and on topic, these are my favorite pieces. This glass blower does a great job. Simple designs that function perfectly. And durable. Takes a licking, and keeps on ripping.
generic photo from the maker. mine are different.
and on topic, these are my favorite pieces. This glass blower does a great job. Simple designs that function perfectly. And durable. Takes a licking, and keeps on ripping.
No unfortunately bongs are made with borosilicate and stained glass is soft glass. The two are very different with regards to what colors can be achieved.
You could probably get a similar effect on a soft glass bong made with frit. I’m sure you’ve seen bongs like these before:
It’s a layer of coloured glass encased in a layer of clear. By layering colors they can make some interesting hues, especially with something like white over red or beige.
If you have a local head shop that sells bongs like these show them the stained glass they might have something like it in their supplier catalog.
I agree old school soft glass would def be the way to go vs boro to get closer to that color.
Had a few nice bob snodgrass pipes and bongs when I use to smoke out of them,I like big fat joints myself,I want to try make some vape pens this next grow
Snodgrass is the man!
A friend had a Snodgrass fumed skull, pretty cool to smoke out of. I love the Chester cheetah the dicro shades are badass!
I have to look around bought a spoon from him at a dead show
He was big back in the day,come to think about it paid a shit load of money for them
Pieces,their all broken now lol
I met him back in the day, at a glassblowing event in Austin Tx. He’s a cool OG.
I think his son took over had a couple of pieces by him as well had a nice Sherlock with and alien strapped to the front lol
he was blowing glass at shows when I was on tour
then pipe dreams came along
Does anybody know of any glass blowers who make cool soft glass bongs?
I’ve been interested in finding someone to make a simple custom piece for a few years.
edit-
This guy does custom work based on this design, I might contact him at some point.
What @piccolo and @beacher said about the differences in color and design between borosilicate and soft glass totally make sense, so I’d like to learn a bit more about artists who work with soft glass.
I did some googling and found a company called noble that makes soft glass bongs with really great swirled colors, but they don’t seem to do custom work and their designs are a little frilly for my taste.
Here is another one of my favorite local glass blowers, benny no knuckles.
I had a sweet inline donut ashcatcher with this basic design with clear glass. I used it with a small boro farms bubbler and my enail.
so the rig was a titanium enail in an inline donut ashcatcher leading into a small bubbler with a slotted disc perc. truly the cadillac of ashcatchers. The whole thing was so light and tiny. eventually I tipped it over and snapped the 90 degree joint. Fortunately the boro bong / bubbler was undamaged and still hits perfectly.
I just contacted benny to see if he still makes those ashcatchers, or knows a local glass blower who might be interested in fixing mine.
The vast majority of soft glass bongs are made in china/india as ‘vases’ then shipped over here and drilled for bong stems.
Soft offhand glassblowers in n America generally make art type stuff like bowls (real bowls lol), chandeliers, cups and stuff. Find one and request a ‘vase’ with the colors and design you want and drill a hole in it yourself lol
I’m sure these days most wouldn’t mind doing the hole for you, but generally they’re completely separated from the cannabis glass scene. It’s like two worlds.
Look for an art glass studio around you. You want the ones where they’re blowing through big metal pipes with furnaces and stuff, what you want can’t be made on a torch.
That’s interesting, I guess those noble glass guys are more interesting than I thought. they are using classic art glass techniques for bongs made in the US.
And speaking of drilling holes in stuff, is it chill if I post some photos of the homemade glass pieces I used in my high school and college days? we made some pretty neat rigs with liquor bottles.
Those noble bongs are cool. Pretty $$, but some neat custom add-ons and stuff and they’re glass on glass which is sweet.
Well I’m pretty happy today, benny offered to repair my inlne donut ashcatcher. Super chill.
I’ll send him a photo, if he thinks he can’t fix it, I will definitely take this opportunity to commission a custom rig.
Turns out benny is now the owner of portland tubing co, which creates colored borosilicate tubes for use as raw material for heady glass blowers. the company actually creates new colors of boro glass.
This may potentially be one of the only guys who could create the edwardian milk glass bong that I have been dreaming about using borosilicate glass.
It seems like they mainly create new solid colors, with varying levels of opacity. Maybe they could cook something up using both opaque and translucent pigments to create something similar to the appearance of the milk glass. A little gold and green fuming and it could look pretty damn close to the real thing.