When using sieves (and frankly when doing vacuum distillation as well) it really important that glassware be kept clean. I strongly suggest the use of a micro cleaning solution+sonicator followed by a dilute HCl/DI water rinse.
Hello Squiggly! I wanted to get straight on the acid rinse technique.
I've used the base bath followed by acid bath, Alconox, piranah solutions, sonication, HF (with a big tube of calcium gluconate in my coat pocket!), hot acids (HNO3 or aqua regia), and straight ultra-pure DI H2O (18 - 18.2 Megohms) for stubborn organometallics.
For all that I have never heard of an HCl/DI rinse for glassware whether to be used or shelved.
A typical rinse included 3-5x H2O rinses, 2x DI and 1-2x acetone rinse. Really quick turnarounds were blasted dry with dry nitrogen or argon. Only the pretentious prick scientists used argon with their big fancy NSF grants...
The great thing about science is that the more questions we answer the more questions we are left with.
Anyways Squiggles, I'd like to understand the reason(s) to use HCl as a glassware rinse.