(1) It's cheaper; and
(2) It looks pretty cool.
It's cheaper because you do the work. It looks cool for a lot of reasons: you're a maverick who goes his or her own way; you are so hardcore that you don't need any poxy filter; cowboys rolled their own smokes; and finally, it takes some skill. The Gadgies are here to help you with the skill part (you're on your own with the cowboy part). We can't promise you entrance into the Land of Cool, but at least we'll get you rolling.
Rolling tobacco varies in price, costing from about £2.25 per half ounce (for those of you who speak metric, there are about 28 grams in an ounce). Cigarette papers cost about 20p, and you usually get ?? papers in a pack. A half ounce of tobacco will usually get you around ?? cigarettes (or more if you like them thinner), so your price range for 20 cigarettes, when you roll your own, is from about £??. A regular pack of 20 cigarettes usually costs about £4.20, so you can save quite a bit by rolling your own.
Which tobacco you will use is, of course, a matter of personal taste. Just try out some of the kinds of tobacco that are available to you and when you find one which is appealing, stick with it. Tobacco and rolling papers can be purchased from tobacconists, convenience stores, newsagents, smugglers, online etc.
It is probably best to buy tobacco in small quantities, because it dries up quickly and it is less pleasant to smoke and very difficult to roll when it is dry. Buy small pouches and keep them sealed up as tightly as possible, preferably in an additional plastic bag (you can keep your papers 'n' stuff in there, too). The large tins might seem like a better deal, but they don't keep the tobacco fresh or moist enough. Unless you smoke like an industrial solid waste-burning facility, you will end up fighting your way through half a can of dry, stale tobacco. If your tobacco does become too dry, you can try placing something moist in its container and sealing it until the tobacco becomes moister. We recommend a leaf of lettuce or a piece of apple, although apple can sometimes impart a flavor to the tobacco. You can also try using a small piece of wet cloth or napkin, but make sure to squeeze it out well or some of your tobacco will be too damp.
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The world of roll-your-own is divided up along these lines: Really rolling your own and Using a cigarette machine.
Really rolling your own
This is what people generally think of when they hear of rolling classic drinks? cigarettes, and it is both cheap and cool. To do this you require only manual dexterity (i.e. less than ten thumbs), cigarette papers and tobacco. If you're unbelievably cool, you could even try rolling with one hand. However, many people actually like the idea of having a filter. For those folks, using a cigarette machine might be a better alternative.
Using a cigarette machine.
Many people are not even aware that this option exists, but there are machines which allow you to make cigarettes with ordinary tobacco and cigarette tubes, The tubes are, however, empty, and you have to use a little machine to fill them up. The advantage of this is that it gives you a smoke with a filter (you know for those who are weak ) which looks and smokes much like a shop-bought smoke but at a much lower price. The disadvantages are that it is not cool, and cowboys, John Travolta and James Dean would all look upon you with extreme scorn.
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There are six steps to rolling a smoke:
1. Set up the paper
2. Measure the tobacco
3. Place the tobacco in the paper
4. Roll the tobacco into a cylinder
5. Roll the paper over the tobacco
6. Seal and complete the cigarette
1. Set up the paper
Get a leaf of cigarette paper and place it on a flat surface or lay it flat on your hand. Cigarette papers are made with folds which create a kind of valley into which you're going to place the tobacco. Therefore, you should place the paper so that the folded parts are sticking upwards, genius. One of the folds will have a little strip of glue right at the top, which you will eventually lick in order to seal the finished cigarette. This strip of glue should be facing you, on the upright fold furthest from you.
2. Measure the tobacco
When you have your paper expertly laid out in front of you, pinch up a small quantity of tobacco. It's difficult to provide exact guidance in this matter; it's something you'll have to get a feel for as you practice.
(a gram and a half of tobacco is a little less than a tablespoon by volume. So start out with that as a guideline and then experiment as you go and see how much tobacco you like to have in your rollies.
3. Place the tobacco in the paper
Once you have your small quantity of tobacco in your fingers, place it in the cigarette paper. Place it so that it is fairly evenly-spread along the length of the paper and so that there is about a half-inch of tobacco sticking out at either end. If you find that you are one of those people who is forever squishing the stuff in the middle out to the edges, you should compensate by both: (1) Not doing that so much anymore; and (2) Putting a little bit more tobacco in the middle. If, on the other hand, you are one of those people who squeezes too hard at the edges and forces all the tobacco into the middle, you should place less in the middle and more at the edges. Straightforward enough, no?
4. Roll the tobacco into a cylinder
From this point on it becomes rather less straightforward. For once you have placed the tobacco in the paper you must begin the part which will make you feel like you have all the grace of a blind midget trying to juggle fourteen spliffs. Gently pick up the cigarette paper in both hands, with the index finger and middle finger of each hand on the far side of the paper and with each thumb on the near side of the paper. The fingers and thumbs should be on a forty-five degree angle, with the fingertips facing toward each other, so that if you touched them together they would form a little tent-like shape. They should not, however, be touching each other, as that would interfere with the rolling. With your fingers in place, begin moving the front fold of the paper up and down with your thumb. Don't pack it too hard.
5. Roll the paper over the tobacco
Once you have as nice a cylinder of tobacco as you think you can get (by the way, if you've been rolling the thing for more than a minute, you've been doing it way too long and it's probably about as smokable as a stick of petrified wood), you are ready to finish the rolling. This last part can be rather tricky, and if it is incorrectly executed, it can wreck an otherwise perfectly-rolled smoke. Here's how you do it: roll your thumbs downward until the edge of the paper is parallel with your cylinder of tobacco. Then, instead of rolling the paper back up, use your thumbs to fold it over the top of the cylinder and then start to roll it up. Only this time, with the edge of the paper tucked right in around the cylinder of tobacco, it really will start to roll up and look like a cigarette. Roll it up fairly
tightly until only about the top half-inch of the far fold of paper with its a personalized strip of glue is exposed above the rolled paper and tobacco.
6. Seal and complete the cigarette
Quickly run your tongue along the strip of glue - moistening it, NOT slobbering on it- and roll the cigarette together so that the glue seals it into a neat tube. Voila! A cigarette perfectly ready for you to smoke - apart from you the fact that you almost certainly did it really badly if it was your first time, and from the fact that there is about a half-inch of hairy-looking tobacco sticking out at either end. (The reason we asked you to leave the tobacco sticking out at the ends is so that you won't end up with the all-too-common phenomenon of having the ends be too loose or thinner than the rest of the smoke.) Once you are finished rolling, you simply pinch off the loose tobacco with your fingernails or cut it off with scissors (not so cowboy-like) or with the bowie knife you carry in your boot (yaaahooo). The resulting cigarette will have a relatively even amount of tobacco throughout its length, and will look and smoke better than if you had not left the tobacco sticking out. Trust us.
Now that you have a finished cigarette in front of you, pick the end which looks the best and stick that in your mouth. Then light the other end and enjoy the smooth taste of your own industriousness. You're going to get some tobacco in your mouth, but you don't care now..... do ya Kid?
so! it's 2008 start grown ya own
In a pot, in your closet (lined with aluminum foil or white reflective paint). With a great overhead light with a very good trusty lightbulb, at least 6-12 inches away from the top of the plant. To make it taste good or add more nutrients put like banna peels, or a compost pile. It's pretty much like growing any other plant. A dehumidifier would be good, and a fan blowing against it. Light schedual to make it grow faster would be light 24/7 for a while then right before fruitation time you put it on 12 hours light 12 hours no light. Theres loads of great websites out there for growing pot plants. Just go to google.com and type in grow pot.
