Here are a few of my old homemade bottle bongs from high school and college.
These actually rip really well (but they chug real hard). Very easy to pack these full of ice.
(The green one might be a little newer.)
We got pretty good at making these. Drill a hole with a glass / tile drill bit while spraying water constantly to keep it lubricated and cool.
they have a brass metal downstem (inspired by the protopipe) which is curved into a “lazy S” shape. an old school rubber gasket holds the downstem. in place. The pipe is 14 millimeters diameter, so a 14.5 millimeter bowl sits on top of it, and is sealed and held in place with another old school bong gasket.
This is my favorite one, made from a huge old bottle of french absinthe.
I made two of these, my old high school buddy and best friend has the other one back in San Francisco.
We used to name all of our pipes and bongs back then. He joked that this looked like the kind of bong Mark Twain would have smoked.
His bong is named Mark Twain, and of course, mine is named Samuel Clemens.
I can’t rip this one that easily either, and I wouldn’t smoke out of a metal downstem these days.
If I find someone who makes worked bottle bongs, I might get this one customized with a fixed glass downstem. Probably as a display piece more than anything else.