Anybody planning on building any of the various forms of pipes will need a few essentials. I buy mostly everything from the local hardware store. You'll need some screens (faucet screens are perfect, if they don't contain aluminum), various pipes of different lengths, some sealant, and a way to drill holes. Just go into the plumbing section of your hardware store and browse. Use your imagination. There are all kinds of different pipes with valves, copper pipes, surgical tubing, blah blah blah... you can get quite creative. One of the best pipes to buy is a toilet pipe... it's usually a 3/8" diameter pipe a couple feet long, and one end widens and holds some kind of plastic attachment. Rip off the plastic piece, and that end makes a perfectbowl. You'll also need bottles. For most purposes, plastic bottles (especially 1, 2 & 3 litre bottles) work quite well. Mason jars are a standard for bongs. If you want to use glass, you'll have to figure out how to drill holes into it (something I haven't done; I simply don't have access to a drill press). For sealant, the only really reliable one I've found is a good silicone sealant. I use a caulking-gun type that's resistant to temperature extremes from -50 to 300 degrees F. and is also a water sealer. For a temporary seal, mostly used when testing designs because the silicone takes a day to dry, hot glue works well, as does 5-minute epoxy. On some pipes, lead-free solder is also useful, although I tend to avoid using even the lead-free in areas where it may be heated. Other supplies can include a various and sundry number of spray paints, glitter, model paints, etc., for decorating your bongs. I love to use that simulated granite-cast spray paint and other textured paints, and I've also made good use of sculpting stuff such as Femo and clay (don't make pipes from Femo, incidentally; fumes are highly poisonous) to decorate them. Once again, be creative.

A joint, as you all should know, is chopped-up weed rolled into a cigarette. When a joint is almost finished, it's called a roach and there are a variety of methods of holding the roach to smoke it without burning yourself such as tweezers, tie clips, alligator clips, small pieces of cardboard, cigarette holders, and so on. Eating the roach is considered bad etiquette in most circles, and I usually keep the roaches to put in a pipe. Piped roaches are very potent, as all the smoke from the joint was drawn through that little bit at the end, and both the bud left and the paper are soaked in nice amounts of concentrated resin. I rarely smoke joints these days. No denying they're highly portable and convenient, but I do find them extremely inefficient. However, Marley and joints just have to go together. =)

A pipe is a simple device to smoke ganja. It (and any other devices working under the same principal) doesn't require you to chop up the weed, as with joints, and you get the added bonus of resin accumulation in the bowl. A pipe is essentially a mouthpiece, a bowl with a screen for the dope, and a pipe connecting the two together. You put the dope into the bowl, light it, and suck from the mouthpiece. Standard tobacco pipes work fine if you add a screen, and screened corn cob pipes work well, as the resin soaks into the cob (which can later be chopped up and smoked), just make sure it's screened and fairly heat resistant. Some pipes have a heating element (usually a car cigarette lighter element) that heats the dope up to sub-flammable temperatures and releases all of the cannaboids without destroying any, as direct flame tends to do. These are called tilt or vaporizor pipes (or bongs, if an element is built into one), and I've yet to rig up a reliable one. If you can make a metal pipe, you can drop some dope onto a heated up cigarette lighter and draw, or drop some on and collect the smoke in a 2-litre bottle with the bottom cut off and inhale from the top (similar to hot knives, below).

I don't use many pipes these days, except for convenience. The most portable type of smoking instrument, you can make them pretty much out of anything. Coke cans, copper piping, tobacco pipes... I've even made a pipe out of a cigarette package (in a pinch). Coke cans make great temporary pipes, just indent it on the side, puncture some small holes in it and smoke from the spout. Punch a carb (an airhole that you keep covered while hooting and uncover to clear the chamber at the end of your toke) in the side if you wish. A rubber hose with a copper bowl stuck on the end works quite nicely. Carve them out of wood or soapstone. Make them out of clay or ceramics. The only things you need are a hole w/screen to put your bud in and a mouthpiece on the other end.

A stash pipe is a pipe with a small amount of ganja held in the stem of the instrument. Whenever bud is smoked in the bowl, the ganja in the stem is bathed in smoke and coated in resin. The longer you leave it in, the stronger it gets.

One-hits or dugouts are very portable instruments for people who only like to smoke a little at a time. It's a small metal tube with a cavity at one end and a mouthpiece on the other. You press the cavity into a small containter of cleaned, chopped grass to fill it and then it is lit like a cigarette and inhaled steadily until the grass is smoked. You only get one inhalation per filling, so it's called a one-hit. A dugout is a small container which has a space for some cleaned grass and another space for the one-hit itself.

A good design that I use often is a simple 3/8" pipe, about two inches long, with a cigar filter stuck on the end, and a small screen pushed down at the front about a 1/4". It's very portable, and in a bad situation, I've passed it off as a cigarette holder.

A gas pipe is essentially a regular pipe with a large chamber. The standard design is a plastic bottle with the bottom cut off and a small bowl mounted perpendicular to the bottle in the side. You cover the bottom with your hand, light the bud and suck, which fills the chamber. Then you uncover the end of the bottle to rush all the smoke in your lungs.

Water bongs, also known as water pipes (esp. in head shops), are, IMHO, the most enjoyable, comfortable and easy way to smoke. The bong is essentially a sealed chamber half-full of water. A pipe with a bowl on the end goes into the chamber and the water, another pipe with a mouthpiece on the end that enters the chamber but stays above the water level. You put bud in the bowl, apply a flame to it and suck on the mouthpiece. This will lower the air pressure in the chamber, causing air to travel from the bowl, through the water, into the chamber and into your lungs, pulling the smoke with it. The water cools the smoke, as well as filtering quite a few carcinogens from it, and you usually get a couple of tokes because the chamber fills with smoke. You can build a carb into the bong to drain the chamber, or leave it without (some prefer this, as it's a less immediate way than a carb to drain the chamber if you just keep sucking on the hose). Here are a couple of designs that I've found to work.

Knives are a rather complex method of smoking dope, but also a very powerful and efficient method. Although it sounds simple, it can be difficult to do them successfully (especially if you're already cooked). All you need are a couple of knives (with wood handles, preferably), something to heat them with (a propane torch works best), a plastic bottle with the bottom cut off, a moderately heat-resistant plate (I use a lightswitch plate), and of course, weed. You heat the knives to the point where they're glowing red. Then you put the bottle in your mouth, take one of the hot knives, touch it to a small bud on the plate so that it sticks to the knife, and then use the other one to sandwich the bud between the two knives underneath the bottle in your mouth. Plumes of smoke will come up into the bottle, which you then draw into your lungs. This can hurt your throat like hell, but it works beautifully. It's also the most popular way to do hash, and a reasonably good way to smoke hash oil.

This is a really entertaining way to smoke dope, and also a pretty good party trick. =) First, take a nice-sized glass mug or jar, run it under the faucet, and put it into the freezer for about twenty minutes. Light a joint and put it into a holder (a Bic pen with the innards removed works well) until only the burning cherry and about another 1/4" of the joint are sticking out. Then take the burning end and carefully put it into your mouth. Take the jar out of the freezer, stick the end of the Bic pen (the end you'd be dragging on if using the pen like a cigarette holder) near the bottom of the jar, and blow. The cold jar keeps the smoke from escaping, and you can fill the jar to the top (it's possible to get the entire joint in). Then take the jar, put it to your lips, and inhale it into your lungs by tipping it into your mouth just as you would a drink. The smoke will be so cold you can barely feel it going down. It's complicated to do correctly, and takes some practice, but it's probably one of my favourite methods.

You can eat dope if you heat it first to activate the cannaboids, which are also fat and alcohol soluble. This is much more efficient than smoking it, as none is wasted, and it gives a longer stone. Also, it eliminates the carcinogenic effects of smoking it. The most popular method is to sautee some ganja in some butter on medium heat for awhile, and then using the butter to cook. You can make anything out of it... cookies, cakes, spead it on bread, cook vegetables, and, of course, brownies. Standard ratio is one eighth of an ounce of ganja to a stick of butter.

It is also possible to extract the active ingredients from dope by soaking them in a strong alcohol. The cannaboids are alcohol soluble, so they dissolve into the alcohol. The remaining solids can then be strained out and the mixture drunk, with the same effects as eating it. The standard method is to take a bottle of 190 proof grain alcohol and put it in a pot on an ELECTRIC stove. Heat it to sub-boiling and then add ganja (standard ratio: 1/2 gram per ounce of liquor). Let it sit at sub-boiling for 20 minutes or so and then drain it out. This produces a green-tinted alcohol known as "Green Dragon", which can be drunk straight (painful) or put in a drink. A popular drink using Green Dragon is 1 oz. Green Dragon and lemon lime soda served over ice with a dollop of honey.