Acetone for Lakeland ghost removal?

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Jevverrett

Jevverrett

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I’m doing some looking into trying successfully remove Lakeland ghost. I’m particularly sensitive to it, as it makes the corner of my mouth and tongue burn like a chemical irritant. I saw on some other forums people have talked about soaking a pipe in acetone and then drying, by lighting the mouth of the bowl till the vapor won’t burn. It was apparently written about in one of Rick Newcombe’s pipe books. They say it works completely, but I can’t find video evidence of it anywhere. You would think it would be well documented. Anybody here ever tried it?
 
What have you tried up to this point? I would take the pipe back to bare wood and plug the shank, fill bowl with kosher salt and fill with everclear and let sit for 3 days. Remove plug and salt and rinse with hot tap water for several minutes. Replug shank and fill with used wet coffee grounds for 3 more days. Remove grounds and rinse out pipe again with hot tap water. Smoke it the next day with a straight virginia and repeat if needed.
 
Ozone treatment. Food safe. Not toxic. Wood and plastic safe. I'd probably do a retort first, and if that didn't work after a couple of retort efforts, I'd employ someone with an ozone chamber. I can't remember the name off hand (someone here will), but there is a store or online resalers/refurbisher who has one and sells the service. Someone used to sell retorts on ebay, but I just did a quick search to no avail. They're easy enough to make on your own anyway via supplies on ebay or locally. Here's a blog link, but there are also youtube tutorials to watch the process.
https://rebornpipes.com/2012/10/17/what-is-a-pipe-retort-and-how-it-is-used/
I've worked a lot with acetone and various solvents. Not claiming to be an expert, but I personally wouldn't touch a pipe with anything of the kind.
 
I’ve already tried multiple grain alcohol/salt soaks. Not for multiple days though, I’ve never heard of that one. But I did it overnight one run through. I also tried alcohol with cotton balls first, which worked in a similar fashion to the salt. The last run through came back pretty clean. I could still taste it in the middle of the smoke. I did do the coffee grounds procedure, had never heard of that one either before. Some guys were talking about baking pipes a 200F, I didn’t try that. After the coffee, I could not taste it, but it burned my mouth/lips in the bottom third of the bowl. I think the previous owner was a serious Lakeland fiend. People probably should indicate strong lingering ghosts whenever they let a pre owned pipe go.

I have been doing some reading on physics forum, clean brite, read material data safety sheets, and even some drug related forums lol. It seems like pure acetone is probably what they are talking about using for briar pipe cleaning. Most likely, because it evaporates very, very completely. I also saw that it is produced naturally in the human body to burn fat. Cheaper acetone has other ingredients like water and such in it. I have used it before for work, and it’s very effective at dissolving oil, paint and grease. (like the oils from Lakeland essence and tobacco generaLoy) Aside from the vapor that causes respiratory issues and direct skin contact related absorption, material data safety sheets indicate it is nominally toxic. I also read people use it to purify powdered narcotics, as well as make homemade hashish. This does seems plausible, I wish I had a cheap pipe I could try this on for science. It seems like the only real danger to the pipe might be the finish. I am not sure it would be dangerous to smoke after it was aired out completely. Sorry for the essay.
 
ftrplt said:
I believe Mike Myers offers an Ozone treatment. FTRPLT
Click to expand...


I had a pipe with a stubborn Lakeland ghost in Mike Myer's ozone chamber for a week, all to no avail. I eventually had to get rid of the pipe. No knock on Mike Myers though. He has preformed some real magic in repairs.


Cheers,

RR
 
I’ve heard folks talking about the ozone treatment. They say it works wonders, just not on lakelands. I used some kind of an ozone machine years ago when I worked in a hotel to get smoke odor out of rooms.

Id like to try and see if I can’t find an estate briar on the cheap that was used for Lakeland, and try the acetone on it. If people are saying they’ve done it and works, it’d be worth a shot. I’d send somebody a cob, but I’m not sure it would work the same way. The pipe I got was a don carlos 2nd grade, and it smokes fantastically well.
 
Before the Ozone treatment.......try jamming the juicy, oily peel of a fresh naval orange into the bowl of your pipe, making sure the oily rind contacts the inside of the bowl. Squeeze/crush the rind to release the oils and juices then jam it into the bowl, tightly. Leave some rind hanging out from the top of the bowl for easier removal. As the rind dries out and loses some moisture, it will pull away from the bowl and it can be removed easily. You won't have to dig it out once it dries and becomes leathery. The aromatic citrus oils dissolve "ghosting" and usually refresh the bowl of the pipe. Stale, foul, rank smells miraculously disappear with the citrus treatments. You might have to do this a few times. ALSO!...make sure you scrub out the mortise area and the smoke-hole in the stem with those scrubby type pipe cleaners dipped in Rum Extract or high-proof drinking alcohol. "Ghosting" can lurk in these areas too, and show up when warm tobacco smoke is sipped through them.

I had bought a new pipe that was ghosted with perfume/cologne. The ghost would only show up when the pipe was smoked and heated. No trace of the ghost could be detected when pipe was cold, but load it up and smoke it....and the ghost ruined it all. I orange peeled, and scrubbed the crap out of that pipe, and I finally got rid of the perfume stench. Make sure the perfume ghosting didn't attach to the shellac or wax finish on the pipe's bowl.

If all else fails....Ozone treatment(s)...... Good luck. I feel your pain.
 
Just might be time to move it along to the next smoker. This would be an interesting topic, but I'm not sure how we'd speak about it. Meaning, would it seem like idiosyncratic gobbledegook or the sky is blue? I don't find myself a picky smoker. I'm likely somewhere in the moderate, middle range, but I might go as far as saying 20%, if not a little more, of all the pipes I've owned "just didn't work out for me." Some of my favorite looking, or came with an interesting provenance, best financial deal or great trade in my favor, or what have you...just didn't want to meet me half way. Me and that pipe weren't meant to have a relationship. At times difficult, but I had to move them along and out of my world.
 
Acetone would be the LAST thing I tried to clean anything like a pipe. Toxic stuff. Nasty. It would be my choice as a prep to throwing the pipe away.

Also…if I was so sensitive to Lakeland (and there are a fair number of different “Lakeland” scents) that multiple cleanings with various agents and methods failed to provide an effective solution I would 1) Try smoking a good aromatic blend in it. 2) Consider it as a gift for a friend, etc. cause it’s NEVER going to meet expectations for smoking those subtle VA blends, etc.

But of course, good luck. Projects are great fun…mostly. 😄
 
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