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As a long time, daily bong smoker you have my attention, got any pictures of your creations?
I have made a few in my time with varying degrees of success but I'm intrigued as to what variables you consider and what "best performance" looks like to you?
I can only show you the two I have left, because I give them away constantly. That's part of the whole "must be recycled" thing... after this comment I'll come back with some pictures just give me a moment...
In 20+ years of stoner engineering, I feel the most important thing is to keep the cloud chamber much, much, much, much smaller than you'd think.
We often see these huge "frat boy bongs" as I call them with huge bases and like 40cm tall throats. That's an absolutely insane amount of wind to have to suck before you can even get the hit. Our lung capacity is limited, even moreso when we abuse them regularly with smoking. A hit from a bong is totally "broken" if the user has to stop, exhale to open lung space and keep going. That's a fail.
The more time smoke has to sit around in or pass-through parts of a vessel that are colder than the smoke itself, you're going to get a shitload of condensation. All that resin you see caked allll over your bong is evidence of excess condensation and reveals product being wasted. And that makes the hit wayyyy harsher too.
So the number one thing which runs counter to what people expect, is that "bong power" comes from keeping the vessel small, limiting the filtration, and ensuring the path from the smoke chamber to your lungs is a short as possible. When I say limit the filtration, passing the smoke bubbles through a few inches of water is sufficient, more than that just robs the smoke of its THC and defeats the point.
My homemade ones hit so hard people are blown away. It's kinda crazy when you learn how to make them hit harder... the best one I ever made was made in a 250ml mason jar - it was tiny but hit like a TANK. Plus once you master the art, you discover you now need half the weed... not because it becomes "stronger" but now you find you're smoking it at double the efficiency.
The other thing is NOT to select a vessel that is narrow on the bottom and widens as it gets to the top. There are some "fancy" bottles like from Crown Royal and such that just don't work properly. There is something about fluid dynamics and how turbulence flows at boundaries... I don't fully understand the hows/whys but I know the vessel needs to taper smaller. (The part with the water needs to be the big part of the vessel)
edit: Here are pics of the 2 I've still got. The one in the Crown Royal bottle is neat and it delivers good hits but my neighbor fucked up the bowl (and my cutting bit!) when I was teaching him how to cut glass. Also I'm going to throw this one away (keep the components just chuck the bottle) as it's incorrect shape. I just wanted to play on this one because I found some discarded paint markers. The skull jar was given to me by the same alcoholic neighbor that wrecked the bowl and my cutting bit, and I'm just carving a nice custom tiny glass bowl for it now. The pieces on it were actually repurposed from the Mason Jar one I mentioned earlier.
Pics all out of order because I'm feeling lazy RN
https://postimg.cc/gallery/mHqq4GV
Cheers for the detailed reply.
Although I haven't probably made as many as you have in my life I couldn't agree more with a lot of what you are saying particularly the size thing. So many people get these massive bongs that are just unwieldly to smoke and require such a huge amount of lung capacity to try and smoke.
I have found for me personally something around 30cm tall is my perfect size with a reasonable size chamber. I want to be able to comfortably rip the enitre hit without running out of capacity but to be getting close to my limit by the end of the rip so that it is a proper full lung full.
There is definitely a sweet spot for water too as too little makes it disgusting, hot and harsh to smoke too.
Ive never tried making or smoking something wider at the top however so that is good to know xD
Cheers for sharing your thoughts man.
Will look forward to some pictures, have a good one!
Thanks man! Pics are up and I'm game to share and compare! I love learning what other peeople do