What Would You Expect To Pay For A Custom Made Hookah?

[variable]

Hi guys. I'm not on here very often, but when I have questions, this is usually my first stop... so...

The economy sucks, and I've been looking at supplemental sources of income. I've made a few hookahs for myself and my friends keep telling me that I should sell them. I had never built them with selling them in mind, but these days, why not? I've made a 6 hose hookah out of a 5 gallon container thats been chopped down to about 2.5 (though I've never measured). It works amazingly well. The tall pieces sticking up are two things, the bottom piece is a one way valve from a sprinkler system with the spring removed. The second piece is a compression fitting for the hose. It works reasonably well for most hoses. Some hoses, the end peice is a little too small and may require you to add the conical shaped gasket on the end of it. I live with 5 people and we frequently sit down and smoke this thing for 3-4 hours straight. With a phunnel and the right coals, the tobacco is completely and perfectly burned through. Though too many people trying to draw at the same time creates a little bit of a pressure problem, this could probably be solved by using a larger pipe in the center. I made this out of stuff I had lying around, so the hookah portion is as you can see from the picture mostly what you would normally buy (aside from the large ash tray). The one I used for this was actually quite small which is probably why the pipe is small. Technically you could have 8 hoses on this since the stem also has 2 locations, but the higher up you go, the harder the draw is. As it is right now, one person can draw air using just the muscles in your cheeks. Well, I can anyway...


The attachments are painted black, they don't actually come that way. This version, the attachments are glued down which is a design I'm not going to stick with as the glue becomes brittle enough to crack loose from time to time. Easy to fix, but annoying. I'll probably figure out some way to 'bolt' them in place. I have some things in mind, but haven't had a real need to build another one of these... It's a 'prototype' so I've got some perfecting to do, but if people were interested, I'd be more motivated to start perfecting. I have a higher resolution version of that image if someone really wants it. I think parts cost was around $50... the one way valves aren't super expensive, I think ~$6-7, but there's 6 of them... between those and the compression fittings... I built it about a year ago so I'm going from memory.

I've also got these hand held ones that I've made out of nalgene bottles. They're quite simple really. I used some componets from the plumbing department and the kitchen wares department. It requires sacrificing two different kinds of tea strainers and a little bit of JB weld. I suppose epoxy would work too, but I had the JB weld in front of me :-P these require a little bit of finesse... drilling holes in the lid of a nalgene bottle really isn't doable since the bits just grab the lid and make short work of your hands. You either have to melt it with a soldering iron or something, or use a hole saw. The soldering iron is much quicker, though not very environmentally friendly and not especially good for you...



Parts for this one are probably closer to ~$20. Again, haven't looked in a while so I could be off. Nalgene bottle's like $6, tea strainers are like 5 each, so, in that range with the fittings and pipe stuff. If there's interest, I'll get a more accurate list going.

[Victim026]

Honestly I wouldn't pay for those, I'd just make it myself. I would pay for someone who could work metal and could make me a totally custom piece....

[steeeeeeve]

I wouldnt buy because i want to make one myself but

KEEP ON MAKING!

its great to see innovative hookahs and those are pretty cool:) (i like the top one best)

if you have more id like to see more pics out of interest:)

Steve

[variable]

Yeah, I kind of figured. Its not a particularly good looking/refined device...

Here's some more pics:

You can see that I had to add a piece of silicone pipe to the end of the stem to reach near the bottom of the resevoir. Not my favorite part. It wasn't tight enough to just be friction fit so I had to use a pipe clamp. Fortunately the pipe clamp doesn't get submerged, but I still worry a little about rust. The hose gets a little slimy over time. I filled the bottom of the hose with epoxy and drilled holes through it on the bottom and on the sides going up a little ways. As more people draw on it, the bubbles start coming out further and further down. Didn't do that by design, but whatever.




The one on the right is from the 6 hose, and the one on the left is from my 2 hose hookah. The 2 hose gasket is much larger and doesn't fit, but has a larger stem... in hind sight I should probably have tried to make that one work and perhaps will in a future version. Right now the base requires you to already have a hookah top to put in it. I did that because I was focusing on making the base work and just never got around to making the top portion.



This is the Hookah Closet. There's a Heinekeg in there that I was going to make into a hookah, but lost interest. I made one out of an absolut bottle which you can kind of see in there, but cutting holes in glass is time consuming and hard to get right. Lost motivation on that one too.. :-P There's some bubbles in there for blowing smoke bubbles. Kind of makes a mess though.

[variable]

Thanks for the honest input btw.