How To Clean Tar From Tobacco Pipee
Many old pipe smokers must have had the experience that when you use your pipe for too long, a mass of tar and resin will accumulate around the mouthpiece and bowl. Apart from influencing the taste, it shortens the life span of your pipe as well. But don’t worry! I will show you how to get rid of them effortlessly with only a few simple steps using some common household items.
What can I use to clean tar out of my pipe?e
It’s really annoying to remove tar from pipes. Fortunately, there are many things in our house that can dissolve or remove stubborn tars easily: olive oil, isopropyl alcohol, salt, vinegar, lemon juice, etc. In this post, we’ll discuss their usage for cleaning our lovely Handmade briar pipe one by one.
Isopropyl alcohol and salt
Cleaning your pipe doesn’t need to be complicated. One of the best solutions is using simple isopropyl alcohol and plain old table salt. The salt acts as a gentle scrubber while the alcohol dissolves and disinfects the sticky tar buildup.
Start by taking your pipe apart so you can get to the bowl and pipe stem areas. Soak a pipe cleaner in isopropyl alcohol first, then push it through the stem up to the mouthpiece to plug it. Next, fill the pipe bowl with salt. Use regular table salt or sea salt. Use an eye dropper or syringe to add some 91% isopropyl alcohol from the pharmacy onto the salt. Get it damp but not soaked. Let it sit for a few minutes to start softening the tar.
After that, add more salt and shake it around to scrub off the tar deposits. You may need to repeat this a couple of times if there’s a heavy tar residue. Rinse it all thoroughly with more alcohol to remove any leftover salt or gunk.
To avoid spills, stand the pipe up in an aluminum foil holder. Let it sit for 24 hours so the alcohol and salt can fully dissolve the sticky tar. Later, use extra alcohol-soaked pipe cleaners and cotton swabs to scrub out the shank, mortise, and stem until they come out clean. No need to rinse since the alcohol will evaporate.
Vinegar and lemon juice, olive oil
Our white vinegar contains about 4-7% acetic acid. This gives it a pretty strong ability to quickly dissolve tar inside the pipe. But we want to be a little careful here – acetic acid may also erode the pipe material over time. So we recommend limiting contact to just 2-3 hours by using a 5% vinegar solution.
In addition, you can also use olive oil in your kitchen， Turns out those fatty olive oil compounds can soften up pipe gunk and tars really nicely, making them more liquidy so they flow out easier. I’d suggest rubbing a thin coat of olive oil on the affected areas and letting it soak in for at least 12 hours. This gives the oil time to penetrate into those tiny microscopic holes. Then just rinse it off with warm water. Olive oil is awesome for getting into the small cracks in pipe materials and lubricating from within. But you’ll want that good cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil for this job.
So by using the solvent powers of vinegar or lemon juice, plus the softening mojo from olive oil, you can loosen up and eliminate those built-up pipe resins pretty easily. This keeps your pipes smoking sweet and fresh. You just gotta control how long you expose the pipes, so as not to damage the material. For regular maintenance, I’d recommend a good deep clean every month or two with this method. It really works miracles on old pipes!
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