- Use a base bath to clean glassware. Professional R&D labs don't waste time scrubbing out flasks. They use a plastic tub half-full of isopropanol saturated with NaOH. A few hours of soaking will clean the toughest stains off glassware. Hardware store ethanol is cheaper and works fine in my experience. Although the denaturants turn black over time the cleaning power is unaffected.

- Cover the top of hotplates with aluminum foil. It's only a matter of time before something spills.

- A plastic syringe and a centimeter of vinyl hose can be used to make an airtight seal to a glass pipette. This works much better than a rubber bulb, especially for heavy or volatile liquids (CHCl₃, Br₂, etc.).

- Add a paper clip to oil baths. When using a hotplate/stirrer the paperclip's stirring vastly improves heat transfer and doesn't interfere with stirbars.

Anyone have others they'd like to share?

It sounds like the paper clip stirs the oil under the flask, while still allowing the stir bar to continue on inside the flask without issue. As it stirs the oil, apparently that helps heat transfer from stove to flask without any localised hot spots or unwanted circulation/currents? (just guessing)

I like the Al foil suggestion.

@ Vesp That's exactly right. Stirring the oil really helps distillations & refluxes start faster, and if you're monitoring the bath temp. readings are more accurate.

A 50/50 mixture of ethylene glycol/water (OTC prediluted antifreeze) stored in a freezer overnight makes a far more effective cooling bath than salt/ice when doing diazotizations, nitrations etc.

If you have a source of compressed air it can be run through a condenser in place of water. It's effective at condensing distillates, even low-boiling solvents like DCM. It's also cheaper than running tap water through, and unlike a jury-rigged recirculating cooler no ice needs to be added and no parts will ever break down.

Hahaha- yeah I brought a cheap orbital car polisher and used a product called brasso. Don't bother trying to buff by hand, it takes waaaay to long!

I also understand you can strip it all back with diluted nitric acidthen polish, I guess it depends on the extent of staining - chek out stainless steel restoration on the gooog

If using an elec polisher, take it easy! It's really easy to make a sink look brand-new :-)

Whoa censor that shit!,,,

another good tip - use a flexible plastic wrap on top of buchner filtration funnels. you pour your stuff in, let the liquids drain, then cover with wrap and fasten the lip. it will suck the wrap down onto the solids and help drain the last bit of solvents out. be mindful which plastic you use since some solvents will eat some plastics

another good one - if you want to pull hard vacuum but dont want to use a dry ice trap, you can use a good membrane pump on the oil chamber of the hard vacuum pump. it will evacuate the oil chamber and immediately suck away any solvent vapor. as the oil pump operates the oil and chamber heat up facilitating better solvent vapor removal. its not as good as a dry ice trap, but it keeps my pumps pumping good vacuum for years without frequent oil changes.

and I agree with b6baddawg, overhead stirrers are really good for lab use. it also lets you stir efficiently very large volumes.

Remembered another one - Silicone grease is surprisingly easy to pack into a syringe. It's much easier and cleaner to dispense from a syringe than it is to daub it on with a finger.

A 5ml plastic measuring syringe works just perfect for applying grease, Toady uses that for engineering stuff. Works a treat, especially if one ever needs to force it down a narrow hole.