What do You Smoke With?
There are many different ways to smoke weed. Some prefer joints, spliffs or blunts, while others like bongs or pipes, and others still prefer to vape or eat their marijuana. This article isn’t for all of them. This article is for people like me: people who smoke from glass pipes.
There are many great advantages to smoking with a glass pipe. They are more portable then a bong, and more convenient then rolling something. (and if you are in a place that the legality of your medicine is in question, glass pipes are easy to break so you can avoid that paraphernalia charge). The biggest disadvantage to a Glass Pipe is keeping them clean.
How to Clean a Glass Pipe
Sooner or late you are going to have to clean your glass pipe. Scraping it only does so much, and sooner or later the resin will build up thick enough that you will burn your thumb on the carb with every hit… (or is that just me?). Well thankfully, I have found an easy way to Clean a Glass pipe. here is what you will need:
- A Dirty Pipe
- A bottle of rubbing alcohol
- A ziplock bag
- a container
- some pipe cleaners
The Simple Technique
Once you have assembled your cleaning tools the process is vey simple. All you need to do is put the pipe in the bag, fill the bag with rubbing alcohol (because after-all: Alcohol really IS a solution), and let it soak.
The alcohol very quickly begins to eat away at the resin build up in the glass pipe. Now you just let the alcohol due it’s magic. I usually will leave the pipe soak for a week. I have no idea if that is necessary, but it works for me.
The alcohol solution in the bag will begin to get very dark as it breaks away the resin that is clinging to the walls in the pipe. I like to agitate the bag every day or so to ensure the mixture is getting at all the gross stuff.
After a week you will notice the liquid in the bag has turned very dark. If your pipe was really dirty, you may not be able to see through the bag at all. This is when it is time to take the pipe out and begin step 2.
Remove your pipe from the cleaning solution, and bring it to the sink. Wash it normally. Turn the sink on full volume and blast the water through every opening on the pipe. The alcohol should have loosened the sediment enough that most of it will come out. However, you will likely need to use a pipe cleaner to get some stubborn areas. On occasion, I have had a pipe that was filthy enough that I had to do this process twice to fully clean the pipe, but if you clean them semi regularly, this will be the easiest way you can find to clean a glass pipe.
Let you pipe dry, and enjoy a nice clean hit from your sparkling clean pipe!