ELBOW GREASE IS A WONDERFUL THING
If anyone finds themselves in this situation: allen screws
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Iām disappointed you didnāt use a fork, but you canāt argue with success my Good Man!
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I shouldāve tried that lol
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No reason because what you did worked, and you didnāt have to ruin a fork to do it. So in reality, your up on this endeavor (besides the broken glass)! You didnāt have to break, or alter anything. You absolutely did the best thing for the situation!
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I appreciate the help a lot. Fork couldāve worked too for all I know.
Now time to buy a new downstem. Pissed about the bowl, was a cool snake design and green. Matched the bong like a cookie pairs with milk.
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Oh dude! Iāve been waiting for this day, Iāve mastered the art.
Its true that you want to heat the outside, but thereās a little more to it to guarantee success - and that is the condition when working with glass; you may only have one chance so you want to stack the odds in your favor.
Its a situation where a picture is worth a thousand words. I had a bowl break off in my downstem recently, this is the shot directly after I liberated the broken male joint:
You wanna grab an assorted set of drywall anchors (and screws) so that you can try different combinations of lengths, diameters and styles. You want an anchor that is long enough to penetrate beyond the stuck male joint and that has those barbs every few millimeters. You want a screw long enough to expand the right section of the anchor, and provide enough length for your vice grips to clamp metal-to-metal. If you look closely at the site where the drywall anchor penetrates, youāll notice the barb there is catching the end of the glass. When you begin to drive the screw, remember that its less about making compression WITHIN the slide but rather having the barb catch the end of the glass. No doubt you need some compression in order to expand the barb and get good purchase. Conversely, compression is how this could go very wrong for you and crack the glass.
When you think youāve driven the screw far enough such that the drywall anchor is seated properly and the barbs have good purchase on the glass, you want to heat gun (or gently butane torch) the entire outside joint. You want to work quickly because one driving force is having a nice temperature gradient across the radial dimension (hotter on the outside female joint, colder on the inside male joint). This is why I prefer the torch over the heat gun, it gets the outside joint up to temp quickly and I can complete the task before the inside glass becomes hot via conduction through the glassware. Once your glass is sufficiently hot, you attach your vice grips to the screw and it should come out of there like Excalibur from the stone (you might need to use some big boi strength). I suggest working with heat gloves on, both for temperature and in case glassware breaks its there to pad your bare hands.
Whatās convenient is that at no point does glass touch metal; the plastic barbs touch the glass, the metal screw touches the plastic drywall anchor, and the vice grips clamp to the metal screw.
This procedure comes with some risk to the glassware, you want to work slowly and methodically. You might try this procedure after other less aggressive attempts have failed. You want to attempt to screw the nail in as little as possible - you require good purchase at the barb but must be wary of breaking the glass. Try driving the screw in 3 twists (for instance), heat and attempt to pull - if the anchor pops out because 3 twists wasnāt enough, let the glass cool all the way down and attempt 3.5-4 turns of the screwdriver. Work piecewise - the glass may impress you by how far you need to drive the screw, but you want to approach it cautiously. Take some solace in knowing the plastic will deform before the glass breaks (up to a point), and drywall anchors expand top to bottom (here the top diameter is wider than the bottom, so it should take a few turns of a screwdriver for it to even engage the tip of the drywall anchor).
If you REALLY wanna stack the odds, you can heat the glass a little and drip some canola oil/vac grease into the stuck joint and it should pull into the joint via capillary action.
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I will use this method next time with oil and the wall screw. Appreciate the help with it lol
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Have you tried using a potato? I know it sounds crazy - but I have successfully used potatoes to pull broken glass out of many things. You might try smashing a raw potato on there, giving it a twist or two (after heating, cleaning, etc.) and pulling it up and out. The glass will stick to the potato, the potato is big enough to let you turn it with more torque - and its wet so that sometimes help with lubrication.
Iāve also slathered things with WD-40ā¦ its worked on dozens of other things that were randomly stuck together for no good reason (Seems like this is not intended to be stuck together forever) - and then you can use the potato trick (or whatever other trick you want to use for thisā¦)
Iāve also used long needle nose pliers wrapped in plumbers tape (PTFE) and inserted then held them open as tight as I can to wiggle and pull things back out. Its kind of like using the potatoā¦ but you know you also have to own long needle nose pliers and plumbers tape to make this one work.
Did you know that these exist? They are called ball bladders and are used to do this kind of work. I think the Foley catheter is probably your best bet if you really think that something like this will help - it will be small enough to fit AND it will be lubricated, in case thatās needed. Plus it gets a lot bigger when inflated.
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Tricks of the trade if U havnt already please!
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Someone should patent this idea/invent a device for CHEAP specifically for it.
Little rubber balloon on the end and pump it to expand to the length and pull. Like a pen sized object.
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