Unique, Prototype, Exceptionally Rare, and Homemade Pieces

[DRybes]

I'm sure this has been done before but being a daydreamer as well as a guy who loves to design and make pipes, I have to know if anyone else has this inclination. If you possess or used to possess a piece that is unique or one of a kind in some way, please talk about it here and post a picture if possible. If you have ideas for unique pipes or perhaps have built one (or a rough prototype of one), post as well. I want this to be a little thread for the truly rare pieces... homemade or not. The pieces I see pictures of are almost always cool. I've seen maybe 5 pipes ever I wouldn't love to have in my collection. But some really stand out, and those are the ones I'm talking about.

I'll start with a working prototype I just made, inspired, as many great pipes, from Cheech and Chong. Ever see Nice Dreams? Of course you have, you're a stoner. The police captain's pipe... you know what I'm talking about. He has a device that looks just like a gun. Barrel's made of glass. He puts a bud in it and the thing lights it for him. Puts the barrel in his mouth like he's about to shoot himself, smokes that shit. Well, people talk about it, but such a device never existed. But damn, I still wanted a pipe that looked like a gun.

So last week I'm in the dollar store and they have bamboo. Gives me an idea. I carved out a gun from wood, drilled some holes, and made myself a gun pipe. It's cheap wood and the pipe is not finished yet, but is smokable. I want to round it up nicer and stain it and glue the barrel on properly. Right now it's got putty as a sealant between the handle and the barrel and duct tape holds the barrel on. Hits nice and it's badass to be smoking through a gun... can't wait to show my friends!

Materials used: Wood (scrap), bamboo, brass replacement bowl from a metal pipe

Edit: How it works: The bowl is at the base of the butt of the gun (upside down in this picture). You hold the gun as in the second picture and point it at the sky, thereby making the bowl upright. This is the normal direction the gun is held during packing and passing. The gun is then tilted back a bit more and the barrel placed in your mouth as though you were going to shoot yourself, whereupon you can spark the bowl and inhale from the barrel.

I may finish this pipe with more sanding and a stain (and actually gluing the barrel to the body, rather than taping it there, and using a rubber o-ring as a gasket rather than the putty I have there now to make the seal between the barrel and the body airtight). I may also scrap this project and make a new gun from plexiglass or other materials. A trigger or a hammer could be created in such a way that you'd pull the trigger or 'cock back' the hammer as a carb.

I want to apologize that every post I make turns out to be longer than everyone else's. I suffer from the "Philosophers' Stone", a condition I totally made up that causes me to talk and think almost nonstop while under the influence of drugs.

[GlassNBrass]

great idea, but how about a built-in torch lighter that hits the bowl when you pull back the hammer (turning off when you release the hammer), and the carb-hole opens up when you pull the trigger. call it "Bud to the Brain".

[DRybes]

Actually am working on that in another prototype. I had the idea to make the trigger a carb for a while, but it was my friend who suggested a feasible lighter configuration. Similar to how a paintball gun has a loading opening on the barrel, so would the bowl go near the hammer. instead of the trouble of building in a lighter (dunno if i can do that, would have to scrap a cheap butane lighter to try it), i was debating making a slot in the handle at the top so that a standard BIC lighter slides in and sits with the top poking out. Then one makes the same movement as to cock a hammer, to light the lighter. The bowl, being adjacent to the top of this lighter, would then light by inhalation.

I'm thinking I have to make this a composite, using plexiglass and either wood or metal for the parts that heat up. The gun made of wood was thrown together roughly and i was dissappointed in the imprecision of both my tools and my carving skills... i probably could not put a decent finish on that piece, and it has several major issues (chunks ripped out) already that would compromise it looking professional.

A drop-in slot for a BIC would be brilliant, but of course building a lighter in would be better. It would have to be the sort of refillable butane lighter that wasn't a jet (shoots out a blue flame). The yellow flame is able to curve around the lip of the bowl and light the contents, whereas a jet lighter only fires straight. I have seen lighters where the piezo sparking mechanism pulled back just like a gun's hammer... now the question of finding one that comes apart easily and can be reassembled inside the handle of the device.

Edit: after writing that, I don't think a built in lighter would be the best option. There are a number of cool ways I could make the thing hold a BIC, now that the air hole would no longer go through the butt of the gun, and lighters in general fail too often to merit building them into a permanent piece. Should anything go wrong with the lighter (and something always eventually goes wrong with a lighter), the piece would be worthless for that feature and would have to be sparked with a seperate lighter, with the built in one still visible but unusable.

I've actually been calling it The Smoking Gun, for the double meaning (and it does actually emit smoke from the barrel inbetween hits, as the current wooden version has no carb). Probably will stick with my name just because of paraphenalia law and terminology (i was told that a local shop owner my friend knows well would buy such a piece to offer in his store if i could make it professional enough, which i know is a long shot from that prototype).

Interestingly, I used quarter inch and 5/16 inch bits to drill the holes, so the airflow ends up being incredibly smooth, as easy a draw as plain inhalation, and yet the smoke gets dense and the hit is very powerful. The properties have so impressed me I think I may make it my trademark now... an unusually large bore that provides a smooth yet knockout hit.

There is one big issue though... the reason I put the bowl on the bottom for this wooden one is because there are few angles to put a gun shaped object into your mouth while keeping it upright. The point of the piece is that it's held like a gun, but with the bowl on top it could prove to be an odd angle for the wrist.