Bongs

How to make a bong

The anatomy of a conventional bong is *very* simple. It consists of a bowl (and screen), a stem (sometimes optional), a chamber, some liquid, and an opening for the mouth(s)

Water fills the container and stem just up to the carb. The water level should really be at least an inch below the "carb". So that when the bong is tilted the water won't leak. The job of the carb is to regulate where the air will be supplied from. If covered, the air (smoke) will come from the bowl; if uncovered, air will rush through the carb and force out the smoke remaining in the chamber.

I won't go through a boring description of every part of a bong--if you don't know, ask someone. The point I want to illustrate is that a bong merely forces the smoke to bubble up through water, thereby filtering it.Most bongs work with this method..however,Gravity bongs work on a different concept.

When planning a bong, one should look for these goals.

airtightness. bowl size. choice of chamber/tube. compactness/portability. decoration. filtration. hit size. transparency. tube diameter. users. volume.

Volume = Filtration

I decided that filtraton is an important characteristic for my bongs to have. I always filled up the entire bong with ICE WATER before packing bowls. While it took a little bit of lung power to initially pull the smoke through the water, it was worth it. The smoke, after passing through the ONE GALLON of ICE WATER as small bubbles, became so cooled that it felt like oxygen when you brought it into your lungs. Stoners passing through my room took enormous hits without realizing it and got baked beyond compare. While my bongs weren't sophisticated by any account, they definitely give the coolest hits ever. The rule of thumb to keep in mind when considering how much filtration a bong will have is simple. The three characteristics which matter most are the coldness of the liquid, the size/number of the bubbles, and the time the smoke is in contact with the water. The one-gallon bong I made turned out to have the best filtration because 1] I loaded it with ice, then filled it to the top with water... The smoke broke into hundreds of tiny bubbles inside the chamber (maximum surface area! The bubbles travelled through about nine inches of water to get to the top.

Scraping Your Bong

I think one of the coolest things about smoking buds is that even after your stash is all gone, you can still get high. Scraping bongs not only salvages resin for a strong-and-fast buzz, but also is a necessary part of bong maintenance. Smoking joints is the easiest thing to do--at most you'll probably want to save the roach. Bongs, however, do get clogged with resin and need to be cleaned. The parts which get most clogged are those with the smallest openings. The screen, of course, gets caked very easily and should be blown clean after every bowl. I always tap the ash out, then blow a fast lungful through pursed lips into the bottom of the bowl. When you can see through the holes in the screen, you're set. If you let the screen get too caked up, it will be *very* hard to get good bong hits because it will feel like you're trying to draw smoke through canvas. When scraping your bowl and stem, you should use a thin, narrow metal object. The awl attachment on a pocket knife works well. I've heard of stoners using an unbent coat hanger, although I am partial towards a jeweler's screwdriver. The best thing to do is to save some leftover ash, then scrape your bowl. The flakes of resin which come off are very sticky and are hard to roll without smearing them all over your fingers. Resin smells very strongly, too, and won't come off your fingers for a few days. If you roll the resin with the ash, the ash acts as a binder and keeps the resin from sticking to your fingers excessively. After scraping the resin onto a smooth, flat surface, roll it with the ash into a ball. When done, stick it back into the bowl and smoke it. Bon apetit!

Length of water = hard pull

The easiest bongs to pull smoke through are those with clean screens and a short distance of water. With one innovation: Instead of just sticking a stem into the chamber, I used a length of flexible plastic tubing which came out of the bottom of the chamber and coiled around the tube a few times before ending in a corncob pipe. The idea was to create some length of water for the bubbles to travel through, thus cleaning the smoke more. The guy who introduced me to smoking argued this point with me. He said that it was the *volume* of water which made a difference in cleaning the smoke, not the *distance* that the smoke travelled. I think he was right, because the one-gallon bong [see above] had much better filtration than the coiled-tubing bong. The down-side to the coiled-tubing bong was that it took some initial lung power to pull the water from the coils into the chamber, creating the necessary vacuum for the smoke to bubble. Veteran stoners and cigarette smokers (especially) didn't like that part of it because of the lung power it required. I didn't mind so much, because I was used to it, and once the bubbling started it had an easy draw. The one-gallon bong was the same way, but it could have had easier pull if I used a simple stem instead of a long length of plastic tubing.

Liquids

Tap water is not the only liquid that can be used in a bong. I prefer ice water, since it really cools the smoke, depending on how much water you have in the bong. Lately, though, I've tried hot/boiling water and I like that effect a lot. The steam moisturizes the smoke and removes the dryness and harshness. If your bong can withstand hot or boiling water, I'd recommend it. Trying various kinds of liquids in a bong is a lot of fun. Using beer and/or liquor in a bong gives the smoke a tasty flavor, covering over the smoky taste. I'd suggest Lineinkugel's beer, or Jim Beam/Jack Daniels whiskey. I tried some cherry-flavored bug juice once (cheap Kool Aid), and it was horrible.

Chamber

The chamber is the part of the bong which fills up with smoke when the pot is being burned. The larger the chamber, the more smoke is "stored up" before inhaling it. I am personally don't like to small chambers. Big chambers are nice because you can use multiple tokes to burn a lot of bud, filling the large chamber. Once the chamber is filled, you carb it and suck in a mind-numbing amount of smoke. But most of the time i never carb it. In deciding where to drill the carb.. I usually drill halfway up or higher for maximum water volume. Remember that the water level cannot be higher that the carb..so you may wanna put the carb rather high on the bong. I would also caution against leaving too little a chamber space, because the smoke seems to be harsher when inhaled straight from the water. It's easier to stomach the smoke when inhaled all at once rather than gradually.

Smoking and extinguishing a bowl

I've seen many ways of smoking a bong. The simplest way, or course, is to cover the carb, light up, wait till your lungs are 90% full, then carb it and inhale the chamber. There are variations on this basic technique. As mentioned above, one good thing about smoking from a bowl is that you can extinguish the bowl in order to prevent wasting bud. The best technique I've seen is to partialy cover the bowl with the lighter, *a few seconds before you carb it*. This method will taper down the air flow toward the end, then will completely stop the burning when the bowl is completely covered and the bong is carbed. A stoner friend of mine tends to take a few smaller hits on a single breath but I don't know if his way is more effective than one long draw. My reasoning tells me that carbing it multiple times on a single breath would cause a waste of lung power/space. This figures because breath goes faster with an open carb (less air resistance), so the less lung time used with an uncovered carb, the better. However, I haven't tried his way so I can't accurately critique this method.

How to Make a Gravity Bong

Also known as bucket bongs, beach bongs, and depth charges, this is essentially a device that uses gravity and air pressure to draw the smoke into a large chamber and then expel it quickly into the lungs. This gives much larger hits than most instruments, and it is possible to get quite fried quickly with a relatively small amount of weed......... This is how we made ours................ I've smoked out of only a few gravity bongs in my life- but they all were constructed in the same method. I have never seen a gravity bong for commercial sale, so here's how to make your own. Equipment A 2 Liter Plastic Soda Bottle. A 5 Gallon Bucket. A 5/8" Socket from a Tool Set. A Knife to cut the Soda Bottle. A Normal Screen used in Marijuana Pipes or Bowls. Cut the plastic bottle at the very bottom where it starts to fold in on itself and form the bottom. Cut the whole bottom off the bottle. Next, put the screen into the 5/8" socket. This is your bowl. Think we're crazy? This size socket fits PERFECTLY into the mouth of the soda bottle. This ingenious method was discovered by my friend Mark S. You can try any other bowl that will fit- some head shops sell rubber corks with a hole in the middle for a metal bowl. Place the bottle into the bucket and fill the bucket with water until it reaches close to the neck of the bottle. That's it!

Smoking the Gravity bong

Put a lighter to the bowl and gradually lift the bottle out of the water. The slower your lift the bottle, the more concentrated the smoke will be and vice versa. If you do it perfectly, the smoke looks like it's raining down the sides of the bottle- it's very beautiful when you're stoned. Once the bottle is full, remove the bowl and place your hand over the top. It's now time for someone's turn! Put your mouth over the opening and let the bottle fall to the bottom of the bucket. Don't try to suck the smoke in- Open your lungs and let gravity do the work. If you inhale or push the bottle down too fast, you might get a mouthful of bong water.

Waterfall bong

This is essentially a variant on the gravity. You take a bottle (I use a 2-litre) and drill a small hole (about 3/8") in the bottom, at the lowest point. Cover this hole with your finger and fill the bottle up. Then, attach a filled bowl to the top (I use the same Coke-bottle lid as the gravity) and light the dope. Uncover the hole out the bottom, and as the water drains out, the smoke will be drawn in. Keep the bowl lit and let the water drain out, and by the time you're done you have a 2-litre bottle full of concentrated smoke. Just suck from the top and uncover the hole at the bottom to hoot. This is also an extremely efficient design, as very little smoke can escape.