OK, so I am no n00b when it comes to smoking, however, my bubbler is causing me a great bit of frustration as I can't get it completely clean. It's a nice, thick, sherlock-style bubbler and the upper portion of the stem is just completely caked with resin. This has been my only used piece for a year and a half now, so when I say it's really caked on, I mean it. Trying the typical alcohol + salt gets a lot of the resin off (mainly from the "bubble" area) and makes it taste better, but the stem is always still caked and unfazed after a vigorous cleaning, so it's only a couple sessions before it starts tasting like straight up resin again. Part of me wants to boil it for hours on end, but I have heard numerous 'bad' things about boiling, since it supposedly rapidly heats and cools your piece, causing it to become brittle. I have a hard time believing this shit since you are holding a 2000 degree flame to your glass and sucking oxygen into it which makes it even hotter, over and over. This seems like a much more direct, concentrated heating which would cause much more damage/brittleness to the bowl of the glass. That being said, I'd rather not take chances and I think my best bet may be to simply soak the entire piece in say half a bottle of alcohol, then rinse and give it a good salt + iso cleaning, then repeat the process every day until it's clean. I'm being serious when I say this is some stubborn resin, it won't come off. Sherlock bubblers further complicate this problem because of their design which makes them hard to clean to begin with. What should I do if I want to experience a truly clean bubbler again? Thanks in advance.
Just cleaned it twice more with salt + iso. Once with kosher salt, once with regular. It's slightly cleaner, but the top of the stem is still caked beyond belief.
Try letting it soak in grunge off. My downstem had an area right in the center than I couldn't clean with iso+salt or q-tips. I let it soak for like 8.5 hours last night and pulled it out crystal clear.
You could try soaking it for a few hours and then scrape it with pipe cleaners to try and loosen any res that's still there. Then soak again and scrape etc etc.
Yeah GO is your best bet, but if you don't want to order online or pay that much you can probaby just soak it in simple green to loosen it and then do an iso salt wash.
Myth, in this case soaking in a strong solution will get best results, like people suggested Grunge Off, or I would suggest Simple green. Look around there's a lot of threads on cleaning a piece effectively and just let that thing soak in one of those for a while and you should be good.
personally what works for me wen im in a situation like that i take acetone and soak it in that then swish it with salt if its the downstem or the mouth piece i picked up pipe cleaners from walgreens(drug store) for smokin pipes not art ones they have very firm scrubbers on it to scrub real gud for $4 for a pack with 90 pipe cleaners
i had a bubbler that was probably in the same as yours. fill that bitch with rubbing alcohol, let it soak for a day or more, i seriously let mine soak for 3 days (i completely forgot it was soaking tell i went to smoke out of it haha) then rinsed, and then rubbing alcohol and salt, one more rinse, and it should be pretty damn clean. and if i were you i might invest in grunge off, im not a big fan of it, but stubborn resin is annoying as hell