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PBW & the Chemistry of Clean

MinnBobber

Well-Known Member
I now only clean with distilled water, too. We buy the stuff at Fred Meyer (grocery&otherstuff store).

I think, over time, my water spots are disappearing.

I clean with tap water, warmed up and mixed with PBW. Then rinse with hot tap water. Then rinse with a little distilled water.
When I want to use it, microwave some distilled water and fill.
 
MinnBobber,

Radio

stay true to yourselves
I use tap water (we have shitty tap water in this town) and PBW mixed with boiling tap water to clean my recycler. It is developing brown marks on the inside of the vortex chamber :(
I can't get anything in there to scrub it off (it looks like a thin, fine layer or brown build-up. nothing serious) but I can't get in there and PBW isn't cleaning it. It's fucking annoying the hell out of me..
 
Radio,

DDave

Vape Wizard
Accessory Maker
Wanted to chime in with my results for PBW. I'm sold!

Glass water pipe with a huge blob of goo stuck above the down-stem, just under the ice pinches. Couldn't reach it with anything. ISO soaks weren't making a dent. OxyClean, borrowed from laundry stash didn't touch it. Finally, PBW arrives.

That night, preheating glass with hot tap, dumping, then premix 1/2 tsp PBW in 1 cup boiled water. 1 cup of water fills water tool to top of down-stem, with a couple drops spilling over. Was amazing to watch the PBW cause globs of good to break away from the glass and float to the water line. 6 of those soaks, each approx 10 minutes, and not only was the glob of goo (about the size of a 50 cent piece) gone, but the hard water buildup on both the ice pinches and on the down-stem were gone as well. Was back to as clean as new...

Repeating myself..... I'm sold! Props to OP! :clap:
 

alltoreup

Damn you, party liquor
Been using PBW for a while with just hot tap water. Wanted to clean my ss travel coffee mug last night so I heated up some water to about 160-170F and poured it in with some PBW. Since I had them handy I decided to drop all my SOLO stems in it as well as a couple of cleaned but stained ELBs. Popped the top on the cup and left it. Came back about 4 hours later to still piping hot PBW water so I just left it and went to bed. This morning my coffee cup was absolutely spotless and the SOLO glass was sparkling. It even got the crusty stuff that blackens the cuts in the PVHES stems. ELBs look great and my coffee tastes fabulous out of my freshly cleaned and rinsed cup.
Just wanted to share my story of using even hotter than tap water. Definitely works better at getting the crusty stuff off when you use hotter water. And the coffee cup is great for keeping that hot water hot. I imagine a ss thermos would work even better.
Clean vaping everyone!
 

MinnBobber

Well-Known Member
alltoreup,
PBW is the greatest. I just cleaned my Mobius Ion and it looks.
I'm intending to post pics on Mobius and on miniVAP threads showing hookup options
 

VANVAS

Well-Known Member
Yes , just our necessary product that each one of us have to have , for this game that is colleting glass. Everyday i learn something with all of you people!
 
VANVAS,
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Dramma Lamma

Looks like a job for!
I just boiled my sub atomizer shiny clean with pbw, what was left came out like buttah.
I'm talking about over a year of continuous use, first cleaning ever.
:tup::tup:


Forgive my laziness to read through all 34 pages of the rest of this thread, but you are saying it is safe to BOIL a pbw solutuion on the sove? I'd be doing it on a side burner on an outside grill at any rate.

I am cleaning some glass for a friend whom does not have hands and can't clean his own stuff, some of the combustion stuff is so badly caked on from him not able to clean it and his other Friends not giving a fuck.

After ISO and rocksalt did all it could I moved onto acetone and that did a killer job on some stuff PBW soaks have put a bit more of a dent in them. But a few ash catchers are still just gnarly, we are talking years of buildup that has never truly been cleaned up.

So, is it safe to boil PBW solution if so what concentration are we talking? I will be doing it outside and in a pot I don't care about.
 
Dramma Lamma,
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MinnBobber

Well-Known Member
mVbskion.jpg
IMO, I would never boil, just to be safe.
I'd do distilled water + PBW and immerse pieces and warm to just short of boiling, like 190 F.
Cover and let steep until clean.

I do indoor method with heating distilled water to 190 F in microwave, stir in PBW, and add to bubbler piece with Ratchhett's silicone plugs so you can fill ALL of bubbler with the mix.
I use about 12 oz water and 1/4 teaspoon PBW but piece is not very dirty, never combusted thru it, etc.

Yesterday's result: shown with miniVAP wire basket module in place, ready for inverted miniVAP....
 
MinnBobber,
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grokit

well-worn member
All I ever heard was that it's bad for aluminum so I took those pieces out of the boiling water first before adding the pbw to boiling water. No explosion or even fumes/odor; ymmv but I sincerely doubt it.
 

exit

Well-Known Member
I'm late to post this, but the main ingredient in PBW aside from basically oxiclean you can imagine as microscopic metal bombs which eat grime. PBW should not come into contact with any metal or plastic you care remotely about because it is designed to eat away to pure metal. I would not wash anything metal like a screen with PBW.

I noticed my jar says something about an overnight wash? can i take a larger piece and just fill it up with pbw and water and leave it in a bucket, clean it in the AM?
 
exit,
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Kief

Medicated
I am cleaning some glass for a friend whom does not have hands and can't clean his own stuff, some of the combustion stuff is so badly caked on from him not able to clean it and his other Friends not giving a fuck.
Once you get that mess taken care of with PBW, you and your friend may want to consider a better long-term solution to keep things clean... and healthy. I would try the Simple Green soak bucket method and let the chemicals do all the work. All someone has to do is drop the glass in the bucket, after time has passed (a day or so) all that is needed is a good rinse (hopefully). You can reuse it over and over until it stops working (like ISO). It should be an easy enough solution for any of the lazy friends to handle. With extra glass, it's even easier to just rotate them through the bucket. Just don't let it build up, clean (soak) them at least once a week. Also, beware that Simple Green is known to remove some labels from glass.

Just my :2c:
 

Dramma Lamma

Looks like a job for!
Ok well I had been hitting the PBW washes just as hot as the tap will go.

I generally do glass cleaning in a garage sink which is less important to worry about removing stains from, after reading that some of you prefer distilled water I decided to move to the kitchen sink, which has an in sink erator that is fed by a reverse osmosis filtering system. That's doing a bit more work each soak cycle, a few more and it will be finally done.

Once this stuff is truly clean, it's all being given and sold away. The original owner has finally gone FC now that he's got a volcano.
 

exit

Well-Known Member
Idk, i did max temp tap water the other day with PBW and my bong which I shamefully hadn't cleaned in months and had gotten ultra nasty got cleaned. I did two shake ups with PBW (second times with gloves on - who would have knew hot water + PBW stings) and one with salt and iso after. Got everything out of there and looks amazing.

I probably could have done it better but it worked fairly well. I put a lot more pbw in than you're supposed to though. does adding too much hamper performance?
 
exit,

Radio

stay true to yourselves
Ive found that putting too much causes it to clump up at the bottom and stop disolving :(
 
Radio,
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Radio

stay true to yourselves
Has the overnight soak worked for anyone?
Haven't tried one yet, but I have noticed that anything more than an hour is unnecessary unless you are shaking it every 20 mins :) (in which case; it can't hurt to let it soak until it's 100% perfect)
 
Radio,

CrimsonKing

The Destroyer Of Worlds
PBW effing genius!!! I had a 4 pound tub in the garage \ brew lair how had I never thought of this when I constantly use it to get nasty organics off of glass carboys and such. Its currently soaking away in my syn showerhead (matter of fact time to go check on it) and it seemed to be lifting the mystery stain on the bottom of the stemless downstem hard water build up mixed with resin maybe? Our water is super hard I'll report back with results.

Edit 1: glass looks virgin stain in downstem still there but I've been going after this bitch for a year and it was only a 25 min soak so ill keep at it, as 15+ mins of iso and salt shaking don't get the rest of the glass this clean and still left the stain, I forgot my phone pics on next rinse I promise. On to soak 2 gonna let it go an hour or so this time. Might experiment with carbed water to really get some o2 action going if the stain keeps being stubborn :science:

Edit 2: after 2 soaks nice and clean execpt bottom of stemless soaking with carbed water now to see if that makes a diff
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CrimsonKing

The Destroyer Of Worlds
Update 3 soak 3 looks like the PBW is making a slight dent in the stain from hell not enough of a change to warrant pics sitting in just a little 99% iso just to change it up / 2 pronged attack. I'm hopeful I will get this thing that's been in my piece forever out of there finally though even if takes 50 soaks nothing else has made a dent.
 
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t-dub

Vapor Sloth
Try putting a scrub brush to it for some mechanical cleaning action. You mentioned "brew lair" which leads me to believe you might have a tap cleaning brush somewhere close?
 
t-dub,

CrimsonKing

The Destroyer Of Worlds
Try putting a scrub brush to it for some mechanical cleaning action. You mentioned "brew lair" which leads me to believe you might have a tap cleaning brush somewhere close?
Yeah the problem is a soft brush I can get down there that I don't worry about breaking the glass doesn't do shit. Stiff brushes have a little bit of metal that protrudes from the end end of the brush and you can't really cut it because some bristles just fall out and same problem. No shortage of brushes here, but its a long stemless joint so what I'm left with having to do is bend a small brush in half so I don't scratch or break glass but it doest work great.
TL;DL I've tried it didn't work FML

Edit soak 4 definite progress being made on the blotch from hell
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hcOAiOe.jpg

Soak number 5 will be overnight as I'm going to bed hope I wake up to clan glass :bowdown:
 
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CrimsonKing,
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