In this guide, we’ll teach you how to perfectly roll a joint. Learning how to roll a joint isn’t going to be something you learn overnight. Rolling joints take practice, and crafting the perfect joint may take a lifetime, or a couple days.
Aside from trying to get a job in joint rolling, rolling your own joints is practically a rite of passage in becoming a stoner. If you consider yourself to be an avid consumer in cannabis, rolling your own joints is practically like tying your own shoes. With that all being said, there is not need to rush through this process. Rolling the best joints requires time, practice, and patience.
What do You Need to Roll a Joint?
Before you begin your path to rolling the perfect joint, we must go over a checklist of everything you’ll need. Here is a list of items you need:
- Cannabis
- Rolling papers
- Filter papers
These are the most essential things you’ll need to roll up any joint. As long as you have these three items, there should be no excuse! However, we can still make this experience a little easier. Here are some additional things you can get to better improve your joint rolling skills.
- Grinder – finely grind your herb
- Rolling tray – so you don’t spill
- Poker – to pack your joint
With all of these pieces of joint rolling equipment, you’re now ready to learn how to roll!
How Much Cannabis Fits Into a Joint?
Most dispensary pre-rolls contain up to one gram of flower. Some people are able to fit as much as an eighth of cannabis into a single king size paper! When starting out, we recommend beginning with at least half a gram of flower in order to get a decent roll. Regardless of the amount, let’s get started!
Let’s Get Started
Rolling a joint can be broken down into five steps.
Step One – Grinding Your Flower
Begin grinding your flower as fine as possible. This will allow you to roll a more even joint, and let you pack more! Remember, It’s best to not pack your flower too tight, or leave any stems. This will give you better air flow, and overall a better hit.
Step Two – Prepare Your Filter
Having filter papers is key to making sure you don’t inhale any flower while you are hitting your joint.
In order to create the best filter/crutch for your joint, we recommend taking your filter paper and fold it like an accordion, zig-zag, until you have folded about half of the paper. With the unfolded half, roll it around the accordion such that you are making a little burrito with it. Below is a diagram for reference on how the filter paper should look.
Once you have crafted your filter, you can now place it at the end of your joint rolling paper and move on to the next step!
Step Three – Place Your Filter and Flower on the Paper
Let’s start by adding your filter to the end of your paper. This will allow you to shape your paper with the shape of the filter.
Next, place your ground up flower directly onto the joint paper. Make sure the flower is spread evenly along the center crease of the joint, ensuring that your joint is even rolled up.
It is now time for arguably the most difficult step, rolling the joint.
Step Four – Time to Roll
This is the most important and crucial step in making your first joint. Remember, this step takes time, practice, and most importantly, patience. Messing up your very first time is expected. Failed attempts are not to be frustrated over, but should be seen as an opportunity to improve your technique. Here is our best way of describing how to roll the best joint ever.
- In one hand, gently yet firmly pinch the rolling paper with the side holding the crutch. The filter should be snug and pinched in the paper.
- By using the filter as a guide, begin to roll the rolling paper with both hands, ensuring that the ground up cannabis is rolled to the same diameter as the filter paper.
- Once you have wrapped around all of the flower and filter once, tighten the joint by gently pinching both ends with either hand, and carefully pulling down the loose paper with your thumbs until the edge of the paper is tightly secured against the flower and filter.
- With your thumb fingernails, tuck the edge of the filter paper into the roll to continue wrapping the paper around the joint. This step makes sure that the joint will not unravel itself as you continue to wrap the paper around it.
- Once you are at the end of the joint paper, lick the inner edge of the joint paper where the sticky strip of the paper is located, and gently fasten the edge of the paper down onto the joint. Now, you should have a nice cylinder of a joint with one side open, and the other with the filter paper.
Step Five – Packing Down Your Joint
If you have gotten this far, it means that you have completed the most difficult part of rolling a joint. Now, you can take that poker we recommended, and gently pack down the flower on the open end of the joint. Make sure to not pack it too tight, as you may prevent air from flowing throughout the joint.
Once you have packed down any loose flower on the open end, begin twisting it up like a bag of bread until the end is nice and tight and will stay closed on its own. If there is too much rolling paper on the twisted end, feel free to cut it off, as it may create an inconsistent burn when you light your joint.
Now, you are ready to light up your very own hand rolled joint. You should feel proud of yourself!
If you haven’t been able to successfully roll up your joint, do not worry! There are several alternatives to consuming cannabis without honing in on your joint rolling skills.
Make a Career out of Rolling Joints
Joints are commonly purchased as pre-rolls or cannabis cigarettes. This is because they provide an incredibly convenient way to consume cannabis. Good joints are often rolled by hand, and can take many shapes and forms.
As a matter of fact, with the increasing popularity and legality of marijuana and cannabis products, we are seeing joint rolling taken to new heights. Famous stoners and artists who frequently consume cannabis like Snoop Dogg have hired people exclusively to roll for them. They are for the lack of a better word, professional joint rollers and arguably one of the best paid roles you can achieve in rolling joints. Joint rolling as an occupation does not stop at the rich and famous. Countless hemp and marijuana companies hire joint rollers to put together pre-rolls for their respective brands.
If Joints aren’t for you..
If rolling joints aren’t for you, that is completely okay! Fortunately, we can recommend a handful of alternatives to consuming cannabis without having to roll your own joints.
Bongs
Bongs, also known as water pipes or tobacco water pipes, is a great way of smoking cannabis without a joint. Bongs may often require cleaning, but may act as a better filter for smoking by cooling down your smoke with water. Additionally, you can take larger hits of smoke from a bong when compared to a joint. As a matter of fact, many people prefer smoking from bongs because they are convenient, and allow you to smoke larger hits of cannabis.
Pipes
Pipes come in many shapes and forms. Most of them are handheld and portable, making them great alternatives to joints. You can pack as much flower as you want into the bowl of a pipe, and you don’t have to ever worry about rolling up a joint. Like bongs, pipes require cleaning, but as long as you are willing to undergo some maintenance, smoking out of a pipe may be the right choice for you.
Prerolls
If you want to still experience smoking out of a joint without having to roll your own, you are always able to purchase prerolls. Prerolls are exactly what they sound like. They are joints that are already rolled up for you and packaged for you to take right off the shelf and smoke. Prerolls are already packed with cannabis, so make sure that the strain inside the preroll is the one you want.
Dabs
If smoking flower isn’t your thing, and you are looking for a cleaner high or a potentially stronger high, we recommend taking cannabis concentrates for a spin. Concentrates, or dabs, are a great way of consuming cannabis without the burnt taste of lighting a plant on fire. By consuming dabs, you are taking a cannabis concentrate, and vaporizing it on a bong or vape pen. Many bongs are specifically designed to hit dabs. If you are looking to smoke dabs from a bong, make sure you start off by dabbing very small amounts before increasing the size of your hits. Dabs are cannabis concentrates, and the high may be far greater than smoking just flower.
Vapes
Vapes are not only portable, convenient, and a healthier alternative to smoking, but they are also comprised of cannabis concentrates. That being said, vapes are a lot more manageable than dabbing, as vapes are more controllable in how much cannabis you consume. Additionally, vapes come in a wide variety of strains and flavors, and is likely to have the right high for everyone. If vaporizers seem to be your preferred way of consuming cannabis, we recommend checking out our selection of pods for you to enjoy.
Edibles
Lastly, if inhaling smoke or vapor isn’t for you, we recommend checking out edibles. Simply put, edibles are food infused with cannabis oil in order to get you high. Although you are not smoking or vaping, eating cannabis products may be even more potent if not the most potent way of consuming cannabis. Eating one gram of cannabis concentrate is far more effective than smoking one gram of concentrate. That is because when you inhale anything, your lungs are only able to take in so much of what you inhale before exhaling the rest.
Now, you not only know or have an idea of how to roll the perfect joint, but you also have a vast understanding of all the different ways you can consume hemp and marijuana products. We hope that from this guide, you have been able to find the type of product that best suits you. If you have any other questions, feel free to contact us and we will be more than happy to help you. Otherwise, we recommend to check out our blog to continue your cannabis journey!
