Lets Start The Faq! Hookha Do's, Don'ts, Tips And Tricks!

[Zerodynamic]

Ok, we have been throwing this around for a while... so here it is.

We all need to find the best info possible in regards to smoking, put it into a central thread, and sticky it.

So this thread has been created to start the process. We should load up this thread with tips, tricks, and experience.

When contributing, please post it up in a write-up format. (Good grammar, organization, etc.)

Please, keep the commentary brief, any false info will erased.

If you are posting up another forum members postings/ideas, please give them credit. Don't plagarize the FAQ to others as your own either.

If there are any other ideas, or something I missed, please shoot me a PM.

EDIT: We shall consolidate info and like posts as necessary. Edited December 15, 2006 by Zerodynamic

[Zerodynamic]

Orginally Posted by EvansLight:

Well I had typed out a nice long post in another thread thats been buried, and it was a nice guide to basic setup for a good smoke. So i decided to make a new post for it, for anyone who needs just a good guide to how to setup most bowls. As it says, to each his own, everyone is diffrent, and does things diffrently. This is just the way that works for me, and also a good place to start if your having trouble figuring things out. Pics to come soon for each step.

Here is my method for setup when I smoke the hookah. This is a general kinda guide for any bowl and hookah. Remeber this is only how I go about my setup. Diffrent things work for diffrent people. Just use this as a base, and work out what works best for you.

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1.) Place clean stem and base into fridge.
2.) Place a cup of ice water in freezer.
3.) Wait 30 minutes.
4.) With the other supplies still in the fridge/freezer, get your bowl, tobacco, and coals of choice out and ready.
5.) Stir up the tobacco to get the juices going, and also to fluff it up.
6.) Lightly drop the tobacco into the bowl, till it comes up to the rim.

The next steps are split in two, one for screen users, another for foil users.

Screens:
7.a) Pack the tobacco down very good.
8.a) Use a toothpick or the poker on some tongs, and poke up through the bottom of the bowl through the holes in the bowl, and through the tobacco to give the best airflow.
9.a) Place the screen onto the bowl, and check to make sure that the tobacco is not touching the screen.

Foil:
7. Gently push the tobacco down, and add a bit more to come just over the rim of the bowl.
8. Snuggly place a large peice of foil over the bowl. Poke holes through the foil in one of many patterns. My most common is just random holes, with more concentrated towared the center.
9. Turn the bowl over and blow through the bottom to make sure there is good airflow. (thanks to Tangiers for this)

Now we move on to the rest of the setup.

10.) Get out the items from the fridge and freezer.
11.) Pour the ice water into the base, up to 1 1/2 inches above the bottom of where the stem will be (differs from hookah to hookah)
12.) Put together the hookah: Stem into base, Hose into hose port, bowl ontop. (some hookahs have more to do)
13.) Give a test pull on the hose with your hand covering the bowl to make sure that the hookah is air tight.
14.) Light your coal, however you light them. Tips for each below.
15.) Place the coal on top, and do some pulls to get the hookah going.

As with packing the bowl, heat management differs slightly from screens and foil.

Screen:
16.a) Start with the coal directly over the center.
17.a) Once you get smoke, move the coal out to the outer edges.
18.a) Once the outside of the coal is almost fully coverd in white ash, take coal off into the tray and knock off the ash.
19.a) Place the coal back onto the bowl, once again on the outer edge, but move it around the bowl in a circular patern once you put it back on.
20.a) Just keep ashing and rotating till you go all around the bowl. Once the coal dies, place a fresh one over the center, and that should last till you are done.

Foil:
16. Star with 1 coal on the edge, and half a coal (for quicklights, varries for natural) in the center, and get the hookah going good.
17. Ash the coal, and as you do move it around the smaller center peice.
18. Once center coal is burned out, move rest of whol coal onto center, and light the other half of the broken coal.
19. Rotate the broken coal around the edge of the bowl, working it like you first did the large one.
20. Once both are done, just keep a fresh coal and move it to where needed.

Some tips:

A.) The ice water, and cold base/stem is to condense more of the vaporized glycerin, giving you thicker smoke. It also can cool the smoke some.
B.) To keep things cool through the whole smoke, place the base of your hookah into a bucket filled with ice, water, and some salt, up to 3/4 of the way to the top of the base.
C.) Once youve gone around the bowl one time on either foil or screens, i usually take off the screen/foil and remove burnt tobacco, and mix up the bottom a bit, to give some fresh tobacco a chance, instead of burning already burnt shisha XD BE CAREFUL EVERYTHING IS BLOODY HOT!!
D.) Lighting coals differs from not only natural to quicklights, but also differs between brands. For most quicklights, a wooden match is all that you need, while others require a constant flame for longer to get all the lighting material to catch, and to fully light the coal. For natural coals, just place the coal directly on the burner on your stove. Some use propane torches you can buy at hardware stores to hand light them much faster. I use a propane torch to quickly light my quick lights
E.) Experiement. Just because it works for me and my hookah, doesn't mean its going to work perfectly for you. Theres so many factors; hookah design, coals used, tobacco used, your hose, the humidity, how cold your setup gets, etc, that makes this just really just a base guide. You still need to figure out what works best for you

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Well I hope this helps anyone new to the hookah scene, or just anyone in general looking for tips from someone who has way too much free time on there hands and therefore smokes too much XD. Edited December 15, 2006 by Zerodynamic

[Zerodynamic]

Originally posted by Hookha Master:

*Please note this is just information that i have figured out from experiences im not saying change your hookah methods this are minor tips. Please feel free to add more tips. Thank you*

1. How you pack the bowl
When packing the bowl be sure not to pound the shisha into the bowl trying to get as much as you can in. Pack it semi full but make sure its loosely. I usually take the tongs and swish the shisha around making it loose. The looser it is the more air goes to the coal creating bigger hits.

2. Water Level
When pouring your choice of substance into the base remember not to go 2 far above the bottom the stem. If its to full more then likely u will pull more crap through the hose including water sad.gif if you like to add ice to the base you might want to compensate for when the ice melts... the water level will rise.

3. Heat
This depends on the bowl. Some bowls are large and some bowls are small. One of my hookahs i have a bowl thats male and its very small. 1 of the large 3 kings quick lites fit perfectly for the bowl. For larger bowls you might wanna break up the coals into smaller pieces 3-4 max. If your taking in big hits every 7 or so hits move the coals around to make sure it burns evenly. If your using natural coals a wind cover is a must due to the fact they lose heat quicker then the quick lites.

4. Leaks
If you are using aftermarket grommets or hoses or bowls be sure that everything is sealed and doesn't leak. If you have a 3 hose hookah and your using 1 hose only put rubber stoppers in the other ones to make sure it doesnt leak. One of my other hookahs is a 3 hose Syrian hookah and usually me and my friend smoke out of it leaving one of the hoses not used. We duck taped the hole where the hose goes in but it still leaks. I will be ordering some rubber stoppers so it doesn't leak.

Enjoy your Hookah.

[SanguineSolitude]

um... ok i guess you can try and do that.

[Zerodynamic]

Screen vs. Foil? Find out here!

[Zerodynamic]

Wanna clean your hoses? Find out here!

[SanguineSolitude]

dude.... theres a reason we dont have a thread for everything. you cant find anything. guess what in the months and years alot of us have been here we actually ahve thought of it. no offense but i mean youve only been here 4 days. maybe wait a while before trying to restructure the whole forum in a nonuseful way?

[ShishaFred]

So like a Hookah Wiki not on the Hookah Wiki type of thing?

[Zerodynamic]

So like a Hookah Wiki not on the Hookah Wiki type of thing?

Yes and no. We have new users here all the time asking the same questions. Now we can point them to a centralized thread that will answer all of their questions.

[SanguineSolitude]

or we could tell them to use the search and they wont have to go through a long ass thread.

speaking of new users all the time... welcome to the forum.

[Zerodynamic]

What kind of hookah should I buy? Where should I buy it?

[ShishaFred]

If you have the willpower for great projects , make searches of important threads ( the ones with lots of replies) and post it on the hookah wiki... if there's more then 5 entries on that site ( which is about what there is on it right now ) we can just sticky a link to hookah wiki and no one that finds that extremely obvious stickied link will ever ask a question like : Where do you put the tobacco ? In the water or jam it in the stem?

[SanguineSolitude]

not only is this thread unneccessary.... the links dont work.

[Zerodynamic]

or we could tell them to use the search and they wont have to go through a long ass thread.

speaking of new users all the time... welcome to the forum.

You know, contribution is always welcome. And search sucks.

[SanguineSolitude]

dude... stop this thread. like i said its pointless AND your links dont work. so youre wasting everyones time. and search doesnt suck, its what you use when you want to find a post. you dont look through a longer post. that would take twice the time that searching would. youre a couple teams short of a football game my friend.

[Zerodynamic]

whats with your pessimism?

I'll give you an example of what a good FAQ thread looks like:

http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=540888


This has all of the most frequently asked questions for a car. The same could be done with a hookha. You know why it was made? Search sucks, and everyone asks the same questions! When repetitive questions are asked, what do it do? Ties up bandwidth, put the important topics at the bottom of the page, and then everyone tells the "noob" to search. What kind of forum is that? If everyone collaborated and put their vast amount of knowledge and put it into 1 thread whats the worst that could happen? What is the waste of time in that? I found that thread (among many others, just read the comments below it, very helpful.)

Ok, so the links I posted up didn't work.. Big deal! I can fix them! Everyone one the other thread thought the faq would be a good idea. I took the initiative and made one. I tried adding info that I thought would be useful and encouraged everyone to particpate.

What's the harm? What do we have to lose? If you think its a waste of time, then you can stop crapping in the thread, and read something else. Edited December 15, 2006 by Zerodynamic

[ShishaFred]

It's good to have initiative , but this forum has seen lots of people come and go , and thousands of threads. I saw what the FAQ looked on the link you posted , and getting any information out of it would still result in a search , because lots of people post random information in no specific order
Also , because of the walls of avatars and signatures , you have to scroll down trought all of this for a pretty long read. You need to have it divided up so anyone can quickly be directed to the specific information he needs ( read wiki-style)
I know the Hookah Wiki is nowhere near complete or as usefull as we'd want it to be , but if you want to take up an initiative , then go ahead and post what you find in there , it's going to be helpful.

[Zerodynamic]

well, how about we make hookha wiki THE FAQ?

The point of having a FAQ is to look through the faq. Whats worse, having a search that brings up irrelavent conversation, or a FAQ (one that doesn't go on forever, but touches the main points and certain techniques) that has a wealth of useful information? Regardless of whether or not that person might of wanted that post, its much more organized that going through all the off topic discussions when he is looking for on topic answers.

So, if hoohka wiki can sub as a FAQ, then I am all for it.

Now if ya'll excuse me, I need to smoke my hookha.

[SanguineSolitude]

thats what hookah wiki is for. if you wanna post on it go for it. most forum members dont want a faq. otherwise we would have made one. we like hte interaction from talking to people. plus if we wanted we could work on hookahwiki... but noone wants to

plus if you do advanced search and search in titles only you usually get exactly what you want. Edited December 15, 2006 by SanguineSolitude

[ShishaFred]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...42046&sid=1
Yes , I know , it's a World of Warcraft link , but this is a good example of settign up a FAQ on a forum with large frequentation of newbies ( around 10 000 per day on that site? )
Important points
1) The topics are divided in a table of content at the start
2) Everything is posted by one user , who either did the work beforehand , or reserved posts and edited.
3) You can quickly go to the section of your choice by using CTRL+F
4) Information is very detailed , yet professionnaly put , there are no details about his cat's favourite food or personal experiences.

That's about all I can find

[Zerodynamic]

ok, one more post before my bowl is ready...

I hadn't heard of hookah wiki until a few days ago, and I saw it posted no where on the forum...

Perhaps, we should let this thread die, and post up a sticky with the wiki link?

[SanguineSolitude]

i think we wanna limit the number of stickies. but maybe

[ShishaFred]

Would be an idea once the content of the wiki is something to be worth of a sticky ( read : has lots of information)

[Scheetz]

yeah, I agree that the wiki should be posted in the sticky.

Just make a simple post that says, All your hookah FAQ. and then just have the link to the wiki. It has everything there, if something is missing we can add it.

For reference, I had started one. But there was so much shit to go in it that I stopped. There is just way to much crap to cover. Plus I realized that when I finished it, this forum would die. Why because it had every answer you would need.