when I went to pull the fat, wet, dirty, filter out of the stem, the whole thing basically fell apart between my fingers, and the little charcoal bits - or whatever BLITZ uses - went all over the place. I was left holding 1/2 of the nasty wet filter between my finger and thumb, and rest was inside the pipe stem.
I went to extract the rest with a dental pick, and discovered the little plastic end-cap was securely lodged deep inside the pipe stem.
The air-hole of the mouth peice on this wonderful little pipe is just barely wide enough to pass a pipe cleaner; BUT, trying to push out the stuck plastic cap only resulted in a bent pipe cleaner.
So, I got a 0.09 electric guitar string, and fished it into the open barrel of the stem, and felt around until it entered one of the little air-passage holes in the stuck filter cap, and emerged out of the mouth piece end of the pipe.
I then feed the guitar string back down through the mouth piece, and again, fished around until it found it's way through one of the other little holes in the stuck cap, and emerged back out of the open barrel of the pipe stem.
I now was holding both ends of the guitar string in one hand, which was lassoed through the holes in the plastic cap itself.
I wound the two guitar string ends around and around a pencil, and holding the stem firmly in my left hand, began slowly pulling with increasing tension on the dual strings - aided by the pencil.
Lo and behold, at last the offending little plastic bugger was liberated. Men cheered, women wept, and throngs of children sang praises in my name.
I've never owned a pipe which used one of these 9mm cartridge filters, so this was all new to me. If you might have the same problem, I hope this little treatise on how to best a stuck plastic filter cap is of use to you. - Sherm Natman
For Christmas this year, a dear friend gifted me a wonderful little Rattray's The Good Deal #206 pipe. This is a fantastic, and fantastically small, excellent smoking little bent stem pipe; with a slightly larger than golf ball sized apple-shaped bowl - think about it in terms of a golf ball sized cannon ball type pipe.
I don't use filters on my pipes, and was not even aware that these pipes ship from the factory with a 9mm filter already loaded inside. And, in this case, whomever it was that put this pipe together at the factory must have really jammed the filter cartridge inside the pipe stem barrel with their thumb - or something - because that baby was really stuffed in there.
Totally oblivious to it's existence inside the pipe, I smoked the heck out of that little pipe; really enjoying the performance and novelty of this dwarf-sized version of it's big-boy sized counterpart.
And, so it came to pass that I was eventually forced to clean the little pipe for the first time - they don't call me Sherm "Dirty Pipes" Natman, for nothing!
Upon opening the pipe to clean it, to my amazement, there was this funky-looking, nasty, brown/black, soaking wet cartridge filter inside!
This explained to me just how I was able to get so many great smokes out of the little pipe before getting juice climbing up the stem and into my mouth - my "usual sign" that it's high-time to clean.
However, when I went to pull the fat, wet, dirty, filter out of the stem, the whole thing basically fell apart between my fingers, and the little charcoal bits - or whatever BLITZ uses - went all over the place. I was left holding 1/2 of the nasty wet filter between my finger and thumb, and rest was inside the pipe stem.
I went to extract the rest with a dental pick, and discovered the little plastic end-cap was securely lodged deep inside the pipe stem.
The air-hole of the mouth peice on this wonderful little pipe is just barely wide enough to pass a pipe cleaner; BUT, trying to push out the stuck plastic cap only resulted in a bent pipe cleaner.
So, I got a 0.09 electric guitar string, and fished it into the open barrel of the stem, and felt around until it entered one of the little air-passage holes in the stuck filter cap, and emerged out of the mouth piece end of the pipe.
I then feed the guitar string back down through the mouth piece, and again, fished around until it found it's way through one of the other little holes in the stuck cap, and emerged back out of the open barrel of the pipe stem.
I now was holding both ends of the guitar string in one hand, which was lassoed through the holes in the plastic cap itself.
I wound the two guitar string ends around and around a pencil, and holding the stem firmly in my left hand, began slowly pulling with increasing tension on the dual strings - aided by the pencil.
Lo and behold, at last the offending little plastic bugger was liberated. Men cheered, women wept, and throngs of children sang praises in my name.
I've never owned a pipe which used one of these 9mm cartridge filters, so this was all new to me. If you might have the same problem, I hope this little treatise on how to best a stuck plastic filter cap is of use to you. - Sherm Natman