Last updated 2026-08-04
Pipes
Choosing a Hand Pipe
Nothing to roll and nothing to buy again. The only real decision is what it is made of, and each material is a different bargain between taste, durability and how much cleaning you're willing to do.
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Glass
Glass is inert, so it adds nothing of its own, which is why it is the default for anyone who cares what the contents taste like. It is also transparent, so you can see at a glance when it is ready for a clean.
The cost is obvious: it breaks, and it breaks in the sink more often than in use. Thicker walls survive more. Borosilicate handles heat changes better than ordinary glass, which matters because thermal shock is how most pieces die.
Wood
Wood survives being dropped in a way glass doesn't, so it earns its place in a bag. It has a character of its own too: a wooden pipe seasons with use, and people who like them like them for that.
Two real costs. It is opaque, so you can't see the state of it, and it must not be soaked: no alcohol bath, no long rinse. Brush it dry and wipe the stem. If your cleaning routine is "put it in a bag of alcohol once a week", wood is the wrong choice.
Silicone
Silicone is effectively indestructible, flexible, and the only one of the three you can genuinely drop on a tile floor without consequence. Most silicone pipes use a glass bowl insert, a neat compromise: the part that gets hot and dirty is glass and lifts out to clean, and the part that gets dropped is silicone.
The trade is that it is the least pleasant to look at and, to some people, the least pleasant to use. It is the practical choice: travel, boats, anywhere a breakage would be a real shame.
Hand Pipe
Hand-Carved Wooden Pipe
Six inches, carved by hand, and no two come out quite the same. Bought as much for the object as for the function.
Pipe Set
Aluminum Pipe Set with Case
Two aluminum pipes just under four inches long, each coming apart so the inside can be reached. The set carries a three-in-one tool, ten replaceable filters, a brush and a hard case. Small enough to travel in a pocket.
Handmade 
Artisan Pipe
Frog Pipe on a Walnut Base
A walnut bowl and base with a hand-painted frog wrapped around it, from a maker called Made in the Andes. Painted by hand, so no two come out quite the same, and the base is part of the sculpture, so it stands happily where you set it. As much a shelf piece as a bowl.
Pipe + kit 
Wood Pipe Set
Rosewood Pipe Starter Set
Rosewood, about three and a half inches, with a lid that swivels over the bowl so nothing spills in a bag. The maintenance kit is already in the box (a 3-in-1 tool, pipe cleaners and steel screens), which is most of what a first pipe actually needs.
What decides it
Where it lives. A pipe that stays on a shelf can be glass. One that travels should not be.
How you'll clean it. This is the question people skip and then regret. Glass and silicone take the alcohol-and-salt method; wood doesn't. Our pipe cleaning guide covers the method and the two mistakes that crack glass.
Bowl size, which nobody mentions. A large bowl on a pipe used by one person means half of it sits burnt and stale for the next time. Smaller is usually better and almost nobody buys that way.
What to ignore: any claim that a material is healthier or tastes objectively better. We don't repeat those on the cards above, because none of them is substantiated by the sellers making them.
The rest of the gear
Pipes are one section of a longer guide covering cleaning, grinders, storage, lighters and the rest.
Informational only
General information about equipment. Not medical or legal advice, and nothing here says cannabis treats any condition. Everything here assumes product bought lawfully from a licensed Florida dispensary.