How to sanitize a bowl without salt/alcohol treatment??

[forsooth]

Without doing the salt and alcohol treatment, what is the second-best method to clean and sanitize the bowl after reaming? Is there a cleaning liquid that I can use that will not jeopardize the briar?
(I've already sanitized, cleaned, deoxidized, and polished the stem, which looks pretty good.)

 

[tedswearingen]

I don't think you need to sanitize the bowl. No germs there. At least nothing that will ever get inside you. You've said the stem and bit are nice and sanitized; that's all the germ-killing you need to do. If you want to clean up your bowl, a reamer, sand paper, or even a knife is all you absolutely need.
EDIT: There's a lot more that can be done as part of a pipe-cleaning regiment. I'm specifically addressing the notion that you might need to sanitize your bowl of germs.

 

[igloo]

Sometimes I will clean a pipe useing boiling water .Plug the stem with a cotton ball and fill the bowl with the water .Let it cool ,repeat ,repeat...... . The advantage of this is it will take out all of the tar in the wood and remove the cake back to bare wood .You will need lots of paper towles and pipe cleaners . When the pipe is clean enough be sure to reinsert the stem and let it air dry for at least a week .

 

[shotokun16]

I think salt and alcohol is the best and only treatment. There are some chemical and synthetic solutions in the market but why risk it if you can use a simple and cheap method.
I guess you can use hot water but that has the possibility of leaving calcium deposits and risk wood expansion.

 

[jjtroutbum]

First post nailed it. Unless the bowl has a taste from foul or sour tobacco ghosts. Then salt/alch or charcoal bake.
Fire (use) kills the cooties otherwise.

 

[unclearthur]

No need to sanitize the bowl. A good reaming and a wipe down with a paper towel should be fine unless you are being haunted by ghosts of tobaccos past.

 

[forsooth]

Thanks, everyone. That helps a lot. The bowl is not terrible looking inside as it is.
I must say that I'm a little more squeamish about smoking a pipe that had faceless, nameless owners than I thought I would be. I never gave it a second thought until the day my first Ebay estate pipe arrived in the mail.

 

[unclearthur]

I would say 99% of my pies are estates. I ain't dead yet! LOL!!

 

[hauntedmyst]

If you use those toilet disks that turn the water blue, you can just hold the bowl in the water while you flush (an empty bowl, a full bowl would be gross) When you are done, light up to dry the pipe and wipe the blue off your lips.
You're welcome!

 

[unclearthur]

And I thought those were large breath mints Haunted!

 

[tedswearingen]

Plenty of guys fresh into the estate game are more than a little weary of the possible hygienic issues surrounding 'used' pipes. Just think of your pipe as a really dirty dish.

 

[forsooth]

Hey, Hauntedmyst...the blue isn't coming off my lips so easily. Thanks a lot! :evil:

 

[forsooth]

OK, into the absurd...perhaps!
Let's say that the previous pipe owner succumbed to Mad Cow Disease (transmissible spongiform encephalopathy -- TSE). He may have never been diagnosed.
Let's say that that the victim, while smoking his pipe, innocently deposited TSE prions into the stem (through saliva). The prion-carrying saliva made its way down the stem and, to some extent, came to rest in the bowl.
Is there any possibility that the winner of the pipe, after cleaning and sanitizing it (which, I understand, does not "kill" the prions), may become infected with TSE?

 

[bubbadreier]

I will admit when I first started in the estate game, I gave EVERYTHING a salt (or cotton ball) and alcohol treatment... Now I just ream the pipe back a bit and give it a go! If I notice a bad ghost then I will go ahead and do the treatment as many times as it takes to get the smell out!
Okay so who has the link to the G.L. Pease method getting a ghost out? I bought some activated charcoal but I don't remember the other steps!

 

[tedswearingen]

OK, into the absurd...perhaps!
Let's say that the previous pipe owner succumbed to Mad Cow Disease (transmissible spongiform encephalopathy -- TSE). He may have never been diagnosed.
Let's say that that the victim, while smoking his pipe, innocently deposited TSE prions into the stem (through saliva). The prion-carrying saliva made its way down the stem and, to some extent, came to rest in the bowl.
Is there any possibility that the winner of the pipe, after cleaning and sanitizing it (which, I understand, does not "kill" the prions), may become infected with TSE?

I suppose. I think I'd get mouth disease first.

 

[tedswearingen]

Like, not Mad Cow Disease, though.

 

[julesholling]

Just to continue this thread a bit more if i wanted to do the salt treatment method, is there a particular type of salt to use or should it be just common table salt?
Also for the alcohol, is something with a high alcohol level like Vodka ok? We can't seem to get everclear in the UK

 

[shotokun16]

You can use table salt but kosher is ideal. In my opinion, table salt can be difficult cleaning out since it faces the possibility of getting trapped inside the walls of your briar; Kosher can easily be removed due to its size.
I recommend applying high alcohol content to your salt, preferably in the 151 proof range. In my experience, i find that rum is a great candidate in salt treatments.



Why Rum?
"Rum is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from sugarcane by-products such as molasses and sugarcane juice by a process of fermentation and distillation."- wiki
Also, i love the sweet caramel taste and having a couple shots before treating your pipe can always be fun. Just be careful not to get the alcohol on the pipe stain .
*About 1-2 bowls will eliminate the rum after taste.

If you cant get everclear use rum thats 151, if you cant get that you can use 40-50% Single Malt Scotch, Bourbon, Macallan 12 year or 14 year Glenfidich.

 

[wolfscout]

I'm like Bubba now I think. years ago, I used to salt and alcohol clean every estate pipe. Now I give it the once over.. If it appears fairly low in cake, and no othewise obnoxious smell, I slip a pipe cleaner through to check what I can't see and fillnpuff.

I've been puff'n for 29 years.. and I'm not sick or dying from it a'tall.

 

[wolfscout]

After a quick re-read of the thread, I'd never advise soaking, wetting or boiling briars in water. JMT&Os.