Last night I took an old dirty, and broken vulcanite stem and cut it into four pieces, then put these in jars containing:
Water
25% Bleach
50% Bleach
100% Bleach Soaked for four hours. Brown gunk leaked out into the bleach solutions and not the water. Roughly the same amount in each.
From right to left increasing strength.
They dried overnight and this morning left a white powder coating on the stems but not on the freshly cut edges. I gave them a quick going over with wet and dry then polished with Savinelli stem polish giving each a fairly even attention.
With the exception of the pure water which has polished up still green/brown the others have come up pretty much the same. That is almost black.
I did this to better understand the process ready for trying it on some of my nice pipes.
Owen
Water
25% Bleach
50% Bleach
100% Bleach Soaked for four hours. Brown gunk leaked out into the bleach solutions and not the water. Roughly the same amount in each.
From right to left increasing strength.
They dried overnight and this morning left a white powder coating on the stems but not on the freshly cut edges. I gave them a quick going over with wet and dry then polished with Savinelli stem polish giving each a fairly even attention.
With the exception of the pure water which has polished up still green/brown the others have come up pretty much the same. That is almost black.
I did this to better understand the process ready for trying it on some of my nice pipes.
Owen