Roll-ucation: How to Roll the Perfect Cone Joint

“And furthermore Susan I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to learn that all four of them habitually smoked marijuana cigarettes.... reefers”

What is a joint?

A joint is the most widely-used term for a cannabis cigarette. They can also be referred to as doobies, J’s, fatties, and spliffs, amongst many other nicknames. Seen as a common staple amongst avid cannabis smokers, a good joint can be difficult to roll. There are various methods and types of joints you can roll, but in this article we are going to focus on how to roll the perfect cone.

Supplies Needed: your dry herbs, favorite rolling papers, filter tips or other thin cardboard material to make a filter, a grinder, and a rolling tray or flat rolling surface.

Step One:

Grind your herbs first (if you are living in a legal state, we recommend the use of cannabis. If you are not living in a legal state, we recommend using CBD cannabis with a THC content under the federal legal limit of 0.3%). It is best to use a grinder to break down your dry herbs, leaving them fine as possible. Using your fingers will result in a coarse grind, ultimately creating a lumpy joint that has a higher chance of boating or canoeing (burning unevenly).

Step Two:

Create your own filter, crutch, carb—whatever you want to call it. You can use pre-made filters, glass tips, wood tips, hard paper, thin cardboard, or even a piece of a business card (in this case, we used a piece of the box the papers came). To make a joint filter, begin by cutting a small rectangular shape of your chosen filter material. Using that piece, create a small “M” shape at one end. Then, roll until you reach your desired thickness.

If necessary, you can discard or tear off any extra material if your filter seems too bulky. Although a filter is not mandatory when smoking a joint, it will bring stability and help you avoid infamous “scoobie snacks” from pulling through—the terrible experience when pieces of your herb get accidentally sucked into your mouth!

Step Three:

Grab one of your favorite rolling papers and lay it open. Most rolling papers usually come creased down the center, but in this instance ours does not. We recommend you crease your paper, if it doesn’t already come that way, prior to laying it open. Line up the filter at the end of one side of your paper. Fill the remaining center, or middle, area of the opened paper with your grinded herbs, using your crease as your center point.

Begin to create a cone shape by adding more herbs on the opposite end of the filter and less as you move closer (see image below). When finished step 3, your unrolled joint should begin to resemble the shape of a baseball bat.

Step Four:

Carefully pick up your set-up and gently begin to roll the paper up and down between your thumb and index finger to lightly compress the contents. You will have to pick it up completely, if you haven’t already, to roll it smoothly. This is one of the hardest steps to master without spillage, but learning to do so effectively will make the entire process faster and easier.

Once your dry herbs are in a more compact bat shape, starting from the filter end, hold the end of your soon-to-be-J and slide your thumb fully across while simultaneously rolling/tucking the paper into its cone shape. Remember to slide your thumb the full length of the J with every roll to make the cone tight and smooth. When the non-filter side (fat side of the bat) begins to have limited J paper remaining to roll, pause and lick the sticky-glue strip all the way across your paper. Once you’ve licked, continue the rolling process.

Step Five:

Once you can’t roll anymore and your cone shape has officially formed, begin to pack it down. You can do so by gently tapping the filter-end of your joint on a table a few times or by using the end of a pen and gently compacting the herbs through the fat, cone-head opening.

This should leave you a gap between the ending of the grinded herbs and the actual ending of the paper. You can then twist and squeeze the remaining paper into a long tip, making the joint fully intact. You have now officially made a cone joint!

 

Step Six:

Relax, sit back & smoke away! You likely won't roll a perfect joint on the first try but practice makes perfect. Besides, there’s a reason most packs of rolling papers contain 50 sheets of paper!

Joint rolling still not for you?

For those who struggle to get there, you can always cheat! Pre-rolled cones are now becoming mainstream, already perfectly shaped for you and ready to fill! You can find them among our rolling papers in our Regal Rolling Papers & Pre-Rolled Cones collection.

Also available now is the banana bros. OTTO™ Grinder (seen above), the first ever all-in-one smart electric grinder and rolling machine, capable of finely grinding your dry herb and rolling the perfect joint with the push of a button. Using the OTTO Grinder, you can pump out perfect cones every time.

Now that you have mastered the art of rolling the perfect cone, here are some interesting facts for you to share during your next smoke sesh!

- It is rumored that it takes 800 joints to kill a man, but you can’t overdose on Cannabis. The actual cause of death would be carbon monoxide poisoning!

- Irvin Rosenfeld, one of the country’s first medical marijuana patients, is featured in the Guinness Book of World Records under “Most Pot Consumed” for smoking 115,000 joints throughout his lifetime…all of which were courtesy of the federal government!

- It is rumored that the first recorded use of a joint was in Mexico. Though cannabis had been used as a medicine for a long time, it seems that the joint was first used for recreational purposes. It was a pharmacist at University of Guadalajara who first mentioned that laborers were mixing cannabis with tobacco in their cigarettes. Although it may have started much earlier, the practice has been dated back to 1856.