Hello folks, Paul here with a how-to video
for you and this one is a very request video. It is how to make a watermelon base hookah. It’s not something I do very often because
personally I like to eat watermelon rather than use it as a base for my hookah, but I'm
going to show you my process, which is a little bit different than what you guys have probably
seen in some other place, and I think this is actually a much more efficient process
that gives you a better smoke, which as you can see
is well sealed and gives nice clouds. The process is pretty simple. What I do is I start my cutting off the very
bottom of the watermelon. I actually cut it a little bit close here. You want to cut it so that the white of the
watermelon is the only thing showing. You don’t want to see any of the flesh as
that means that water can potentially permeate. The reason that I cut the bottom off is mostly
to make it more stable while I do the next step. The next step I actually measure the size
of my hookahs junction between the stem and the vase. I use calibers. I have those on hand but you can actually
do the same with a piece of paper and some tape. What you do is you wrap the tape around the
paper, around the junction, and that gives you a sleeve that you can then use to mark
out the exact shape. You want to actually cut a little bit smaller
so you can give yourself some room and a little bit of leeway if you mess up because you want
a solid tight seal here. Now comes the sloppy part. Using a knife, I cut out the plug of the actual
skin. I then pull that out. It has a decent amount of flesh on it but
next comes hollowing. Hollowing is a problem when you do it in this
method because instead of cutting the top off of the watermelon and then replacing that
as if it were some kind of gasket, I actually use a combination of knives and a grill fork
to scope out the inside and hollow it out. You don’t need much water in there. You just need enough space and enough depth
so that your downstem can reach in without being obstructed by any of the flesh of the
watermelon. You then do what you can to get as much of
that pulp out of your new hookah base, which can be a problem. It will take a little bit of finagling. You don’t need to get it all, but the less
pulp that there is inside of the watermelon, the smoother the smoke is going to be, and
you're not going to get any chunks gumming things up and making it hard to draw. Next, you can see me here actually fitting
the hookah together. The way I do this is I really love to use
a silicone thinned grommet because it conforms to a regular shape, which I'm pretty handy
with a knife and the caliber has allowed me to get a pretty neat circle, but this fill
in the gaps. You can cheat a little bit by using the wet
paper towel grommet method that I've showed you guys before and that'll create a pretty
good seal, but it’s not quite as solid and stable. It should be noted that I actually use the
juice from the watermelon to fill this back up. I dumped out the pulp and juice that’s created
from hollowing out the inside and then added the juice back into the watermelon with a
little bit of water to top it off. It can be hard to see your water level obviously
because it’s a solid piece of watermelon, but you can eyeball, try it out a few different
times, add a little bit of water or take a little bit of water out and you should be
able to find the perfect level. As you can see here, it works pretty well. It does the job. I did some carving on the outside with some
of my [leather] tools actually just to give it a little bit of extra flare and it looks
a little bit better to me than just a watermelon. I have this bowl here that it’s sitting
in in case anything leaks out of the bottom and it also helps to stabilize the entire
thing. I'm lucky that I have a bowl that fits this
watermelon quite well and creates a pretty solid base, but if you don’t have a bowl
that fits really well, if you cut the bottom off carefully, you can actually put this on
top of a baking sheet or a cooking sheet. That will help to stabilize things as well
and also catch any liquid that might leak. Funny enough, as much as I am not a big fan
of using fruit bowls or vases, this one is actually lending a bit of flavor to the smoke
and I'm actually really enjoying it. It’s not a huge amount of flavor. It’s just enough that you can tell it’s
watermelon. I'm currently smoking Social Smoke Absolute
Zero and that is a light enough flavor with just a nice strong minty kick that blends
well with the watermelon. It’s a watermelon chill flavor right now
and it’s nice. It doesn’t overpower the flavor of the fruit,
which a stronger flavor might. That’s my process for making a watermelon
vase. As you can see, it’s actually pretty success
and getting really good clouds here because the seal is so good and I hope you guys try
it out. It’s really nice at parties, it’s a great
conversation starter and it actually does lend a little bit of flavor to the session. This is Paul once again for hookah.org saying
thank you very much for joining us. Please check this out. Try it out for yourself. Let me know what you think in the comments
down below or on the forums. Thanks very much for joining us. Please make sure to like and subscribe. Give us that thumbs up and I’ll see you
guys next time. Happy smoking.