If you want to smoke out of a bong but you don’t have one around, don’t fret. You can make your own out of a water bottle using a few simple tools. Just make sure you’re using it in a place where smoking is legal.

There are so many DIY recipes for water bottle bongs out there that it can be hard to distinguish the good from the bad. You’ll even see instructions for water bottle pipes that claim to be bongs but don’t use water. Wrong! Don’t be fooled. A bong uses water to filter and cool the smoke which makes for a much more pleasant and enjoyable smoke.

On top of all that, a lot of the builds you’ll see use materials that, when heated, can release toxic fumes. These toxic fumes can make your smoke taste bad and even lead to headaches. No one wants that. That’s why we’ve assembled instructions for the safest and simplest water bottle bong you can make at home.

A gravity bong, also known as a geeb, is a cannabis consumption method that uses two empty plastic bottles to funnel smoke through water and push it into the consumer’s lungs. Gravity bongs work by submerging a small bottle with a bowl of cannabis on top in a larger bottle or bucket of water. While lighting the cannabis, slowly draw the bottle out of the water to fill with smoke from the burning cannabis. Unscrew the lid, put your mouth over the bottle’s opening, and push the bottle down to let gravity propel the cannabis smoke into your lungs. Voila!

Are gravity bongs worth making or buying?

If you’re new to cannabis or have a low tolerance, you probably don’t want to start with a gravity bong. But for intermediate to advanced consumers, making a gravity bong is a fun, easy DIY project that ensures a fast delivery of your favorite strain. Not the crafty type? You can buy gravity bongs to add to your collection of hardware and bust one out whenever you want a unique and potent smoke session.

Are water bottles safe to use?

Many homemade bongs or smoking devices are made using single-use plastic bottles, which contain PETE or PET (polyethylene terephthalate) that can release chemicals when heated (like how the water from a bottle that’s been left in a hot car can taste odd). You may pull these chemicals into your lungs when applying heat to your gravity bong.

Research is still being conducted on what sort of impact this type of exposure may have on your health. Many cannabis consumers prefer to use glass or silicone smoking devices and avoid plastic as a precaution. If you choose to make homemade gravity bongs and other smoking devices out of plastic materials, be aware of the risks and proceed with caution.

What is a water bottle bong?

Far from embodying the braindead “stoner” stereotype, the cannabis community is actually quite ingenious—especially when it comes to throwing together makeshift smoking devices. The water bottle bong is one of the best examples of this ingenuity.

A water bottle bong is exactly what it sounds like: a bong fashioned out of an old water bottle. A water bottle bong should not be your primary smoking tool. In fact, it should probably not even be a piece you use more than once. Instead, a water bottle bong is a last-ditch effort when you find yourself in a pinch and have no other way to smoke. If you find yourself in this situation, making a water bottle bong will serve as a quick, easy, and incredibly effective solution. Here’s everything you need to know to build a water bottle bong from scratch.

What you need to build a water bottle bong

• A plastic water bottle. Use one of the standard 17-ounce bottles, and avoid the smaller ones. You can also use soda bottles, but you’ll want to wash out the sticky residue first.
• Scissors, razor blade, or a sharp knife
• A pen, marker, or highlighter that you don’t mind taking apart
• Aluminum foil, the thicker the better, or a small metal pipe bowl that can fit inside the cylindrical body of your pen, marker, or highlighter
• A needle or toothpick
• Water
• A lighter, match, or hemp wick
• Your favorite cannabis strain

Wondering how to make a Gravity Bong?

In college, when I first started smoking weed, I had a long period of discovering new and exciting ways of getting high. I went from a crappy aluminum spoon to a glass bong in a few weeks and then began a long campaign of experimenting with different vessels on a quest to make the ideal DIY bong. The results were questionable at best.

As building experimental smoking devices with friends escalated someone eventually suggested we make a gravity bong. At the time I had no idea what it was or how to make a gravity bong. But from the name and a brief description of how it worked, it sounded like we were going to get high AF, so I was down. The bong we made was not pretty by any means and not glass. We cut the bottom off a three-liter bottle and drilled a hole in the cap to slide the bowl into. We placed this bottle top into a 5-gallon bucket of water with only the bowl sticking out. When you held a lighter up to the bowl and raised the bottle out of the bucket, it filled with an enormous amount of smoke. We made a gravity bong.

What I did not understand at the time about a gravity bong is that despite all the water you see, that massive hit stored up, it’s uncooled and unfiltered. It was harsh for sure, and I thought I was going to die, but I just got extremely stoned instead. I was blown away by how hard and intense the hit was and how fast you could inhale it when you used the pressure from the water. Now I understood what the big deal was, but I could not possibly imagine smoking out of one all the time.

Enter the Gravitron
Little did I know years later, I would encounter the gravity bong again, but in a much different form. The Gravitron is what put the Grav in Grav and was the debut pipe made only by them. The original waterfall was more of a contraption that had a rotating water vessel, and a stand that it would sit on. Eventually, it would evolve into a much more traditional and modernized all glass gravity bong that would look like the glass on glass wine bottle style Gravitron we have today.

The wine bottle model is what I hit, and I was thoroughly impressed by how much easier to use and effective this model was. Like the tagline says, you’ve never made one like this. The Gravitron XL has an airtight seal around the bowl that makes a massive difference for creating enough adequate suction to cause smoke to fill the chamber. When you pull the bowl and lower the bottle top back into the water, it forces the smoke up into your lungs effortlessly.