Basic Principles.
A bong is simply a smoking apparatus, which filters the smoke you inhale through water instead of through a filter or roach.
The various procedures a bong utilises to convert marijuana into pure filtered cool smoke are as follows:
The starting point of the process is with the bowl that will contain your cannabis. This must be fire proof so that when you hold a flame to the weed it wont go up in smoke, and also must have tiny holes in the bottom to allow the smoke to be pulled through.
The next stage the smoke goes through is to travel through a hollow pipe that is attached to the bottom of the bowl containing your weed. The pipe will enter into the side of a large vessel containing water. The hole in the side of this container should be airtight, and the bottom of the pipe must be submerged in the water.
The water is the next part of the process. The cool liquid acts as a filter for dust particles and other nastiness that floats along with the smoke, and also it acts as a coolant to further refine the hit. After a few uses you can see the superb filtering properties the water has - the water turns into a foul liquid.
The smoke will rise up through the water - and hang suspended in the top part of the water filled container. At the top of the container will be a hole through which you have just sucked - pulling the flame onto the weed, and pulling the resulting fumes through the pipe, into the water and finally into the top part of the container. The empty space of the container now has filled up with cool filtered smoke, waiting the final part of the process.
At the side of the container - above the water level, there is be a small hole which you should keep covered up with your finger until this point in time. This hole is called a shotgun hole, as it acts in the same way as when you shotgun a can of beer - allowing an easy passage of air into the container - to allow an easy passage of smoke out of the container into your lungs.
So to summarise the events:
1) Hold a flame to the weed in the bowl.
2) Keeping your finger over the shotgun hole - inhale to draw the smoke through the water into the top part of the bong.
3) When this is filled with smoke, stop burning the weed.
4) Release your finger from the shotgun hole, and inhale strongly a second time - sucking the smoke into your lungs.
5) Hold in as long as you want, then breath out.
6) Lie back and enjoy - but keep your bong upright, that water becomes pretty disgusting.
