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Yesterday

2011-12-25 18:56:17.585744+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments

Yesterday, learned how to cut and drill glass bottles with a teenager. It's probably good for society that making a good bong is difficult.

[ related topics: Drugs Children and growing up ]

comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: made: 2011-12-27 02:16:22.827132+00 by: Dan Lyke [edit history]

So, anonymous teenager says he'd like to make a bong out of a wine bottle. Talks about all the details. Teenager is 18+ can walk into any smoke shop and buy said bong, so if we sit down to build it, we're not really crossing any particular lines.

[Bong]The question then becomes: How realistic is teenager's view of fabrication issues? I decide to call teenager's bluff, and we headed to the hardware store. This was a bit of a challenge because we didn't have any real tools to begin with, just a hand drill. Had this happened in my shop we could have tried a number of other techniques. Here's what we ended up with.

A few things to note:

#Comment Re: made: 2011-12-27 15:13:52.106261+00 by: TheSHAD0W

You might want to branch out from this into actual small glassworking. The equipment needed isn't expensive, just a couple of gas torches and possibly a cooling box.

#Comment Re: made: 2011-12-27 17:17:51.538172+00 by: Dan Lyke

I think the next project we're going to try is, once my shop is done, to have him come visit for a week or so and build an electric guitar. Just to maintain my sanity in terms of capital equipment acquired.

What I did convince myself, and I think him, of here is that bongs are expensive because low-volume procedures take time and working with glass is non-trivial. There's no easy way to build something quality that he can sell to his classmates at $70-80 a pop and make money, even when he's scrounging the recycling bin for materials.