Bloc’s Step-by-Step Guide to Rolling Up: Part 1: How to Roll a Joint

WHAT ARE JOINTS AND WHAT ARE BLUNTS?

The first thing we need to understand is the difference between a joint and blunt. The “joint” - also known in slang terms as “doobie,” “jay,” “jawn,” “spliff,” or “paper plane,” - is the classic, traditional marijuana cigarette that appears twisted up in thin, translucent white or brown rolling paper. A blunt, rather, is cannabis rolled with tobacco paper or even placed inside a hollowed-out cigar. Blunts are usually larger, thicker, and more noticeable thanks to their dark outer layer.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED:

• ½ gram of quality cannabis flower, preferably Crops brand
• Rolling papers (normal or 11/4 size)
• Cannabis grinder
• Rolling tray

First thing’s first, set up your rolling tray. This could be something simple from around the house like a frisbee or a plate, or grab a custom rolling tray from your local headshop if you want to get fancy with it. The purpose of the tray is to stage the joint or blunt rolling ritual so that you don’t spill cannabis biproduct everywhere.

You’ll then need to take those beautiful green Crops buds and grind them into shake, which is a term for pieces of ground up cannabis flower. This can be done by hand, but we don’t recommend it because it can be a very sticky, messy process. Invest in a cannabis grinder, which is a small, handheld tool that will help break the flower up for you. On Amazon, these range in price from $29.99, such as the 9to5 Grinder, while more designer brands like the popular Santa Cruz Shredder are priced as high as $84.99.

Once you have your grinder in hand, insert the flower and break it down to a smooth ground. Dispose of any leftover stems and seeds if you spot them.

The next thing you want to do is to create a tip. There are products on the market, such as RAW brand rolling papers which include the tips pre-installed, which cut out a lot of the traditional steps to rolling up yourself. You can also purchase a reusable glass tip or disposable tips, but let’s assume you don’t have one.

The purpose of the tip – sometimes called a crutch – is create a barrier between the shake flower and your mouth, so that you don’t accidentally ingest any of it. Additionally, the tip will create a stopgap marking the end of the joint, which will help avoiding scalding your mouth as you burn and inhale the smoke.

To create a tip, take a piece of thin cardboard – not too thick - like an index card or a postcard. We recommend folding the cardboard on top of itself, accordion-style, back-and-forth about four or five times. Then roll up the excess paper around it into a small cylinder.
The end-product tip should be about an inch tall.

Some prefer to skip this step entirely, but we treat it as an essential one.

Now on to the rolling papers. Any brand, such as Zig Zag will work. Open your rolling paper on your tray and fill it with ground cannabis flower. This can be about a half-gram or a gram of flower, depending on the size of your paper and how large you’d like the joint to be. Rest your tip at one of the ends of the paper, just peeking our barely. Evenly distribute the flower across the paper in a straight line.

“Spread the weed out evenly, so there is not impregnation of the joint,” says Cypress Hill’s B-Real in a 2008 BREAL.TV video, “A pregnant joint is obviously when you’ve got a big old lump in the middle and the sides are all skinny.”

So, avoid that.

Now it’s time to roll. The trick here is to roll the joint tightly by pinching the paper with your fingers until it’s in a cylinder shape. You can tuck one end under the shake to really pack it in. In the pre-COVID world, we used to seal it up by licking the exposed top of the paper like it was an envelope and then folding it over. You might feel differently about doing it that way now, but alas.

Give the flower one last packing in on the exposed end, using a pen or any long, thin object. Finally, hold the joint by the tip and twist the open end to close the deal.

Seth Rogan suggests a tactic to take it even a step further.

“You might want to do what me and my friends call ‘baptizing your joint,’ and that is taking your joint and kinda covering it in your spit,” he explains in a 2016 episode of Merry Jane’s “How We Roll,” before putting the whole thing in his mouth and sucking on it once like a candy cane.
“It’s gross, but it makes the joint burn a little slower, which is a little better.”

Again, the world was very different pre-pandemic.