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Meth Question - Recrystallized/ Recycled Meth in the Pipe

Minion said:
Next time it needs cleaning, i'm just running it under the sink.
Click to expand...

Pretty much the best thing you can do with it IMO. Even better if you do it around any overly fiendish tweaker friends who might be there at the time, the look of horror on their faces combined with the internal struggle you know their going through between wanting to say something and not wanting to look like a massive seagull is worth so much more than the garbage you're washing down the drain.
 
Even better if you do it around any overly fiendish tweaker friends who might be there at the time, the look of horror on their faces combined with the internal struggle you know their going through between wanting to say something and not wanting to look like a massive seagull is worth so much more than the garbage you're washing down the drain.
Click to expand...

Ha!!! Funny as. Know a few like this.
 
Call me what you want, but last night after 4pts had been through the pipe (over 2 days) what I melted back down into the bowl was a nice big puddle that then took about 20 min.. Fuck I don't know exactly but a while to again smoke. Even as I was melting it towards the bowl, and it had a chance to set on the stem it was forming nice crystalized patterns.

No way would I have just washed that down the sink. Even though I still have more on hand. But then I just like the act of smoking it.

Hard to comment how good after the amount already consumed. But I would bet my dogs left nut a newbie would have been amped off that one puddle.
 
popeyes mate said:
Call me what you want, but last night after 4pts had been through the pipe (over 2 days) what I melted back down into the bowl was a nice big puddle that then took about 20 min.. Fuck I don't know exactly but a while to again smoke. Even as I was melting it towards the bowl, and it had a chance to set on the stem it was forming nice crystalized patterns.

No way would I have just washed that down the sink. Even though I still have more on hand. But then I just like the act of smoking it.

Hard to comment how good after the amount already consumed. But I would bet my dogs left nut a newbie would have been amped off that one puddle.
Click to expand...

4 whole points in a night? wow! you mad kent!
 
I'm agreeing with footscrazy in this reply along with the following replies. SoWhat! I don't know where you were educated, namely in science, if you were at all. from the short time i spent reading your senseless gibberish, all that i can think to offer to try and make your level of knowledge close to up to speed for this thread is http://www.chem4kids.com/files/matter_changes.html if the writing is too hard for you there is a nice little picture for you to look at.
 
If I had a meth pipe and smoked it I'd just fill it with water and allow the meth to dissolve and then down the hatch. Not worth a fuck unless you've smoked at least 0.5 grams or more through it and not charred the meth into black stains in your glass pipe. Just my opinion. Chase that reformed shit all the way up till you burn your lips if your that desperate. Sadly have seen many people do this :(. Here we have it "I just like the act of smoking it" each to their own but I consider smoking meth to be supper addictive on par with IVing the stuff IMO. Also you char through so much more gear smoking than say just doing a line or eating the stuff. Again just my opinion I'm not here to lecture, hell I've been as guilty as the next man/woman.
 
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I wash my pipe out after every session. Love having a crystal clear wifey at the start of me next sesh, it looks so clean and pure lol. Just like a new thing. And yes, I have tried smoking the recrystallised meth and it doesn't work for me. Just makes me cough. The recrystallised shit around the bowl, however, were slightly better and I could feel some pinging off that.
 
Gentlemen, I think it's more simple than you think. OP said that when he first started hitting the pipe with a new shit in there, he was breathing out a ton of clouds.

Fast forward to when he's hitting the step, he's breathing out baby puffs, but feeling it STRONG for a SHORT duration.

I'd like to remind everyone that when you hit the pipe, all the clouds that you breath out, are crystal methamphetamine crystals in it's vapor form. all of that is being wasted into the environment and not being exchanged through your lungs, probably because you aren't drinking enough water lol.

now when he's hitting those baby clouds, he's heating the crystal much closer to him, the opening is also now a straight corridor making it much harder for the very hot crystal vapours to condense quickly enough. therefore all of it is going straight into his system. most of it is condensing either on the back of his throat, and also coating his lungs, giving him an ingestion ROA and a Breathing/smoking/whatever the fuck its called ROA.

That leaves one last question is why is the "ultra highs" he's getting not last as long. Well he's already partied all weekend, usually when you hit the stem, you've already finished the bowl. your tolerance is already adjusting.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE NEXT TOPIC OF DISCUSSION.

this is why I fucking recycle my clouds. sweet fucking head rush.

please reply i'm very lonely.
 
K ı d R ı v a ł said:
please reply i'm very lonely.
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Welcome to Bluelight. It seems you are the first new sign up for the year. Congratulations. You’ve replied to a thread that seems to have finished 8 years ago. Which is not a problem apart from you may not have any luck striking up a conversation here. As far as I can tell all the meth enthusiasts are elsewhere at the moment or have made it their New Year’s resolution to quit. However you might have luck in the Drug Culture forum here: https://www.bluelight.org/xf/forums/drug-culture.76/. You’ll also find the most active discussion of the best way to handle meth here: https://www.bluelight.org/xf/threads/meth-primer-post-your-meth-tips-hints-hacks-here.778648/. You can also introduce yourself here: https://www.bluelight.org/xf/forums/new-member-introductions.143/.

I hope you are having a great New Year’s Day,
 
TripppAR said:
Well I have a question about the leftovers in my pipe... ;-) A godsend for when you have scraped your bag clean :p


I hit the pipe again on the weekend just gone and ended up making 3 points last like Friday night + Saturday day + Saturday night... Now by day 2 all my actual meth rocks were gone. Although as many of you would be familiar with..the vapors recrystallize on the actual pipe the whole way through. I was using the gas element on my stove to heat the pipe evenly and melt off the recrystallized shit... this actually led me to a SOLID meth high for the rest of the day.. I would put it down and say "ok, that's enough" and then find myself back at the stove again a couple hours later getting ANOTHER hit from the "leftovers" ...


Now at this point I was BARELY inhaling any vapors..or at least EXhaling any... yet I was struck EACH TIME with a profound high that came on just like smoking a pipe of shards.. actually it hit BETTER then the original nights pipes... I was actually getting higher off these baby puffs then the clouds I was emitting the night before..


Now I want to know whether or not the CUTTERS recrystallize on the glass... I was thinking about it and I convinced myself that perhaps only the METH MOLECULES are recrystallizing on my pipe and NOT the cutters.. meaning that vaping what is on the glass however small will still be more meth then a hit with cutters...

I am talking total pupil dilation, euphoria and other symptoms of a meth high! It happened with the mrs as well.. tiny tokes had her going again.


What do people think about this? I really feel I am getting better hits off the white stuff sticking to the glass the next day/ later that night then I am off a decent hit with a cloud...


Would my theory be correct in that ONLY METH is re attaching itself to your pipe whilst the cutters, whatever they are.. do not?
Click to expand...

MSM usually burns off quicker and doesn’t hang around, that’s only one cutter though, there are others but I don’t know much about them.

Unreacted ephidrine generally just burns black.

I don’t use much anymore but went through a phase of experimenting with recrystallised meth in pipes and also the smoke exhaled as why the fuck not.

I used a skewer to scrape down the pipe and smoked that which was great if there was a lot.

I also blew out smoke into balloons, tied them off and sucked that back in and got a bit of a hit, even realising smoke back out.

Also, I put a small amount of alcohol into a 2litre empty bottle of soft drink, squeezed the sides in and blew into that, recapped it and shook it. Put this in the freezer after a session waiting to have a toke until the meth absorbed into the vodka to squeeze the bottle so it didn’t escape. The gear recrystallised in the vodka well and I scraped them out (sacrificing the bottle as I cut it open to scrape). Glass bottles are better but good luck scraping them out.

It wasn’t much but wasn’t a total loss, easier to blow the smoke into someone else’s mouth if you’re having a pipe with someone but on your own it’s not possible.

blowing out onto a cold glass surface works too.
 
✿Dai₷y✿ said:
MSM usually burns off quicker and doesn’t hang around, that’s only one cutter though, there are others but I don’t know much about them.

Unreacted ephidrine generally just burns black.

I don’t use much anymore but went through a phase of experimenting with recrystallised meth in pipes and also the smoke exhaled as why the fuck not.

I used a skewer to scrape down the pipe and smoked that which was great if there was a lot.

I also blew out smoke into balloons, tied them off and sucked that back in and got a bit of a hit, even realising smoke back out.

Also, I put a small amount of alcohol into a 2litre empty bottle of soft drink, squeezed the sides in and blew into that, recapped it and shook it. Put this in the freezer after a session waiting to have a toke until the meth absorbed into the vodka to squeeze the bottle so it didn’t escape. The gear recrystallised in the vodka well and I scraped them out (sacrificing the bottle as I cut it open to scrape). Glass bottles are better but good luck scraping them out.

It wasn’t much but wasn’t a total loss, easier to blow the smoke into someone else’s mouth if you’re having a pipe with someone but on your own it’s not possible.

blowing out onto a cold glass surface works too.
Click to expand...
shot gunning clouds into somebody's mouth is my #1 kink,. jesus.
you have the deep slow ones
and then you can also do the fast, mini huffs and puffs back and forth. try it with someone! its fking awesome.
 
I rinse my pipe and then filter the solution.
Meth recrystallizes/freezes in the bowl immediately as it leaves the surface of the puddle. The air in the bowl is not so hot.
You cannot see meth vapor. It's just like boiling water. The vapor looks like/is clear bubbles in the liquid water. When the bubbles reach the surface, they immediately turn back to liquid, which you can see because the tiny liquid particles (aerosol) has a surface to reflect light. Meth will, in the same way, be invisible as a vapor, but will cool at the surface to form tiny particles (aerosol) of solid meth that can be seen due to the surface reflection. (I presume that the meth will pass through the liquid phase before the solid phase. But, I am not sure)
So, it is pointless to speak of vapor in the stem or...in the lungs. There is simply no vapor to speak of.
There does seem to be a higher concentration of meth (or maybe total stimulants) in the reclaimed meth. But, tasted nasty as hell, so i only use it when i can't get unused meth.
 
Jabberwocky said:
You’ve replied to a thread that seems to have finished 8 years ago.
Click to expand...
While this would obviously be true for threads about any number of topics, a thread about meth requires special consideration. Of course it could have just been a finished thread, but it'd also be reasonable to guess the participants got sidetracked parting out that broken microwave to jury rig a little spot welder, vacuuming every surface in the house with the brush and crevice tools, and giving the shed a real proper clean until the mess is 10x'd while explaining to any spectators that this is the only way to ensure top notch organisation so really they could be back to resume the thread any time now. Cleaning out the gutters at 3:30 by head torch isn't even out of the question!

re bic vs. jet:
  • Neither (I mean, either in a pinch of course)!
  • Try a heat gun with the appropriate temperature tip attached. This works extremely well, but can be a bit of a hassle in many settings.
  • Another one to try if you're handy on the torch is fitting one of those ceramic vaporizer caps that turns your flame into hot air onto your vessel. This seems like it should work out pretty good, but I've never gotten around to actually trying it.
  • If I'm by myself I quite like a little homemade alcohol burner, but it doesn't come out in company...that big hot flame makes it way too easy for one greedy person to scorch the lot (more on this below).
  • Also for the crafty, this project seemed promising until drunk girl broke it on its third puff and I haven't ever got around to trying again: Fashion a little element using a pair of SS wires and embed it into the bottom of your bubble, then connect it to a decent TC vape mod. If I do try it again I'll work out a better design though cause sticking a normal pipe on top of a big vape mod was awkward even before it got dropped on its head.
  • While we're on vapes, is there any better way to get in some massive rips outside the pub while you're pointing out the guy sleeping in the bushes to a pair of police on foot patrol? For a long time I tried to find a good way to create a meth oil so I could just have a bottle on hand to fill a tank with and they always worked okay, but I never achieved my goal of getting something that worked the same every time, didn't leak out the bottom, and delivered consistent great hits. Actually by those criteria maybe I did achieve my goal when I abandoned the oil and started doing this: For starters switch out the tank for a squonk or drip deck. Something with a couple horizontal coils and some cotton and for convenience an easy to remove top. Thoroughly wet the cotton with some VG and turn the power all the way down. Toss a dump along the top of each coil and slowly raise the power until it takes about 2 seconds to start melting. That'll be enough power to deliver as big a puff as anyone could want without too much risk of burning it. If you want that ridiculous cloud take a second puff while it's still warm rather than turning the power up. (N.B. This is also perfect for THC oil except turn the power all the way up and keep some VG on hand for the cotton. The other major difference is if you hit this in the smoking area at the pub the smell is instant, obvious, and strong so there's no hiding what you're doing, but if you're clever about it you can hide that it's you doing the doing.)
  • This last one isn't really about the heat source, but unless I need something compact for travelling or whatever I typically aim for a 70-80mm diameter bubble when I'm blowing for myself. There's a few reasons for this, but the relevant one here is that it allows me the option to give it a little shake when I'm melting in so the puddle is splattered all over the place. This forces people to keep the heat moving to get a puff and prevents some jerk being able to scorch the whole puddle with some greedy overheating.
Some clarification for anyone confused by any of the ancient bickering:
  • These are the well defined and well known terms used to describe, respectively, matter as it changes from solid<->liquid, liquid<->gas, and gas<->solid (collectively called phase changes): melting, freezing, evaporation, condensation, deposition, and sublimation.
And at last, addressing the topic at hand:
  • Is the stuff in the stem worth smoking? Usually, but it's so very tedious to actually do. Will you heat up the stem and try to move it back to the bubble with short sharp breaths? Push it down mechanically with a straw or some other scraper? Hold the stem upright and oh so slowly allow gravity to pull it down as you melt it? Or skip all that prep work and smoke the stem. If you have a jet flame you can chase it back and forth, sometimes puffing on the tip and sometimes the bubble, and all the while hoping you don't forget which is the hot bit. A very determined person can do this with a Bic even if it means burning through half the gas and awkwardly striking with an index finger once the thumbs are too sore to do so. But wait, there's more! I once knew a guy who swore by his method of gently blowing long hot breaths through the pipe which formed condensation inside the stem. It didn't take long to start rolling down to the bubble and the result was a clear stem and a tiny bit of liquid to boil off before the puddle was revealed. Further, he often got that puddle all to himself because, "Ew, I'm not smoking your spit." This suggests a final option in which you add some water to your vessel, cover the holes and give it a good hard shaking, then boil away the water (be sure to seal the stem first or it quickly becomes very hot).
  • A closely related task that is often just as tedious arises when we double check that bag in decent light cause how could it possibly be empty already? Occasionally it will have been filled with something rocky and dry (which comes with it's own separate worry about keeping the bag upright while it's open and being extra careful not to fumble it) and unquestionably empty. Far more often (here where I live anyway) the contents were grainy and moist, and although it probably started off as a neat little blob, repeated attempts to gather it back together while hoping that this time it sticks to the straw better than it does to the bag have produced something that acts empty, but certainly doesn't look empty. Again there's a few options. An obvious one is to have another go at it with the straw, but extra carefully this time. This isn't very reasonable though as by the time you're trying to squeeze that last stubborn drop from an empty you're unlikely to be in any condition to exercise extra care (or as I like to tell people I catch being naughty to themselves, "Look, you're probably right about that thing crawling around under your skin, but it's obviously been there awhile and you're in no state to catch it so let it be a bit longer till you're sober"). This method can be greatly improved by cutting down the sides of the bag and opening it flat on a hard surface. Now it can be scraped smooth in one stroke with a knife or plastic card or whatever. Finally, like above, you could get a pack of those long skinny plastic pipettes from the craft section of the $2 shop and use one to put just enough water in the bag to dissolve everything then suck it back out, squirt it in your pipe, and boil away the water (these are really handy for the water option above too). Regardless you've probably eked out 2 or 3 puffs that provide very little satisfaction and have more likely just stoked your craving.
  • The third tedious thing a lot of people love to get hung up on is a clean pipe. In my experience it has proven to be an exceedingly rare event to obtain something that I can melt into a clean pipe, smoke until it's gone, and then be unable to detect that it was ever there. Lots of things seem to factor in to this, but inevitably something remains whether a ghostly faint residue or a crusty black ring.
Edit: Man, I thought I lost that whole post when Chrome on my PC just decided to break. I had a feeling it was failing to post so I quickly copied the whole thing, but I never bothered to paste it anywhere and forgot about it until one second after I copied something else. I just installed Clipdiary which I really wish I'd learned about sooner. Logging in from my phone I learned that indeed it had not posted. It was disappointing cause I spent entirely too long writing it, but then I remembered I could open tabs from other devices and there it was, mostly intact! That last bullet ended up as long as the one above it plus one more that length and two shorter ones. I'll try to do it here, but with fewer words. Looking at this intro paragraph, though, I'm not optimistic. lol.
Click to expand...
  • I've abandoned all the things above in favour of my current method: Get a jar big enough to fit your pipe in, but not much bigger. Fill it with distilled water. Tear all the empties open and rinse them in the jar (tearing them avoids fiddling around to get the water back out). I have a very strong aversion to smoking scorched gear (just thinking about it is almost enough to make me gag) so any time that happens I'll dip the pipe in to fill the bubble with water, swish it around until everything is dissolved, then tip it back in to the jar. To maintain a clean vessel with great ease, I do the same when there's 2-3 puffs remaining as the stains and residues generally appear only once everything's been smoked. Always follow these with a good rinse using clean water as the jar water will dry dirty and you'll be good as new every time. I usually wait until the water in the jar has quite obviously changed colour before doing anything with it. Sooner than that the yield doesn't seem worth the effort and while there's no reason you can't carry on using the same water for far longer, at some point the tiny droplets that get washed down the drain have a nontrivial amount of stuff dissolved in them which strikes me as wasteful.
  • By the time you're ready to reclaim your prize, the water in that jar will look pretty gross. In addition to the obvious debris floating around in it there's a bunch of suspended solids that you can't see. That suggests filtration is probably a good first step. I think a lot of people like to use coffee filters for these kinds of tasks, and to be fair they probably catch enough of the stuff to be sufficient. I'm not a fan for a small job like this, though. Instead I prefer to grab a couple of wheel filters and the biggest syringe from the vending machine at the needle exchange. These filters are phenomenal and overall it just feels more precise than breaking out the funnel and having a big wet coffee filter left over. At this point there's a couple options.
  • Option A: Grab a clean pan you can heat up (I like enamel, but glass is fine too) and sized such that all your water covers the bottom in a thin layer then filter the water in to it. Set a fan or two blowing a good wind at the surface and apply a gentle heat (you want it hot enough to boil the water off, but you're not trying to boil a jug or anything crazy like that). Here's the most important part: watch it the whole time until it's done. If you absolutely must leave it alone make sure you turn off the heat first. The fans should be fine though. It goes pretty quickly and I usually stop when it reaches the point that nothing flows when I rock the pan, but the crystals are still quite damp. Then I'll scoop out a fat dump and let the rest air dry for a few hours. Finally, you can bag it up or whatever.
  • Option B: If you have a bit of patience and access to the supplies you'll need, then you can instead filter it into the appropriate clean receptacle and proceed to re-salt it.

I think I actually did manage to make it shorter this time, but only cause I omitted the discussion about all the different "perfect" pipe cleaning methods people seem to know and a bit of a gripe about burning them clean. I'm not sure I really expect anyone to read all this, but thanks if you did! Bet you'd get it in one guessing what I got up to last night (maybe not just last night if I'm being honest) lol. Time to do something else now, though. If I open another topic I doubt I'd be able to help myself writing another one lol.
 
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Absolutely not! Cutters like msm are the first thing to show up clinging for dear, often mottled, white opaque life on the side of your pipe.
TripppAR said:
Well I have a question about the leftovers in my pipe... ;-) A godsend for when you have scraped your bag clean :p


I hit the pipe again on the weekend just gone and ended up making 3 points last like Friday night + Saturday day + Saturday night... Now by day 2 all my actual meth rocks were gone. Although as many of you would be familiar with..the vapors recrystallize on the actual pipe the whole way through. I was using the gas element on my stove to heat the pipe evenly and melt off the recrystallized shit... this actually led me to a SOLID meth high for the rest of the day.. I would put it down and say "ok, that's enough" and then find myself back at the stove again a couple hours later getting ANOTHER hit from the "leftovers" ...


Now at this point I was BARELY inhaling any vapors..or at least EXhaling any... yet I was struck EACH TIME with a profound high that came on just like smoking a pipe of shards.. actually it hit BETTER then the original nights pipes... I was actually getting higher off these baby puffs then the clouds I was emitting the night before..


Now I want to know whether or not the CUTTERS recrystallize on the glass... I was thinking about it and I convinced myself that perhaps only the METH MOLECULES are recrystallizing on my pipe and NOT the cutters.. meaning that vaping what is on the glass however small will still be more meth then a hit with cutters...

I am talking total pupil dilation, euphoria and other symptoms of a meth high! It happened with the mrs as well.. tiny tokes had her going again.


What do people think about this? I really feel I am getting better hits off the white stuff sticking to the glass the next day/ later that night then I am off a decent hit with a cloud...


Would my theory be correct in that ONLY METH is re attaching itself to your pipe whilst the cutters, whatever they are.. do not?
Click to expand...
 
For anyone else who stumbled across this it's simple and not so complicated. You need a torch with a big flame, I don't mean from the corner store I mean like a culinary one. You csn buy them on Amazon for $20. Hold the pipe with a cloth or something similar so you don't burn your hand. Start the flame at the end you inhale from, it's about a 1 second delay for thrle heat to travel from out of the glass to the inside so don't hold the flame there long. Than just pull the flame down towards the bowl. It will flow like water along the heated surface with the weight it picks up as it goes. Do that around thr whole thing. Usually it won't get all the way into the bowl because it's awkward holding it and not burning your self so you have to switch sides you're holding after it cools off and than simply heat up what's at the entrance and it should all flow right in.
 
Well when you look at the melting point of methamphetamine hydrochloride, I can only presume you are breathing out pyrolysis products/impurities.

People worrying about the losses due to the clouds might want to wonder if they have a problem.

Oh, and if it were methamphetamine freebase, you WOULD know about it because it's quite corrosive.
 
ky0ki13 said:
While this would obviously be true for threads about any number of topics, a thread about meth requires special consideration. Of course it could have just been a finished thread, but it'd also be reasonable to guess the participants got sidetracked parting out that broken microwave to jury rig a little spot welder, vacuuming every surface in the house with the brush and crevice tools, and giving the shed a real proper clean until the mess is 10x'd while explaining to any spectators that this is the only way to ensure top notch organisation so really they could be back to resume the thread any time now. Cleaning out the gutters at 3:30 by head torch isn't even out of the question!

re bic vs. jet:
  • Neither (I mean, either in a pinch of course)!
  • Try a heat gun with the appropriate temperature tip attached. This works extremely well, but can be a bit of a hassle in many settings.
  • Another one to try if you're handy on the torch is fitting one of those ceramic vaporizer caps that turns your flame into hot air onto your vessel. This seems like it should work out pretty good, but I've never gotten around to actually trying it.
  • If I'm by myself I quite like a little homemade alcohol burner, but it doesn't come out in company...that big hot flame makes it way too easy for one greedy person to scorch the lot (more on this below).
  • Also for the crafty, this project seemed promising until drunk girl broke it on its third puff and I haven't ever got around to trying again: Fashion a little element using a pair of SS wires and embed it into the bottom of your bubble, then connect it to a decent TC vape mod. If I do try it again I'll work out a better design though cause sticking a normal pipe on top of a big vape mod was awkward even before it got dropped on its head.
  • While we're on vapes, is there any better way to get in some massive rips outside the pub while you're pointing out the guy sleeping in the bushes to a pair of police on foot patrol? For a long time I tried to find a good way to create a meth oil so I could just have a bottle on hand to fill a tank with and they always worked okay, but I never achieved my goal of getting something that worked the same every time, didn't leak out the bottom, and delivered consistent great hits. Actually by those criteria maybe I did achieve my goal when I abandoned the oil and started doing this: For starters switch out the tank for a squonk or drip deck. Something with a couple horizontal coils and some cotton and for convenience an easy to remove top. Thoroughly wet the cotton with some VG and turn the power all the way down. Toss a dump along the top of each coil and slowly raise the power until it takes about 2 seconds to start melting. That'll be enough power to deliver as big a puff as anyone could want without too much risk of burning it. If you want that ridiculous cloud take a second puff while it's still warm rather than turning the power up. (N.B. This is also perfect for THC oil except turn the power all the way up and keep some VG on hand for the cotton. The other major difference is if you hit this in the smoking area at the pub the smell is instant, obvious, and strong so there's no hiding what you're doing, but if you're clever about it you can hide that it's you doing the doing.)
  • This last one isn't really about the heat source, but unless I need something compact for travelling or whatever I typically aim for a 70-80mm diameter bubble when I'm blowing for myself. There's a few reasons for this, but the relevant one here is that it allows me the option to give it a little shake when I'm melting in so the puddle is splattered all over the place. This forces people to keep the heat moving to get a puff and prevents some jerk being able to scorch the whole puddle with some greedy overheating.
Some clarification for anyone confused by any of the ancient bickering:
  • These are the well defined and well known terms used to describe, respectively, matter as it changes from solid<->liquid, liquid<->gas, and gas<->solid (collectively called phase changes): melting, freezing, evaporation, condensation, deposition, and sublimation.
And at last, addressing the topic at hand:
  • Is the stuff in the stem worth smoking? Usually, but it's so very tedious to actually do. Will you heat up the stem and try to move it back to the bubble with short sharp breaths? Push it down mechanically with a straw or some other scraper? Hold the stem upright and oh so slowly allow gravity to pull it down as you melt it? Or skip all that prep work and smoke the stem. If you have a jet flame you can chase it back and forth, sometimes puffing on the tip and sometimes the bubble, and all the while hoping you don't forget which is the hot bit. A very determined person can do this with a Bic even if it means burning through half the gas and awkwardly striking with an index finger once the thumbs are too sore to do so. But wait, there's more! I once knew a guy who swore by his method of gently blowing long hot breaths through the pipe which formed condensation inside the stem. It didn't take long to start rolling down to the bubble and the result was a clear stem and a tiny bit of liquid to boil off before the puddle was revealed. Further, he often got that puddle all to himself because, "Ew, I'm not smoking your spit." This suggests a final option in which you add some water to your vessel, cover the holes and give it a good hard shaking, then boil away the water (be sure to seal the stem first or it quickly becomes very hot).
  • A closely related task that is often just as tedious arises when we double check that bag in decent light cause how could it possibly be empty already? Occasionally it will have been filled with something rocky and dry (which comes with it's own separate worry about keeping the bag upright while it's open and being extra careful not to fumble it) and unquestionably empty. Far more often (here where I live anyway) the contents were grainy and moist, and although it probably started off as a neat little blob, repeated attempts to gather it back together while hoping that this time it sticks to the straw better than it does to the bag have produced something that acts empty, but certainly doesn't look empty. Again there's a few options. An obvious one is to have another go at it with the straw, but extra carefully this time. This isn't very reasonable though as by the time you're trying to squeeze that last stubborn drop from an empty you're unlikely to be in any condition to exercise extra care (or as I like to tell people I catch being naughty to themselves, "Look, you're probably right about that thing crawling around under your skin, but it's obviously been there awhile and you're in no state to catch it so let it be a bit longer till you're sober"). This method can be greatly improved by cutting down the sides of the bag and opening it flat on a hard surface. Now it can be scraped smooth in one stroke with a knife or plastic card or whatever. Finally, like above, you could get a pack of those long skinny plastic pipettes from the craft section of the $2 shop and use one to put just enough water in the bag to dissolve everything then suck it back out, squirt it in your pipe, and boil away the water (these are really handy for the water option above too). Regardless you've probably eked out 2 or 3 puffs that provide very little satisfaction and have more likely just stoked your craving.
  • The third tedious thing a lot of people love to get hung up on is a clean pipe. In my experience it has proven to be an exceedingly rare event to obtain something that I can melt into a clean pipe, smoke until it's gone, and then be unable to detect that it was ever there. Lots of things seem to factor in to this, but inevitably something remains whether a ghostly faint residue or a crusty black ring.

  • I've abandoned all the things above in favour of my current method: Get a jar big enough to fit your pipe in, but not much bigger. Fill it with distilled water. Tear all the empties open and rinse them in the jar (tearing them avoids fiddling around to get the water back out). I have a very strong aversion to smoking scorched gear (just thinking about it is almost enough to make me gag) so any time that happens I'll dip the pipe in to fill the bubble with water, swish it around until everything is dissolved, then tip it back in to the jar. To maintain a clean vessel with great ease, I do the same when there's 2-3 puffs remaining as the stains and residues generally appear only once everything's been smoked. Always follow these with a good rinse using clean water as the jar water will dry dirty and you'll be good as new every time. I usually wait until the water in the jar has quite obviously changed colour before doing anything with it. Sooner than that the yield doesn't seem worth the effort and while there's no reason you can't carry on using the same water for far longer, at some point the tiny droplets that get washed down the drain have a nontrivial amount of stuff dissolved in them which strikes me as wasteful.
  • By the time you're ready to reclaim your prize, the water in that jar will look pretty gross. In addition to the obvious debris floating around in it there's a bunch of suspended solids that you can't see. That suggests filtration is probably a good first step. I think a lot of people like to use coffee filters for these kinds of tasks, and to be fair they probably catch enough of the stuff to be sufficient. I'm not a fan for a small job like this, though. Instead I prefer to grab a couple of wheel filters and the biggest syringe from the vending machine at the needle exchange. These filters are phenomenal and overall it just feels more precise than breaking out the funnel and having a big wet coffee filter left over. At this point there's a couple options.
  • Option A: Grab a clean pan you can heat up (I like enamel, but glass is fine too) and sized such that all your water covers the bottom in a thin layer then filter the water in to it. Set a fan or two blowing a good wind at the surface and apply a gentle heat (you want it hot enough to boil the water off, but you're not trying to boil a jug or anything crazy like that). Here's the most important part: watch it the whole time until it's done. If you absolutely must leave it alone make sure you turn off the heat first. The fans should be fine though. It goes pretty quickly and I usually stop when it reaches the point that nothing flows when I rock the pan, but the crystals are still quite damp. Then I'll scoop out a fat dump and let the rest air dry for a few hours. Finally, you can bag it up or whatever.
  • Option B: If you have a bit of patience and access to the supplies you'll need, then you can instead filter it into the appropriate clean receptacle and proceed to re-salt it.

I think I actually did manage to make it shorter this time, but only cause I omitted the discussion about all the different "perfect" pipe cleaning methods people seem to know and a bit of a gripe about burning them clean. I'm not sure I really expect anyone to read all this, but thanks if you did! Bet you'd get it in one guessing what I got up to last night (maybe not just last night if I'm being honest) lol. Time to do something else now, though. If I open another topic I doubt I'd be able to help myself writing another one lol.
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Does this work if all you have is basically really fine white powder left? Like, if you get the powder in some water and then use thr method of fans blowing on it / slow boiling it to evaporate, Does that make the powder reenter a crystallized form?
 
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