Stem and pull are stuck together

[thetaco]

I've got a long glass stem with a sliding bowl, and the bowl and stem are impossibly cemented together. I tried soaking them in alcohol over night, and that didn't help. Then I tried boiling it to soften the resin, but that didn't help either. They are cooling right now and in a couple minutes, I'm going to try putting the bowl in icewater and the stem in hot water to get them to pull apart.

I'm just wondering what you guys do about this problem?

 

[Bubonic Chronic]

hot and cold would just break stuff

 

[thetaco]

If I subject it to a drastic change in temperature then it would break, but that's not what I tried. I let it come down to ambient temp after the boiling. Then I put the stem in hot water and put a little crushed ice in the bowl. The joint wasn't directly exposed to either the hot or the cold. My hope was that I could get the bowl to contract just a little and the stem would expand a little bit with the resin acting as a thermal insulator in between.

Of course, nothing happened. No breaking, but no separation either. I really don't know what to do at this point other than alternate between soaking in alcohol for hours and then boiling for a few minutes.

I'm almost at a point where I don't even care that they are stuck. I'm getting ready to call it a loss and just start pulling the whole stem out and using it like a carb, but that sometimes drains the second bubling chamber...

 

[Insane]

Try heating up the joint between the stem and the bowl with a lighter, and then have a thick pair of gloves handy or something to take the bowl off once it gets hot enough. If a lighter doesn't get it hot enough, you could always use a cutting torch!