For me, developing vaping devices is as much a part of the spice hobby as the teks. When I started out, it was very challenging to find a vaporizer that worked well for me. I tried several popular devices/techniques and still frequently put myself in severe throat pain. The difficulty was certainly all in my head, and understanding that my psyche was dissatisfied motivated me to start inventing new devices. The goal was to discover a device that was very cheap and extremely easy to use for any desired dose.

I searched long and hard to find something one could buy ready-to-use, but nothing was cheap enough or consistently available. The final option was a custom-made pipe. I designed it and made it (and several others like it) from an 8" long, 3mm thick, and 13mm diameter borosilicate glass tube. The tube was heated with a Hot Head propane torch. The tubes cost about $1.50 each, the torch costs $15, and the propane tanks cost $4. One tank is enough to produce 3 or 4 pipes. This pipe is super cheap and absolutely rips. I had no prior experience with lampworking or glassblowing and I've had no problem making these.




It's easy to take big doses. Using a regular Bic lighter, it's effortless to find that balance between burning and under-heating the material. Three reasons for this are: 1) The copper mesh element is easily visible to the user; 2) the flared opening allows unheated air to enter the tube along with the hot air coming from the lighter; and 3) The tube narrows in the u-curve enough to create a significant amount of resistance to air flow. This means it's very easy to control the rate of inhalation, and therefore it is very easy to control the concentration of the vapor.

I love this pipe and I love being able to afford gifting them often. So many people wind up with a few doses of spice in their possession, but waste a lot of it because their vaping devices are not user-friendly. This design solves all my problems with administering doses to myself as well as helping others. On to something else....

Thanks for posting that. It is very inspiring. I've got to give it a go sometime. The need for an expensive specialist torch is a bit of a barrier though. How did you anneal / stress relieve it?

There was no annealing. I put the glass down on a metal surface and let it cool at room temperature. This worked well- the pipes are definitely not brittle at all.

There was no need for annealing because the glass was only minimally heated. It is difficult to fully melt the glass with my cheap blowtorch setup. For the bends, I heated the tube just until it was red hot, which allowed it to bend about 10 or 20 degrees before cooling. It would cool very fast, so I would reheat it, bent a little more, and repeated the process. A 90 degree bend is the product of four or five smaller bends. I think that the repeated reheating produces a sort of rough annealing process.

I'm using pure propane. The flame gets hot enough to make the glass pliable, but can't fully melt it. MAPP gas tanks can be used with this setup and produce higher temps, but cost a lot more. The pure propane does the job perfectly.

The process was a bit tedious, but it was still extremely fun. You should go for it! I think the total investment was just about $45, and that produced five sweet pipes that made my fiends and I very happy. I can't wait to make more. If you decide to take a stab at "budget" lampworking, let me know and I'll be happy to provide some more detailed descriptions of how the manipulations were done. I thought my learn-as-you-go approach was definitely fun, but it would've been nice to have a little more direction.

Nice! A worthy contribution to furthering egalitarian access to hyperspace.

So, when you use the device, spice is loaded into the mesh and heated from below, like you're holding it in the pics?
Or does that matter?

I like the use of constrictingbends to control airflow, I like pipes with some resistance, and it's not often considered in constructing a design.

Is it easy to reload and manipulate when one is experiencing, um, extreme novelty with the situation?

I'd imagine that it's form would become a thing of interest when it's in use. Maybe incorporating three-dimensional spirals would be nifty?

Yeah man, inspiring. Can you post a pic of your torch set up for the Google lazy?

When vaping, the pipe is held as shown in the picture and the DMT-loaded copper is heated from below. I think heating from below is essential with a device like this. To load, the pipe is held upside down, the spice is placed on top of the copper and melted. Reloading and manipulating are always easy.

I think it's form could be made much more interesting... I like the 3D spirals idea. I'll have to look into increasing my heating temp sufficiently to allow more detailed manipulation of the glass.

I can't take a pic of my actual torch setup at the moment but it looks like this:

Made a some "new and improved" pipes last night.
The main improvement is that the dome stands straight up on its own for easy loading.
The dome has a more even, rounder shape that creates a dispersed intake of air across the mesh. The openings in the dome walls allow the user to place spice directly on the mesh with a small utensil and melt the spice with a bic lighter flame.

How long does one of these pipes take?
I imagine the tempering stage is horror.

Very good work for the money spent and simple ingenuity, looks like it'd work real well

A spiral tube with the end made appropriate for loading the dmt - that would be cool , especially with maybe some colored glass

It takes 20-30 mins. I don't have to do any annealing/tempering because the low heat of a blowtorch and the nature of bending/stretching a glass tube means that very little internal stress is introduced to the glass. You can get a significant amount of internal stress when the glass is bunched up or made thicker. I've encountered a couple issues with that in sharp corners where the glass bunches up in the crook but it's avoidable.

I love to see a bit of glassworking. Nice how you're developing the idea, too.

Funny thing is, looking at your username, I've made some pretty awesome pipes out of potatoes from time to time!