I've been doing the Butane thing for about 2 years now, and I'm going to teach you all something about how to use it, IMHO, the absolute best way.

At first, I was having trouble finding a way to smoke it. I found a glass crack pipe and tried that, but it seemed to run away from the flame and never gave me a big solid hit. One day I was at a friend's house and didn't have the pipe, so, I tried the old trick of wrapping tin foil around a pencil, and then withdrawing the pencil and shaping the end into a bowl. But, as I was trying to heat the resin in the tin foil bowel from the outside, the resin melted and ran out, bursting into flames, as I was hitting the tin foil pipe.

Suddenly I had a lung full that I could barely keep in, and when I exhaled, I tasted something I hadn't tasted since the mid seventies--Nepalese Black Hash! Now this has always been my favorite high and flavor, so I was excited to find a way to duplicate this. I realized that I needed a way to ignite and burn the resin fast, while prevent its escaping down the pipe's bowl & up its stem. Now for an easy way to get close to what I eventually arrived at, you can just put some pot, or cigarette(Yuk!), ash into the bowl, and put the resin atop the ash and light up, but this isn't totally effective and some will be lost.

The first thing to increase the efficiency is to abandon your Bic and get a true butane torch, such as are sold for kitchen use, and also as a tool. And there are pocket sized units, made for pipe and cigar smokers. The next part is the actual pipe. Here's what I came up with, and it works really well. I ordered some pipes off the net that had the chamber in the stem that you're supposed to put weed into to catch the resins from what you smoke in its bowl (a really dumb idea, IMHO). Then I took them apart. From those parts, I assembled a stem, long enough for me to be able to see into the bowl when it is in my mouth (Important!), with a standard metal bowl. The bowels happen to have threads on the top, inside of them. Into those threads, I screwed one of the threaded metal bushings that were used to assemble the pipes' stems at the factory. Onto that male threaded bushing, which was now sticking up from the pipe's bowel, I screwed one of the metal chambers that you were supposed to put pot into to collect resin.

Now, into that chamber, I carefully installed 6 good quality steel screens, atop each other, making sure that they were inserted deeply enough that I could then screw another threaded bushing into the other end of the chamber. Now I had a bowl with a chamber full of screens mounted to it, and another male threaded bushing sticking out of it. Then, onto that bushing, I screwed a second one of the same kind of chamber, and into it I inserted another 6 screens. This is the final 'bowl' into which I put the Hash to smoke it. As mentioned, the stem of this pipe needs to be sufficiently long that you can see into the bowl with it in your mouth. This makes it easier to burn the resin efficiently, as you can see it, direct the flame straight onto it, and not have it escape and run down the pipe's screens. However, these screens do catch a considerable amount of resin, and every-so-often, I simply turn the top bowl upside down and hit it, and also, I hit the bottom bowl every few days to get what's there. Then I turn it over, too! Very little is wasted!

Now, a word about the resin, itself. If you make it from high quality buds, it will become VERY stiff within about 2 hours of being extracted. Test it after 2 hours. If it hasn't thickened up, let it sit longer. Sometimes it can take overnight, & if it has too much leaf in it, it will not get as stiff, or hard. You can make this resin (I simply call it Hash, which is really what it is, IF it's made from buds) from leaves, and even male plants, and it will get you stoned, but it won't taste like Nepalese Hash, or give you that immediate 'Hash High'. Personally, I don't like the taste of resin extracted from leaves and males, but it will work, it just won't thicken up, is harder to use, and isn't as potent. Also, don't believe the statement that ALL the butane is gone within minutes. It's not. It shouldn't be smoked until the next day.

The best thing to extract into, is a good Pyrex baking dish, the bigger the better, to have less lost in the corners of the dish due to the butane being deeper in a smaller dish, though if you can get hold of some old fashioned double edge razor blades (search the net), you can put adhesive tape over one edge and then use the other edge to get most of what's in the corners. They're very flexible and can get down in there, just be careful doing so. Once the Hash has started to thicken, and it's hard to push into a pile with a razor blade, it's time to do just that. I then put it in a glass jar with a lid to keep air out, and also, to keep dust out.

Now, how to get it into the pipe's bowl, as, unless it's really high quality and has sat for a few days, it's too sticky to handle. One method is to refrigerate, or freeze it, but if frozen, it tends to fly off in little slivers when you try to break some off, and this is wasteful, so the fridge is better. But, neither is necessary if you don't mind putting the tips of your thumb and finger into your mouth. I use a large jewelers' screwdriver to pull a dalop of hash out of the jar. Then, I wet, thoroughly with spit, the ends of my thumb and index finger. Then I use my thumb nail to scrape it from the screwdriver, and I pass my index finger over my thumb nail to get it on the tip of my finger. Then, as my finger is slimy with spit, I can just touch the dalop to the bottom of the bowl, and it sticks there, ready for me to smoke it.

Not all varieties will taste the same, and some may taste a bit different than Hash, but always similar and pleasant. I suppose you have to really be into Hash to go to this trouble, but I am, and if I want to take some out with me, I just put the dalop onto a rolling paper, and then, squeeze it flat and cut away the excess paper. I put a few of these in a baggie, and off I go. But, you have to be very careful not to put this baggie into your pocket, or any place else where it can feel heat, as if you do so, the Hash will run out from between the pieces of rolling paper and be lost to the sides of the baggie! So, miss that great Hash from the sixties & seventies? Well, I just gave you a way to have it again. Enjoy........
bluesteve Reviewed by bluesteve on . Honey Oil in 420 easy steps Step One: Get weed Step Two: Get a 12 inch X 1.5inch PVC pipe with external threads on both ends Step Three: Get PCV threaded caps Step Four: Drill a shallow hole in one cap with 5/64 inch drill bit, then drill the rest of the way through the cap with a 1/32 inch drill bit. (these measurements will fit the 8 oz Gasone Butane) Step Five: Drill many holes in the other cap, any small size is fine. Step Six: Get butane (like for a butane torch, you don't need the torch part. My Fav is Gasone Rating: 5