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Lab Glassware?


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So as soon as I get some money set aside, I intend to embark on my first hookah-building project: a hookah constructed from labratory glassware.

Glassware is remarkably cheap, from sources such as United Nuclear, and is designed for high-heat applications, as well as being fairly easy to clean/impervious to staining.

I think with a little bit of ingenuity and patience I can even work out a fairly elegant no-coals solution.

The only caveat I can see at the moment, for whatever design, is that draw would be somewhat inhibited by the size of the glass tubing available, however I would put up with that in an occasional use decorative hookah. This would certainly not be portable, as most or all of the parts would probably need to be supported on a rod stand.


From you guys, I'd like to know if anyone has attempted anything like this before, or have even heard of it? It just hit me earlier today, this is an entire field of equipment expressly designed for the handling of fluids.


If I'm talking crazy, let me know.
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QUOTE (Canon @ Jan 3 2008, 02:30 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
your crazy, but let us know how it works out.


I appreciate the honesty. As someone more experienced with hookahs than I, do you forsee any significant problems that I might have overlooked, beyond the obvious difficulty of making a hookah out of things not intended to be made into hookahs, that is.
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I say this with 100% good intentions, but prob. since you don't have experience (just a guess), it is prob. going to be hard to get a nice looking airtight hookah... if you do get it working good, it will be sweet... I could imagine a hookah base/stem that is one peice, and then to clean you just take off the bowl and dump out the water, and clean it... I think it would look sweet to see the hookah in action... good luck
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i dont think that it being airtight would be a problem cause of rubber stoppers.

i was thinking that glass heats up easy and gets hot but there ill be a grommet between the bowl and the glass.

i agree with Joe in that a once piece thing would be sweet as hell and very functional.

but you could make it out of pieces, it would have to be specially made and unless you can blow glass then i think you're SOL
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Airtightness, as eternal said, should be a moot point thanks to rubber stoppers.

As far as the bowl, I hope to be able to rig that out of a glass lab funnel with a fairly long stem that will fit into the hole of a rubber stopper, so no issues there.

I don't know if a one piece thing is feasible without custom fabrication, but my intent for this project is more of a 'mad scientist' aesthetic anyway.
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I dont think you're SOL at all... Judging by the stuff we had in our highschool chem lab you could easily make a sick hookah.. It may not be the conventional look but you could sure as hell make on..

What if you did something like putting shisha in one of those small dishes (petry dish?) and just roast it from the bottom instead of the top? Idk just throwing ideas out after a night at the bar.

Good luck and keep us updated
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QUOTE (PhishPhood @ Jan 3 2008, 03:09 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
What if you did something like putting shisha in one of those small dishes (petry dish?) and just roast it from the bottom instead of the top? Idk just throwing ideas out after a night at the bar.


actually, a bottom-heated method is something I'm toying with. I'm thinking something along the lines of a small flask with a 2 holed stopper being heated from the bottom. One hole is either open or has a one way valve as an inlet(if needed) and the other hole has tubing connected to the 'downstem' of the hookah, which would be a hose going into the input hole of the stopper in the 'vase' flask. This would take some experimenting, but I think if I could reliably fill the 'bowl' flask/test tube with smoke, then this would be a pretty elegant solution to the 'coal problem' in addition to looking damned cool.
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Sounds really cool and feasible but it'll be very difficult. One thing you have to be extremely careful of is cleaning. Let the pipe cool down to room temp before you even try to clean it. The extreme temp change will crack the glass.
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QUOTE (MechAnt @ Jan 3 2008, 04:11 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Sounds really cool and feasible but it'll be very difficult. One thing you have to be extremely careful of is cleaning. Let the pipe cool down to room temp before you even try to clean it. The extreme temp change will crack the glass.


Yeah, fortunately there's only going to be one piece that gets warm at all, if everything goes to plan. The cool thing about using glassware is, if I can get away using a test tube for a 'bowl', those are a few bucks for a box of twelve. Glassware is pretty affordable, all things considered.
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QUOTE (QuiltedMaple @ Jan 3 2008, 04:48 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
http://www.collegehumor.com/picture:1693682

Check this out. If you could do this and get it smoking withouts coals, that would be sweet.

-QM


that's a lot simpler than I'm envisioning, but certainly effective. The vacuum filtering erlymeyers are exactly what I'm looking at for the vase.
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