Jim Bourbon
Guitar pickin' man
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2007
- Messages
- 84
- Reaction score
- 63
WARNING: LONG READ AHEAD.
:bongin:
I'm just curious. When I first started smoking, I borrowed a metal sectional pipe from a buddy. It was filthy, and I didn't know any better. So, after a few weeks of smoking through an eigth, I decided it needed to be cleaned out. I took it apart and scraped it out real good with a toolset of picks and mini screwdrivers and did a good job. Being scotch, I saved the scrapings and decided to try smoking them and see if there were any left-overs. I discovered the wonderful world of resin smoking. Ya for me.
Anyway, I'm out at the moment and just scraped up a one-hitter of resin to smooth out on my day off and wondered how everyone else cleans their gear?
Over the years, I've narrowed it down to the stuff in the following attached pictures. I use the knife (an SOG Pentagon) to get out the big stuff. It's sharp, sturdy, has a secure rubber grip and has a wonderfully small and sharp point. Great for dislodging the bigger chunks. Works best with glass. It's made of tough enough steel (as are the picks) to score cheaper cast-metal import pipes, so be careful. Wonderful tool.
The picks I use are like the top two with the red X's on them. They're great for getting inside downstems and into the deep end of a nasty, caked bowl from the mouthpiece, the carb and even the bottom of the bowl.
The screwdrivers pictured are great as multi-purpose scrapers for the hard-to-reach places, like the insides of stems in bong bowls. The knife tip can't get in there and you can't get the picks in all the way without breaking the stem (I've done it twice, don't try it), so the mini screwdriver is king. You can get the inside of a stem just about spotless in very little time, and the same with any other bowl.
With these tools, some time and patience (and increasingly, better light... LOL), I can get a clogged glass pipe pretty much devoid of anything but scrape marks in less than fifteen minutes. Bongs, I don't bother with scarping anymore. It's just not worth it. You can't reach hardly anything, and you get very little return for your time spent.
When I've scraped out all the gooey left-over goodness, I drop the bowl into a ziplok sandwich bag, and then fill the bag about ain some 91% ISO alcohol, and play shake & bake for a few minutes. When the alcohol turns a dark amber color, I pour it out onto a glass dinner plate and set it in front of desk fan to evaporate the alcohol. The sticky left on the plate is pure resin, and you can scrape it up with a razor blade and smoke it or add it to the top of a bowl of schwag to add a little extra oomph, in case you didn't know. Following that step, I pour a tablespoon or two of plain kitchen salt into the bag along with the pipe, re-fill the bag with alcohol and shake again. I make sure to work the salt into every surface, polishing the inside of the bowlpiece with my finger through the bag. Work that salt in. The salt doesn't diffuse in alcohol (for those that didn't know) and the alcohol helps liquify the resin, so you end up with a well-polished piece, depending on the time put in. For bongs I remove the stem, downstem and grommit and clean as above. Then, into the bong I pour a tablespoon or two of salt, and about a cup of 91% ISO alcohol. I cover and hold the top with one hand and hold the bottom of the bong with the other, CAREFULLY plugging the stem hole with my thumb, and then I play bartender and shake the snot out of it. If you have a clear piece, you can see what you've gotten clean and what you haven't. If you don't, guesstimate or take a peek inside. A good swirling motion works best. Get the liquid rotating in passes. It'll work like polisher on the inside and if you're vigorous enough, you'll get every last speck off the inside of your favorite bong. The downside to this is that the resin you cleaned out is now un-smokeable. It's impossible, as far as I know, to seperate the salt from the resin, and smoking resinated salt is way, way, way very bad. I know from experience. Don't do it. Just dump it out. I've tried all manner of things involving coffee filters, water and glass plates. Nothing works. Just dump it out, no matter how stoned you think you might've gotten off what was in there.
Now, I happen to be a bit of a resin smoking fan, so I try to salvage as much of it as possible for the dry periods when I can't get hooked up. Many of you might just skip to the alcohol & salt, but I find that removing all the easily removable debris first makes for a 30 second shake session instead of one that goes on for 30 minutes or more of soaking and shaking.
So how do you all deal with keeping your favorite smoking device clean? Do you keep your piece pristine, or do you run it 'til it gums with black sticky? Do you save your resin, or do you rinse your glass out with acetone, ISO and then water once a week like a buddy of mine? I figured I'd bring it up; maybe someone's got the ultimate time-saver solution to everything.
P.S. - I've never used a vaporizer. Is there any regular cleaning involved with them? If so, what's involved?
:bongin:
I'm just curious. When I first started smoking, I borrowed a metal sectional pipe from a buddy. It was filthy, and I didn't know any better. So, after a few weeks of smoking through an eigth, I decided it needed to be cleaned out. I took it apart and scraped it out real good with a toolset of picks and mini screwdrivers and did a good job. Being scotch, I saved the scrapings and decided to try smoking them and see if there were any left-overs. I discovered the wonderful world of resin smoking. Ya for me.
Anyway, I'm out at the moment and just scraped up a one-hitter of resin to smooth out on my day off and wondered how everyone else cleans their gear?
Over the years, I've narrowed it down to the stuff in the following attached pictures. I use the knife (an SOG Pentagon) to get out the big stuff. It's sharp, sturdy, has a secure rubber grip and has a wonderfully small and sharp point. Great for dislodging the bigger chunks. Works best with glass. It's made of tough enough steel (as are the picks) to score cheaper cast-metal import pipes, so be careful. Wonderful tool.
The picks I use are like the top two with the red X's on them. They're great for getting inside downstems and into the deep end of a nasty, caked bowl from the mouthpiece, the carb and even the bottom of the bowl.
The screwdrivers pictured are great as multi-purpose scrapers for the hard-to-reach places, like the insides of stems in bong bowls. The knife tip can't get in there and you can't get the picks in all the way without breaking the stem (I've done it twice, don't try it), so the mini screwdriver is king. You can get the inside of a stem just about spotless in very little time, and the same with any other bowl.
With these tools, some time and patience (and increasingly, better light... LOL), I can get a clogged glass pipe pretty much devoid of anything but scrape marks in less than fifteen minutes. Bongs, I don't bother with scarping anymore. It's just not worth it. You can't reach hardly anything, and you get very little return for your time spent.
When I've scraped out all the gooey left-over goodness, I drop the bowl into a ziplok sandwich bag, and then fill the bag about ain some 91% ISO alcohol, and play shake & bake for a few minutes. When the alcohol turns a dark amber color, I pour it out onto a glass dinner plate and set it in front of desk fan to evaporate the alcohol. The sticky left on the plate is pure resin, and you can scrape it up with a razor blade and smoke it or add it to the top of a bowl of schwag to add a little extra oomph, in case you didn't know. Following that step, I pour a tablespoon or two of plain kitchen salt into the bag along with the pipe, re-fill the bag with alcohol and shake again. I make sure to work the salt into every surface, polishing the inside of the bowlpiece with my finger through the bag. Work that salt in. The salt doesn't diffuse in alcohol (for those that didn't know) and the alcohol helps liquify the resin, so you end up with a well-polished piece, depending on the time put in. For bongs I remove the stem, downstem and grommit and clean as above. Then, into the bong I pour a tablespoon or two of salt, and about a cup of 91% ISO alcohol. I cover and hold the top with one hand and hold the bottom of the bong with the other, CAREFULLY plugging the stem hole with my thumb, and then I play bartender and shake the snot out of it. If you have a clear piece, you can see what you've gotten clean and what you haven't. If you don't, guesstimate or take a peek inside. A good swirling motion works best. Get the liquid rotating in passes. It'll work like polisher on the inside and if you're vigorous enough, you'll get every last speck off the inside of your favorite bong. The downside to this is that the resin you cleaned out is now un-smokeable. It's impossible, as far as I know, to seperate the salt from the resin, and smoking resinated salt is way, way, way very bad. I know from experience. Don't do it. Just dump it out. I've tried all manner of things involving coffee filters, water and glass plates. Nothing works. Just dump it out, no matter how stoned you think you might've gotten off what was in there.
Now, I happen to be a bit of a resin smoking fan, so I try to salvage as much of it as possible for the dry periods when I can't get hooked up. Many of you might just skip to the alcohol & salt, but I find that removing all the easily removable debris first makes for a 30 second shake session instead of one that goes on for 30 minutes or more of soaking and shaking.
So how do you all deal with keeping your favorite smoking device clean? Do you keep your piece pristine, or do you run it 'til it gums with black sticky? Do you save your resin, or do you rinse your glass out with acetone, ISO and then water once a week like a buddy of mine? I figured I'd bring it up; maybe someone's got the ultimate time-saver solution to everything.
P.S. - I've never used a vaporizer. Is there any regular cleaning involved with them? If so, what's involved?
eace:
