Glass Pipes
From Taimapedia
Glass pipes are any smoking device made from glass, typically formed through the type of glassblowing known as Lampworking or Torchworking. This article focuses on the variety developed to consume Cannabis, but these pipes are also very useful for a number of other drugs that can be smoked or vaporized.
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[edit] Why Glass?
Glass is widely regarded as the best material for non-tobacco pipes for a number of reasons. Primarily, it will not sour your smoke's taste or smoothness, as even a torch lighter is not strong enough to alter the state of glass. There is no material that gives smoother, safer, cleaner hits than glass. In other words, Glass is Class.
Another major incentive for choosing glass pipes is the wide range of possibilities. Most glass pipe blowers incorporate tricks and designs from the Studio Glass art movement, turning what would be simple glass pipes into beautiful, intricate works of art. As this requires a lot of time, a lot of equipment, and a substantial amount of training and experience, these pipes cost a notable amount more than their simpler counterparts.
[edit] Glass is Glass, Right?
One common misconception is that all glass pipes are made from the same material, or that all glass is the same material. This is not the case. Glass comes in a wide range of grades, quality, durability and heat resistance.
[edit] Soft Glass
The cheapest form of glass, known as soda-lime glass or "Soft Glass" is able to be worked at much lower temperatures than borosilicate, and with less powerful, less expensive torches. Soft glass is heavier than borosilicate, and so may fool some buyers into a false sense of security. Soft glass is the worst possible material to use by far for a pipe, because unlike borosilicate, soft glass is highly temperature sensitive. Putting a soft glass pipe in the freezer, or cleaning it with especially hot water can cause it to crack or explode under the temperature stress... not good when you're putting ice in your bong, and taking a torch lighter to the bowl. You get the picture. The repeated strain of shifting the temperatures will slowly weaken the glass until it eventually splits. Soft glass is fine for kitchenware.... but avoid it for pipes.
[edit] Hard Glass
The opposite end of the spectrum, "Hard Glass", refers to Borosilicate, a type of glass that is substantially more durable and heat resistant than soft glass. Many know it as "Pyrex", though that's merely one brand name. To work with borosilicate requires more experience, hotter torches, and more money. Borosilicate comes in a wide range of grades, itself, from cheap chinese mass-produced borosilicate to the strongest in the world, produced by the German company Schott AG. The durability difference between generic Chinese borosilicate and the durability grade of Schott borosilicate is drastic. 7-9mm Schott borosilicate pipes have been used to perform the stunt of hammering in a nail without sustaining damage, but it is not recommended you try this.
[edit] Annealing
Annealing is a process applied to completed glass. To anneal something, it is left in a kiln, and held at a temperature just below melting, so that the stresses inside the glass even out, before the temperature is eventually brought down. A bong may need to be annealed for as long as 16 hours.
The difference in durability between annealed glass and un-finished glass is extreme, and failing to anneal a piece can render even the highest grade of glass super-fragile. Many of the cheap import pipes detailed in the section "The Import Problem" are un-annealed or under-annealed, as there is a LOT of money to save in reducing the amount of time spent making each pipe by as much as 12 hours. An un-annealed piece will last long enough to make it to the headshop, and get sold to you... but that's about it. Everyone goes home happy and paid... except you.
[edit] The Anatomy of a Glass Pipe
[edit] Downstems
Downstems are no longer just a simple straight tube, and now many high quality pipes will come with a diffuser downstem by default. Innovation on the downstem has produced three primary varieties. There are all sorts of crazy multi-arm huge joint downstems out there, so this is not a comprehensive rundown.
Diffuser
The diffuser is a standard, the original souped-up downstem. Most diffusers have two rings of six holes each, as well as a small hole at the tip, but they vary by maker. Diffusers serve to break up the smoke into smaller bubbles, increasing how effectively the pipe filters, as well as breaking up the turbulence to give you smoother airflow. The size and placement of the holes can alter the performance in surprisingly noticeable ways. Although RooR has begun to lag in the glass scene, this is the one area they remain king: the airflow on standard RooR diffused downstems is the absolute top of the charts for production diffusers. If you're buying a diffuser and your headshop wants $8 more for a RooR over a no-name, it would be a smart move to consider the upgrade.
Showerhead
The showerhead is a compromise between the Diffuser and the Circulator. It provides the sideways-diffused action of the circulator in a compact package, allowing it to fit through a standard glass joint, making it an upgrade option for users of a diffuser, where a Circulator wouldn't fit.
Circulator
The circulator is a diffused downstem that uses a sideways spray action to reduce drag and increase filtraton. It provides a small increase in smoothness of smoke, and a notable decrease in drag, over a diffuser downstem. Circulators are primarily found in big-joint bongs, and built into bubblers, due to their incompatibility with standard glass-on-glass joints.
Inline
The inline is less of a type of downstem, and more a type of pipe in itself, but it can be worked into other designs of pipe as a downstem replacement, so it will be listed here. The inline is the most recent major technology update to glass pipes, and was invented by Steve Hops. It consists of a completely horizontal downstem in a snug chamber, with slits along the bottom. Above the slits is attached a "can". When inhaling through an inline, bubbles flow evenly from each slit up to the can. As the water level only needs to just submerge the slits, there is very little splash, and extremely high bandwidth airflow. The filtration is also more efficient than any of the other types of downstems, allowing a single well-made inline to outperform a tree-percolated bong.
[edit] Percolators
Percolators are essentially the fully functional workings of a waterpipe, made compact so that they fit inside another, larger waterpipe, usually in the main tube. Submerged partially in water, the percolator will refilter the smoke on it's way to your lungs, without any extra interaction from the smoker. This makes for a smoother, cooler hit. A badly made percolator can add drag that makes your smoke thick and stale, but a good one will completely change the hit your pipe gives.
Dome Percolator
The Dome percolator was the original design for the in-tube percolator, and so it is possibly the most widely known variety. Easy to produce, the dome perc is a simple upstem, with a dome over it. Cut into the base of the dome are slits to allow the smoke through. The dome provides the least filtration and cooling, and the highest amount of drag of any type of percolator, so it's fallen out of favor as tree percolators become the standard.
There is a variation, called the "Grid Perc", which consists of a dome with as many as 96 holes punctured in the area where the slits would normally be. These percolators flip the whole game around, and are one of the best, smoothest pulling varieties. They are, however, very difficult to make and therefore quite expensive and uncommon.
Hook Percolator
Hook Percolators are an early design that was popular for production tubes before the introduction of the tree percolator. It is essentially a one armed tree percolator. The downside to a hook percolator is that with only one tube, often somewhat small, the airflow is restricted. However, it is possible to make a wide-tube hook percolator with diffuser slits, and thick glass. This makes it a viable option for a durable, quick to create percolator, especially suitable for beginning tube-makers and mass production.
Tree Percolator
Tree percolators are, as of this writing, the most common and popular variety of percolator. When the design was originated, it was very difficult to assemble, and regarded as a high end luxury feature. Eventually, most of the big name glassblowers began to use them, and to keep up, Chinese factories began spitting out pre-made tree percolators of questionable quality, which can now be found in some too-good-to-be-true budget bongs. These trees drag more than their American counterparts, and are prone to snapping off at the base during cleaning. They work, but they leave something to be desired.
Initially, tree percolators did not include diffusion slits, but as of this writing, it is almost impossible to find a tree percolator that is not diffused, and trees are assumed to be diffused if it isn't specified.
Other Percolators
There are a number of other designs out there, many of them simply a cosmetic remake of the other forms. The "Halo Perc" is a hook percolator that bends and circles itself once, with slits cut into the horizontal "halo", acting as a sort of circular inline. The "Spiral Perc" is the same thing, but in a spiral around the upstem. It adds a substantial amount of drag over the halo in exchange for cool looks, and is mostly found on import glass.
[edit] The Import Problem
Currently, like every other industry, the glass pipe industry is being inundated with huge amounts of questionable product mass produced in Chinese factories and Indian sweatshops. These pipes are cheap, fragile, often directly rip off individual glass artists, and sometimes are even unsafe to use... and they're all sold for many times what they cost to make. If you fear owning a "corporate" bong, this section is for you. RooR and Co. aren't the corporate enemy, sweatshop glass is.
Aside from worries such as an un-annealed soft glass pipe shattering mid-use and getting glass in your mouth, another safety issue is worth noting, although this one applies primarily to hand-pipes rather than bongs.
In the early days of glass pipes, it was very hard to get them into the country and past customs, so import pipes were ordered made without a hole in the bowl, shipped in from India as "art glass paperweights". Once they arrived here, the buyer would then machine-drill holes into each bowl. This is a problem because drilling the hole substantially weakens the pipe, causing stresses in the glass, and rendering it very fragile. Not only this, but the bulk-manufacturers who use this method almost never wash out the pipes afterwards, meaning that when you buy it and take it home, and give it that first hit, you may well be inhaling a lungfull of glass dust. This is not terribly common as of 2009, but it does still happen.
If you're buying a cheap spoon, and the bowl looks drilled... put it back. If you have to buy it, or already did: wash it out before your first hit. Make absolutely sure you're not inhaling any glass dust.The amount of bad that will do to your lungs is not worth saving even ten thousand dollars.
[edit] WeedStar
WeedStar is the most visible and prolific pipe-faking corporation out there. The owner, "Ziggy", sends photos of other people's pipes he likes to factories in China, which spit out tons and tons of their best copy of the pipe, from just the photo. These workers do not know what a bong is, or what cannabis is.
WeedStar has pirated the Hurricane as the "Tornado" and added an ice pinch that destroys the hurricane-action, showing that they don't understand the pipe they're pirating. They've pirated the Inline ashcatcher designs directly of a number of artists, badly and obviously. They even had the nerve to claim they INVENTED the Hurricane and the Inline designs, among others.
WeedStar has also recently begun selling the same pipes that Molino used to sell... which means they bought the indian sweatshop Molino was using out from under them. Great business practices, guys.
So, in short: WeedStar pirates the work of artistic stoners, mass produces it with super cheap labor in sweatshops at a very low level of quality, claims credit for having invented the pipe, and to top it off, is slowly buying out all the other shitty bong duplication companies.
It doesn't help that their CEO routinely goes to TokeCity.com and shitposts all over the place about how he feels no regrets for what he's doing.
[edit] Imitation Brand-name
One particularly displeasing variety of glass pipe con is the fake brand name bong. There are some headshops which have been tricked into purchasing a "truckload of RooR pipes" on the cheap, or other such things. These RooRs turn out to be badly made, super fragile fakes, which are sold for almost the same price as the real deal.
Fake RooRs are most easily detected by the fact that the logo is either tilted, pointing up instead of down, has the copyright symbol on the wrong end of the word, or other such bugs. They also typically have all the same "signature" near the base, usually very bad and not RooR-like at all.
Some headshops that stock fake glass are unaware, and others knowingly con their buyers. Neither will react well to being told, but you are encouraged to politely inform them, and then inform everyone you know not to buy the fakes. At this point, they cannot be stopped, only avoided.
[edit] Other Known Import Labels
Tsunami - A Chinese-pirated version of the Hurricane. Similar performance, inferior durability.
Molino - A bulk-glass manufacturer that uses Indian sweatshops. Inferior performance, inferior durability.
AMG American Made Glass - Made in China, inferior performance, inferior durability. Yeah, you read the name right.
