Quote Originally Posted by FlyGuyOU
Good advise both of you, but can i interject my two cents

Don't use hot water! if its so hot you can't touch it i wouldn't use it. From my personal experiences using boiling or even really hot water makes the pipes brittle. Esp if you rinse with cold water right after **DONT DO IT if you want to keep your pipe for awhile. If you keep ontop of cleaning using rubbing alcohol and salt (I like to use Epsom salt as it has great big crystals) then just rinse with normal temperature agua.
IDK all the technical jargon but it includes words like tempered, and valmorphanize

ive broken several 100$'s worth of glass, sometimes with nothing more than a mere touch of my finger. i stopped using hot water and incidents of breakage have gone down too, but it could be b/c ive gotten away from Hanayama...
This has more to do with the quality and thickness of the glass.