Originally published at: A look back at the Proto-Pipe, the perennial gold standard of stoner technology | Boing Boing
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Horrible POS and smoking thru metal. I have owned several.
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Kansas was such a dry state in the late 80s, my stoner technology was either a wooden dugout or a Coca-Cola can.
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Agreed. Plus, they ALWAYS got so resinous that you couldn’t get them apart to clean.
I liked them for the lid over the bowl, so I could put the pipe right back into my cargo shorts.
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If they were so horrible, why did you own several? Couldn’t you have used a TP roll with a DIY tinfoil bowl, like I did back then?
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This is why I appreciate the person who began making the sectional pipes with parts that screwed together. I could carry enough weed in it for a nice evening at a party and still be able to share with my friends. It was much easier to remove the resin, and the weed in the body of it would become resined as I smoked, which I enjoyed.
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Can anyone here comment on the knockoffs I see around? Original vintage Proto Pipes on ebay, and new ones on his site go for around $100. Some knockoffs seem to be from China so the quality and safety is suspect, there is also an “American Pipe” that claims to made in the USA but looks similar to the Chinese made ones albeit with an “AP” logo. (Who wants to spend $100 on something you could easily lose.)
I always liked the setup, it’s handy, but I can see if you’re a regular smoker it can become a resinous mess despite the “easy to clean” design.
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They were the ‘cool’ road trip/camping pipe where glass would clearly break. I got tired of losing the pokers just smoke joints.
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Gold standard for any REAL pot smoker is Zig-Zag 1-1/4s. Anything else is jewelry for posers.
Now, what was I doing?
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Stoner for 40+ of those 50 years, and I’ve never used one. Never had a friend that used one
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Standard-sized Club papers or one is merely an amateur.
Now, where’s my glass one-hitter?
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But some of us really suck at making good joints, no matter how often we practice. 
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Yep.
People may be ‘heavy handed’, or have unstable hands, or like myself, maybe they just don’t care for the delivery method of a traditional joint.
(My personal preference remains a double bubbler.)
Obligs:
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In high school in the the late 70s early 80s where I was it was illegal to sell pot paraphernalia but certain party stores would have stuff under the counter. We did have an old school headshop that had all the cool pipes and water bongs. Not sure how that was legal at the time but what a great store.
I either rolled my own or used a pipe like the one below. We used brass screen from the hardware store for filters. Occasionally I would smoke an old school hunk of hash by sticking it on a pin lighting it, blow it out, cover it with a glass and then enjoy.
We didn’t need anything fancy to get high.
The good ole days at a concert when a joint would come down the row from god knows where, those were the days.
Now I really want a joint.
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That may be the most appropriate use of that meme ever!
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i remember these. they looked cool, but i always thought they would get hot. i still have my old glass one-hitter with the scarab design on it, but i’m old enough to know how to use Zig-Zags to just roll my own.
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Yes - that exact type of pipe and yes, hash on a bent safety pin, in an upturned glass. Hardly ever saw grass where I was, so powdered/crumbled hash resin in the pipe. One bowl of Moroccan would get half a dozen of us well out of it.
Ah - those were the days. 
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