After many trials and tribulations, I have found that melting the stem down into the bowl works the best. And man, does it get me hi as fuk.
If you have a nice & thick glass pickle, I would use a mini torch to burn the stem down. (I was hesitant to buy one, and I found a nice one for $15 and it is the best thing since Wonder bread.) If you don't have a torch, I use tea lights (little candles.) Lighters always burn the hell out of my thumbs and I get sick of buying so many of them. I won't use a torch on a thin pipe because it warps the hell out of the bowl and becomes immediate trash. So if you have a thin glass bowl, just use the candle method. It won't warp the bejesus out of your pickle. Anyhoo...
1. Grab your pickle. Hold it by the bubble with the stem pointing straight up in the air or tilted just a little bit.
2. Torch (or use tea light, when I use a tea light, I set it on the edge of a table so I can tilt the bubble downwards as opposed to holding it horizontally). starting at the mouthpiece and heading south. Initially it may take a good 10-20 seconds, depending upon how thick your glass is, for the cloud-like sheen on the inside of the pipe to get hot and start dripping down the neck.
3. Don't rush. I take my time doing this. You get more product this way. Torch about 2/3 of the way down the neck or just a tad more, (I stop there so I don't burn my fingers) and then put the pipe, bubble still facing down, on some type of cotton or something that the pipe won't burn (THE NECK OF THE PIPE IS HOT AS HELL AT THIS POINT, depending upon how thick your glass is, it may take 5-7 minutes to cool down.) Entertain yourself with something for these few moments and wait for the neck to cool.
4. During #3, assuming you've smoked quite a few bowls through this pipe, you should be able to see a fairly big puddle building up and sliding down the side of the neck towards the bowl. This is good. Although you may notice that when torching the neck that you are losing a little bit of smoke, it's really not much, and you'll still get a good 4-6 fat hits with the stuff you're already melting down. So once the neck has cooled a bit, continue the process of moving the resin into the bubble. Hold the end of the neck where you would put your lips with the bubble still pointing towards the ground, and melt down the remaining stuff into the bowl. Usually it comes out in one big blurb blob, and slithers right down into the bowl, just waiting to be smoked. It will be a bit darker in color than the original white product, and may taste a little burnt, obviously - but is still a godsend when you're low on product, and for me, I get wayyyy hi off of it, maybe because it's the mixture of a few different batches inside the pipe, or who knows...but it's all good.
I don't like the scraping method because I don't think it is as effective, and 90% of the time, I would sneeze or drop or fumble half the shavings around and get all pissed off...I'd rather avoid that.
The water method isn't bad, but what has happened to me a few times is when the water boils, the product will splash all over the place, or back into the neck of the pipe, and it's just kind of a pain in the ass. Only use A FEW DROPLETS OF WATER when doing this.
Hopefully this will assist you in some fashion......
\m/