havent been on here in a while, but im bored and this is shit people ought to know... so everybody's got that one friend who tells stories about making ridiculously huge gravity bongs out of trashcans and swimming pools and watercooler jugs and all kinds o shit, well im gonna tell yall right now that making everything bigger just makes you look like a fool, you cant hit it in one lungfull so all your smoke isnt fresh by the time you clear it, it takes forever to fill, and its just generally a waste of your time. In actuality, if you really want a functional, powerful, everyday smoking device that uses less weed than any other piece and gets you way higher than just about every other piece, theres a few things you need to know. FIRST] theres three basic parts to a gbong. the cap, which holds your bowl and screws onto the chamber. the chamber, or bottle, which is what fills up with smoke. and the basin, which holds the water. SECOND] everybody is different. I'm 6'1" and my lungs can hold a little over a gallon at the most, you may be smaller or larger and might need a different sized chamber to fit your lungs. i use a 1.89 liter gatorade bottle as my daily driver but for special occasions i step down to a smaller 1.75liter plastic tequila handle THIRD] bottle size is everything, find yourself a bottle that fits your lung capacity just right. be able to clear the bottle and still have a 1/4 to a 1/6th of your lung space left to blast a bunch of cool fresh air into your lungs to keep from coughing. the raunchier the hit, [determined by the bowl and whats in it], the more space you wanna leave on top of your hit to suck in cold air to cool down your hit and to have oxygen in your lungs so they continue to intake the THC and other chemicals in the smoke. the MOST IMPORTANT reason for having extra air on top is to get the smoke out of your throat. smoke in the throat that didnt quite make it to the lungs will make you cough every single time, i dont care how much pot you smoke. the ideal ratio would be to get the smallest bottle you can find that still has enough volume in it to allow a long enough burn time to burn the whole bowl. [for example you cant burn a huge ass bowl into a 20oz bottle because it runs out of water too fast] FOURTH] how high you fill your basin is actually important, believe it or not, filling the bottle up entirely is just gonna get you a mouthfull of water. fill your basin up just high enough so that when you make a seal on the mouth of the bottle with your lips and inhale, it should become reasonably difficult to pull a vaccuum strong enough to bring the water all the way to your lips, if its too easy to pull the water to your lips then pour some out, if its too hard to bring the water at least close to your lips then pour more in. when hitting the gbong you should pull the water almost all the way to your lips (this is easier to keep an eye on if your bottle is clean) and then as soon as it becomes difficult to pull the water higher, just slightly let the seal break with your lips and slowly increase the leakage until the bottle is cleared. BE CAREFUL not to breathe in harder when you break the seal because water can splash up into your mouth :/ and also BE CAREFUL not to break the seal too rapidly or the water will drop quickly and possibly splash out yof your basin outside the bottle. FIF.] bowl selection is extreeeemely tricky. for the most part i use small measure sockets for a 1/4" drive socket wrench. through all my years of smoking gravitybongs multiple times a day every day i cant decide between a small opening like a 4mm socket or a wide opening like a 6mm... i have another piece with a much larger bowl pack and a 3/32" hole [thats somewhere in between the hole in a 4mm and 6mm] the 4mm has a slower burn time, blocks easily, and cant handle large or tight bowl packs but if your scrounging dust outta the corner o yer bag its the way to go because the slower burn time hits you harder off of less weed, and the smaller hole prevents pullthru with the shakey shit. HOWEVER, i currently use a 6mm which i think has a little over 1/8th hole thru it which allows it to burn a larger and tighter bowl pack, thus getting u way higher, and the lower vacuum pressure inside the chamber keeps the smoke from getting sour. this bowl must be pulled slowly and carefully, but once mastered it will hit you way harder off of a still tiny amount of weed. SIXTH] chamber pressure is another thing people dont think about when building a gstation, a tight or blocked hole thru your bowl will make you hafta pull really hard to get your pack to burn and this makes the smoke inside sour and harsh, keeping a low, even pressure is crucial to not hacking up a lung. SEVENTH] cutting the drain in your chamber can also affect burn time. a smaller hole will slow down your burn but you must be careful because you can shrink the hole only so far before you cant go down on the bottle fast enough to hit it, at that point you have to take the bottle entirely out of the water and try and clear it just by blasting air through it, this method, called a burp bottle, i find is extremely inefficient and a huge pain in the ass. i just chop the entire bottom of my bottle out. UNLESS you only poke a small hole, this is called a waterfall, the small hole only really works for small bottles (48oz and under) a 48oz bottle with a small hole with a medium-sized bowl pack and a small thru-hole is probably the absolute ultimate in conservation of bud, the small hole can be covered right before the hit and used as a snap valve, make a seal with your lips over the mouth of the bottle and build a vacum with your finger over the hole, then quickly break your finger away, snapping the smoke instantly into your lungs. to give yall some examples of what i mean. i have a 1.89liter gatorade bottle with a 6mm cap and another cap for that bottle with a stainless machined piece that holds about .4g to .5g of fluffy shit in the pack with a 3/32" thru-hole as a more powerful hit, and then i have the face blaster that i only smoke on special occasions. its just a 1.75 inch long 3/8 thick stainless tube with a wide open screen in the bottom, leaving almost no vaccum pressure at all, it holds about a gram of ground fluffy shit and burns aaaalllmost all of it, whats left is mostly burnt, all on top of a 1.75liter(half gallon) tequila handle. shit kills you, your eyes tear up, your vision tunnels out even when youre sitting down, its just crazy, and its mindblowingly inefficient but it gets you higher than anything ever will. sooo basically big bowl, small bottle, make sure the bottles big enough to burn the whole bowl, keep low vacuum pressure in the chamber, and use the right thru-hole for whatever you're trying to do. hope that enlightens some of you...
thanks man, just tryin to get the word out. ive seen some downright silly configurations out there....
airflow airflow airflow airflow airflow Of all the waterfall/gravity bongs I've used, the #1 way people fuck them up is by making a bowl with insufficient airflow, by packing a bowl too tightly, or by not timing the lighting of the bowl well with the lift or whatever action fills the chamber. It sucks when people screw that up too because you can't really "start over." If you screw it up you end up not only with a shitty hit but also wasting the bowl. This probably isn't a problem if you're using an actual bowl piece and you can pack well, but if you're improvising a cap with tinfoil or something, make sure you give it enough airflow. You can, on the other hand, give it too much. I think there's a critical amount of airflow that you want to hit. The less air you have flowing through the bowl (determined by your design and/or operation of the device), the bigger of a hit you have because you're filling the chamber longer. However, if your airflow is not great enough, you will be pulling barely any smoke. Also, you will lose smoke off of the top of the bowl at a certain point. The rate at which you're pulling it times the length of time for which you pull it determines the size of the final hit. I believe that the effect lies on a sort of bell-curve here. You want to hit the sweet spot in the middle. With the huge "trashcan" gravity bongs you talk about at the beginning of your post, you can get both good airflow and good duration due to the size of the chamber if you do it right, but then you have the lung capacity problem you were talking about (the bell curve here is broader and therefore more forgiving the greater your chamber becomes. The problem for bongs that are too large is, as you said, lung capacity). The trick is to scale the chamber size down without messing with the correct proportions and hitting that sweet spot. I guess this is basically what you were saying in part five. EDIT: Oh, and awesome post, great info. +rep
i also forgot to touch on the subject of bubbling gravity bongs and i guess just bubblers in general. a few years back i stuck a downstem on the bottom of my bowl piece that runs straight down into the water that drains out, and lemme tell ya, this is a completely different animal here. bubbling gravity bongs and bubblers in general cool down the hit and filter out some of the "crap" which makes it easier to handle, however there seems to be a widespread misunderstanding that bubbling pieces get you higher, this is not at all the case, quite the opposite in fact. although THC isnt water soluble, theres alot more than just THC in weed that fucks you up, and some of these chemicals are either water soluble or simply get trapped in the water on their way to your lungs, thus weakening your hit. any of you out there are looking for a little extra kick on ur bong/bubbler hits, and i know thats a bunch of you lol, just take the water out. get yourself a nice glass bong or bubbler and hit it dry, if you can handle it, youll be couchlocked for weeks lolol.