Water Plus Pipes Equals?
- Thread starter Richmond B. Funkenhouser
- Start date
SmokingPipes.com Updates
Watch for Updates Twice a Week
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
Site Sponsors
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
Nothing wrong with a clean ass and a clean pipe.
Wasn't that the original BJ Long slogan?
Maybe it's a good idea. I don't doubt it. But the water here has a lot of chlorine and ( Cal) lime. And I'm worried that it will leave an aftertaste when smoking. If it were like the water of Madrid, if I would do it, that water comes down from the mountains, and it is a luxury to drink it directly from the tap.
I do smoke cheap pipes, and I also water flush from time to time. They all still look nice and pretty.
Funk, good to see you back!!!
A water bath a week is good for man and pipe. More than that is a wasteful extravagance.
Here's how I do it.
I don't keep the stem in. Warm or hot water can cause some sulfur content in the vulcanite to migrate to the surface. I clean the vulcanite stem with alcohol. Mylar stems get cleaned with warm water and a couple of pipe cleaners first moistened with warm water and then given a drop or to of unscented dish washing soap to clean out the stem airway, that then gets rinsed out.
After first cleaning out as much crud as I can from the airway using tapered bristle pipe cleaners, I set the rate of water coming out of the faucet such that it just fills the chamber without flooding over the rim and exterior while the water empties out of the end of the shank. The water runs for about 30 seconds to a minute. Then I use more pipe cleaners to remove whatever is left in the airway and the mortise to sop up any remaining moisture and use wadded paper toweling to wipe out the chamber.
After that I let the pipe sit for 10 to 20 minutes to thoroughly dry. So far, I've never lost the fit between the shank and the stem.
Because briar is different from pipe to pipe I may have to wait a little longer before reattaching the stem. With some pipes you can reattach the stem immediately, but I still like to give the pipe some drying out time.
I've done this hundreds of times over the past 6 years with no issues.
Pipes are wood, and wood floats, ducks also float so if your pipe floats it's a duck.
has been my experience as well after several years of water rinsing and a quick scrub with a shank brush after every smoke. I still do a regular scrub with Everclear, but much less frequently than I did before I started water rinsing. That being said, I use warm water, never hot.
The ability to occasionally wash acrylic stems in warm soapy water is one of the reasons I prefer them over vulcanite. I consider myself lucky that I don’t find acrylic stems uncomfortable to clench, but I do understand that many do and so prefer vulcanite. For some reason, I find vulcanite stem maintenance profoundly irritating, so acrylic works for me.
What if it turned me into a newt?
While water on Vulcanite will expose existing oxidation, it doesn't cause it. (So easily restored with mineral oil or, I presume, wax on the stem.)
No. I'll do this after a day's use. Otherwise I just used pipe cleaners to clear out the airway and a wadded paper towel to wipe the chamber walls.
Then it would end up as a plot line in Jeeves and Wooster.
This man gets my write-in vote in the next US presidential election.
His reasoning and intellectual power is so far ahead of any US elected leader in the past century it is embarrassing.
Global peace and bounty for all is guaranteed within six months of his taking office.