Look to your left. Look to your right. There is no doubt in my mind you have just spotted a perfect vessel to make a quick and dirty do-it-yourself pipe. Okay, perhaps not totally “perfect,” but the truth it, if you have an understanding of how a pipe works, nearly anything can become one! The components of a pipe are: Bowl, carburetor, and mouthpiece. Weed sits in the bowl, lights up, the smoke is pulled through by sucking and given more or less airflow by the carb. As long as the item you you seek to pipe-ify is three dimensional enough to carve these out, and you have some basic tools like a screwdriver for easy “drilling,” making a pipe should be no trouble, especially with my favorite materials.
What are these best materials to use for an emergency, impromptu pipe? The less synthetic your material is, the less extraneous crap you will inhale. Ideally, if it’s not a water pipe, it should be small enough to be held in one hand, and won’t burn or melt if you put flame to it. That’s why my favorite DIY pipe material is literally any fruit. Before I realized that glass pipes are fairly inexpensive (and kind of fun to clean), I made pipes out of apples (classic), oranges (a little moist), bananas (tasty), and even a strawberry once (cute). The apple is such a tried and true classic because of its firmness. With my handy screwdriver, I bore a hole where the stem is, making sure it’s wide enough, then push it to the middle of the fruit. Then, poke a hole through the frontside of the apple until that passage meets the one coming from the top. Mouthpiece and bowl, done. Then another simple hole from the side to make a carb! It’s that simple. For wetter fruits like oranges, some smokers prefer to create a dish for the bowl with a small piece of tinfoil. My alternative to that would be to use some skin of the fruit instead. Oranges are so juicy, that I recommend doing the crafting process over a sink or outside to avoid a dribblesome mess. When carving your bowl in such a wet fruit, you’ll want to make sure your bud doesn’t come in contact with liquid, so I try to keep my citrus pipe bowls shallow and mostly in the skin. It helps to find the nubby, thick area of pith to carve out the bowl. Bananas work surprisingly well, given their shape- just be careful not to poke all the way through when creating your passageways. Other excellent produce alternatives: Carrots, bell peppers, cucumbers, zucchini,
Candy makes a wonderful pipe too, because of its shapeability. Using Starbursts, taffy, tootsie rolls, gummies, or any other moldable soft candy, makes a super yummy pipe. Again, the mess factor on candy pipes is something to be considered because you don’t want your flower turning into a molten gummy mess after one hit. Moldable candy can be shaped around a pen or straw that can be removed, or poked through. It’s so multi-utilitarian for the crafty smoker! Another weird food material is bread with a hard crust- think a thin, crispy baguette. I don’t advocate as much for carbohydrate pipes in the DIY category because they’re just not as yummy. If you’re going through the trouble of making an emergency pipe, fruit or candy is the premium.
Runners up, based on accessibility of materials and ease of crafting, are: metal tubing/nuts and bolts, ice, water bottle, pen, or can.
Happy crafting, may your pipe be smokeable!