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Okay, so I've been using my crown micro phunnel daily for a few months now, and even though I cleaned it after each and every session, it collected a lot of brown stuff in it, not on the outside, but where I can't reach to clean it, that is, the inside. I remember asking a question about cleaning it a while back, and Santino, the man himself responded saying that he himself uses Brew rite coffee cleaner in boiling water to clean his bowls, so I looked around for it, but could not find it, or any other coffee cleaner for that matter, but then I looked up it's ingredients and it only said [b]"Contains sodium carbonate"[/b], after which, I started looking for sodium carbonate/washing soda/soda ash, and found it. Yesterday, I decided to go ahead and give it a shot, so I boiled some water with the bowl in it, and then poured some sodium carbonate in it, approximately 2 teaspoons, and kept it boiling for 5 minutes, and left it in the water for 15 minutes after that. When I took it out, it looked the same to me and I was really disheartened, BUT, the second I ran it under the tap, ALL the filth inside it got washed away in one second, with the exception of a few lines...you should have looked at my face! Confident in the success of the said process, I repeated it once again, and god, the bowl came out looking new! Here it is! [img]http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/7271/20120220211458.jpg[/img] [img]http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/5879/20120220211446.jpg[/img] [img]http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/4953/20120220211413.jpg[/img] Now I had thought of taking both "before" and "after" pictures, but I forgot, so these are the only ones I have, but I can assure you, that the *bowl" part was almost close to black before I cleaned it! So if your crown bowls get dirty, you know what to do.

Since we've had a bunch of "list your top 5 brands/flavours/whatever" threads, and I've found some of them more interesting than I expected... please list your top 5 bowls, i.e. the ones you actually use rather than the ones that looked like a a good idea. In my case, that would be: 1. Saphire Power Bowl - the single best bowl I've ever used for Nakhla, sees the most use 2. Crown Micro Funnel - great results with Tangiers in an economical size 3. Crown Micro Classic - the bowl I use for trying new shisha, economical, good results from a single coal 4. Saphire Funnel - amazing results with Tangiers, but it don't half get through the stuff... 5. Saphire Hot Shot - ultra-economical, scorch-proof, great bowl for short sessions or newbies. Has been eclipsed in my collection by the Crown bowls when I wish to be economical and the other Saphires when I don't, but still a great bowl.

What up? I've been lurking here for a while, been studying up as much as I can, but this is my first post. I wanted to see what the opinions were on my findings. A little bit of back story: I've never even smoked a hookah. Never even thought about it until recently, when I started smoking a pipe. I've been studying up on that and am going to pick up some nice McClelland blends and a good looking Savinelli shortly, but with winter approaching, I won't be able to smoke much outside, and I'm anticipating that SWMBO won't react to favorably to the aroma of some of the more flavorful blends of pipe tobacco I'll be smoking. So I was trying to come up with a way that the problem can be avoided, and as soon as a hookah popped into my head I was dead set on getting one (who knows why, that's the way my brain works ). So, anyway, unless my girlfriend surprises me and takes up an interest in the hookah (she has never smoked [u]anything[/u]) this will be a solo hookah 99.99% of the time. For that reason, I'm not looking for a massive rig, and not looking to spend a lot of money on the device itself (rather spend it on shisha). After reading countless forum posts and reviews, here's the rig I'm currently settled on: [list] [*][b]Mya Mozza[/b] - adding a large Mya tray [*][b]Nammor Hose[/b] - probably small, in black [*][b]Crown Micro Phunnel[/b] [/list] I'll probably also add a small windscreen, and it seems like quartered, flat coconaras will be the way to go with this bowl. I like the mozza for it's modern, non-traditional look. I'm hoping the crown micro will help with conservation of mu'assel and be small enough for 45-60 minute solo sessions. Any suggestions on the rig? Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this forum so I can be confident in my first purchase without having to waste a lot of money on trial and error.