How To Roll The Perfect Blunt: The Foolproof Guide

Learning how to roll a blunt is a necessary skill if you want to earn and keep your Stoner Pro Card (patent pending).

Rolling a joint will get you accepted— all cannaseurs should acquire that skill — and rolling a cross joint will get you the adoring looks you’ve been craving all your life.

But to truly set yourself apart from the crowd, you need to know how to roll a blunt — and roll it well.

In this article, the all-things-cannabis experts at Honest Marijuana give you a step-by-step guide to help you learn, practice, and master the art and science of rolling a blunt.

Blunt 101

At its most basic, a blunt is marijuana rolled in a smokable wrapper.

But then, so is a joint and a spliff and a Thai stick. What’s more, you should never, ever refer to one as the other unless you want to lose all cred as a cannaenthusiast.

OK, so now let’s focus on what makes a blunt a blunt. We’ll address this question by breaking everything down into five categories:

• Interior
• Exterior
• Color
• Size
• Flavor

Doing so will give you points of reference for when you compare a blunt to a joint to a spliff to a Thai stick.

Interior

The interior of a blunt is strictly marijuana. The strain doesn’t matter one lick — only that it’s 100-percent cannabis.

A blunt mixed with any non-cannabis-based product is not a blunt and should be referred to by a different name.

Exterior

This is what makes a blunt a blunt and sets it apart from all the other smokable marijuana products.

A blunt is a piece of tobacco paper or cleaned-out cigar wrap filled with your choice of marijuana.

Color

Blunts are brown, and that’s all you get. No wacky colors or fun prints. Just the dull brown color of dirt or mud.

Size

Blunts can range in size. But because they use wrap or paper meant for cigars, they are almost always longer and thicker than the typical joint.

While the length doesn’t vary all that much, the thickness can fluctuate depending on the size of the wrapper you’re using and the amount of marijuana you pack inside.

Flavor

The flavor of a blunt depends, in large part, on the type of wrapping you use.

At the most basic, you’ll taste tobacco alongside your strain of choice. Sometimes that’s good. Sometimes it’s bad.

You’ll have to experiment to find the right strain/wrapper combination (or you could just purchase a pre-rolled Honest Blunt — the freshest, most flavorful, longest-burning blunt available).

Now that you can distinguish a blunt from a joint from a stick in the ground, let’s discuss how to roll a blunt.

How To Roll A Blunt

What You’ll Need

• Cigars or cigar wraps
• Your favorite strain of weed
• Grinder
• Small knife or razor blade
• Clean tray to work on
• Water
• Paper towel
• Patience
• Practice

Instructions

1A) Buy A Cigar Wrap

There are two ways to get started learning how to roll a blunt (hence the 1A here and the 1B below): the easy way and the hard way.

The easy way is to buy an empty cigar wrap at your local smoke shop or online — actually, the easiest way is to buy a pre-rolled blunt like the ones we make here at Honest Marijuana.

But there is something to be said about DIY, so you should at least know how to roll a blunt on your own even if you don’t do it that often.

1B) Empty The Tobacco Out Of A Cigar

This takes a little bit of doing, but the results are well worth the effort. Before you start, be sure you have multiple cigars on hand because you will make mistakes and have to start over.

Look and feel for a bump or “vein” that runs the length of the cigar. That’s the glue the manufacturer used to seal the cigar, and that’s where you want to split it.

You can use your fingers to massage and “crack” the cigar, or you can use a small knife (an X-acto or razor blade works well) to slice the cigar in half lengthwise.

Once you’ve gotten the cigar open, empty the tobacco into a bowl if you want to use it again or the garbage if you don’t.

Feel free to cut off the glue ridge with a sharp edge of your choice.

2) Grind Your Weed

If you don’t have a grinder, get one. It makes everything easier.

Grind up 1-1.5 grams of your favorite bud so you have plenty to work with. And don’t get too aggressive with your grinding.

The goal here is a nice, fluffy consistency with plenty of small chunks. This facilitates airflow and makes the burn easier and more enjoyable.

3) Moisten The Cigar Wrap

This step is optional — and with practice, you may not need it anyway — but we want to make it easy for those first-timers out there.

With a damp paper towel, pat the cigar wrap until it feels moist. Be careful not to saturate the cigar wrap with too much liquid (so no dunking it in a bowl of water).

Getting the cigar wrap just a little bit wet will make it easier to work with and prevent it from tearing in places it shouldn’t.

4) Load It Up

Pack the empty cigar wrap with as much weed as possible. This makes the end product better because an underloaded blunt will collapse after you light it.

Pro Tip: Load up the center of the blunt with more weed than the ends. When you roll it, the weed tends to spread and fill out the ends for a nice, even thickness.

5) Roll It Up

This is the part that takes patience and practice.

Roll the cannabis-filled cigar wrap between your fingers and thumbs until you’ve got a closed tube with weed inside. Be gentle so you don’t crack or tear the cigar wrap and ruin the look and feel of your blunt.

When you’ve got the blunt all closed up, moisten the exposed edge from end to end and then seal it down (like licking an envelope).

Pro Tips:

1. Practice your rolling technique with the tobacco from the now-empty cigar and a quarter of a piece of printer paper (4.25” x 5.5” or 10.8 cm x 14 cm for those of you who can handle the metric system).
2. As an alternative to licking the edge before closing, you can seal your blunt with a bit of cannabis oil if you’re feeling really daring and want an extra kick.
3. “Bake” the blunt by running a lighter lengthwise under the seam and around the outside to help seal everything together.

6) Light It Up

After admiring the beauty of the blunt you’ve created, light that sucker up! Toke it for yourself or puff, puff, pass with your friends.

Blunt Benefits

1) Burn Time

The thickness and composition of the wrapper make a blunt burn slower than the more short-lived, flash-in-the-pan joint.

Burn time is a major bonus, especially when smoking in a group. Participants get more tokes because the whole thing lasts longer.

2) A Different Type Of Buzz

The tobacco in the cigar wrap provides a “buzz” similar to the caffeine in coffee.

This pleasurable effect often precedes the cannabis high, makes for a different type of buzz, and is a nice addition to the cannabis experience.

3) A Higher High

Blunts are usually thicker than joints, and many feel that they get higher from a blunt because of the extra cannabis.

Whether this is true in all cases or just a matter of perception is open for debate, but the addition of tobacco may have something to do with it as well.

Get Creative With Your Blunts

We talked about the construction of a blunt at the beginning of this article — inside is cannabis, outside is cigar wrap.

After you’ve got those basics, though, the sky’s the limit on what you can add to make your blunt even better.

To help you customize your blunt, here are some DIY suggestions that take everything to a whole new level.

1. Sprinkle a dash of kief on top of your cannabis before you close to add a kick of flavor and a bump of psychedelic effects to your blunt
2. Moisten your blunt with THC oil and roll the whole thing in kief if you’re really adventurous
3. Roll a Backwoods blunt
4. Add some wax or shatter or budder to the inside of your blunt
5. Roll a cross blunt
6. Make your own moon rock weed and add it to the mix

Get creative and we’re sure you’ll come up with some cool variations of your own.

Will All Blunts Get You High?

This may seem like a trick question because when you first learn how to roll a blunt, you’ll probably be doing it for the sole purpose of taking a psychedelic trip.

Because of that, you may think that all blunts are the same and that all blunts will get you high.

We’re here to inform you, friend, that they won’t. It all depends on what you roll inside.

Yes, the outside is always going to be cigar wrap — if it’s not, you’re smoking something else — but, on the inside, your blunt can be anything you want it to be.

It can be hemp. It can be a high THC strain. It can be a high CBD/low THC strain. As long as you’re rolling with some form of cannabis, a blunt it will be.

That highlights the importance of knowing a bit about the ganja you’ve got on your hands.

If you bought it yourself, you’ll know what it is. But if someone hands you a zip and tells you to show them how to roll a blunt, you’ll want to ask some questions before you take a toke.

Once you’ve got the information you need, here are some general rules for assessing the possibility that the blunt will get you high.

1. If the cannabis you roll in your blunt contains one percent THC or less (commonly known as hemp), you won’t feel a thing.
2. If the cannabis you roll in your blunt contains one percent to five percent THC, you’ll start to feel something (depending on your pot experience).
3. If the cannabis you roll in your blunt contains five percent to 10 percent THC, you’ll probably hear a shape or two.
4. If the cannabis you roll in your blunt contains 10 percent to 15 percent THC, you’ll be well on your way to high town.
5. If the cannabis you roll in your blunt contains anything above 15 percent THC, kiss reality goodbye.
6. If the cannabis you roll in your blunt is a CBD-dominant strain used for medicinal purposes, you will not get high.

So, back to the original question: Will all blunts get you high?

No, they won’t. The lower the THC dose, the less likely you’ll feel anything at all.

What Does A Blunt High Feel Like?

Again, it all depends on what you load in your blunt before you roll it up.

THC

If the strain (or creative extras) are more than one percent THC, you’re going to find yourself experiencing the seven stages of being high.

These include:

1. A dramatic shift in your reality (what we’ve dubbed the “what-the-eff-just-happened moment”)
2. Euphoria and a complete lack of all worries
3. Deep contemplation
4. Paranoia
5. The Munchies
6. Contentment and happiness
7. Fade out and sleep

That’s not to say that you won’t encounter more (or fewer) stages from your blunt high, but these are the most common ones we’ve experienced in our many years dating Mary Jane.

CBD

If the strain you add to your cigar wrap is high-CBD/low-THC, you’ll experience a different set of feelings than you would with a THC strain.

These include:

1. Relaxation
2. Less nausea
3. Increased appetite
4. Less pain and swelling
5. Improved mood
6. Less anxiety
7. More focus
8. Dry mouth

Additionally, CBD is unique in that it can interfere with your liver’s ability to process other drugs (read, prescription drugs). Be sure to talk to your doctor about potential conflicts before you add CBD blunts to your repertoire.

It’s also important to understand that CBD is biphasic, meaning that, at low levels, it provides a certain list of effects, while at high levels, it provides a different list of effects.

If this seems foreign to you, think about alcohol (also biphasic). At low levels, it’s a stimulant. At high levels, it’s a depressant.

CBD doesn’t act exactly the same as alcohol — stimulant on one end, depressant on the other — but the effects will change as the dosage level increases.

Hand-Rolling Vs. Machine-Rolling

The instructions above focus mainly on learning how to roll a blunt the old-fashioned way: by hand.

But there is another way — the blunt-rolling machine.

At Honest Marijuana, we use a large, industrial blunt-rolling machine to produce some of the best blunts in the business.

Our machine is a mass of gears and motors and computer controls that can roll hundreds, if not thousands of perfect blunts every day.

But for those of you who only need one or two blunts a day — and don’t have a big pile of cash burning a hole in your pocket — there are plenty of simple manually-operated blunt-rolling machines on the market.

If you’ve ever seen a joint-rolling machine, the concept is the same for the blunt-rolling machine, only slightly bigger.

Most of these “machines” cost less than ten bucks and make building a blunt so easy that even a complete noob could sit down and figure it out.

That said, we firmly believe that everyone should learn how to roll a blunt by hand.

We tell everyone who asks us for advice and guidance the same thing: learn the skill so that you’ve got the skill in your toking toolbox.

You just never know when you’ll be without your trusty machine or find yourself somewhere that you can’t get a hold of one of HMJ’s delicious blunts.

So why do we even bring up the whole issue of hand-rolling vs. machine-rolling — other than to encourage you to learn the skill for yourself?

Because there’s a whole debate among cannaenthusiasts about which method is better.

Only One Or The Other Will Do

Many feel that hand-rolling is the purest way to build all your joints, blunts, spliffs, and Thai sticks, and that machine-rolling is flying the finger in the face of the cannagods.

Basically, they feel that anything you can smoke is better having been hand-rolled — with the exception of the bong, we guess, which would burn the hell out of your hands if you tried it.

It reminds us of the legend that the best Cuban cigars were hand-rolled on the thighs of virgins.

Really? What does that do?

Absolutely nothing, except perhaps introduce a whole hygiene issue into the discussion.

The hand-rolled angle was just a way to make that particular cigar stand out. It didn’t contribute to the taste or the smoker’s overall enjoyment. The quality of the wrapper and the stuff on the inside did that.

The one concession we will make is that whoever came up with the whole “virgin thigh” thing was a frickin’ genius because we’re still talking about it today.

Which Is Better?

Honestly, cannaboys and cannagirls, it’s entirely up to you.

Asking which is better, hand-rolling or machine-rolling, is like asking which is better, cats or dogs? Toyota or Chevy? Coffee or tea? Pens or pencils? Yoda OG or Blue Dream?

Remember, variety is the spice of life and different strokes for different folks.

It all comes down to whatever makes your smoking experience the most enjoyable.

Because, either way — whether you hand-roll or machine-roll — when all is said and done, you’ve still got a joint in your hand. That’s really all that matters.

We recommend that you learn both methods and then decide for yourself which one to use most often.

Pros And Cons Of Hand-Rolled Vs. Machine-Rolled

Again, we’re not taking sides in the debate over hand-rolled versus machine-rolled anything. We do recommend that you learn how to hand-roll for yourself.

You never know when society is going to break down and you’ll turn into a nomadic stoner hunting for whatever landrace strain you can find.

Think of it as a survival skill!

After you learn how to roll a blunt, you can do whatever makes you feel good and use a machine eight times out of ten.

We don’t care. We just want everyone to know how to do for themselves. To help you decide, here’s a list of pros and cons from each side of the issue.

Hand-Rolled Blunts

Pros

• No need for extra supplies
• Master a new skill
• Roll anywhere

Cons

• Takes practice
• Not the fastest method
• Produces irregular joints

Machine-Rolled Blunts

Pros

• Uniformity
• Easy to use
• Fast

Cons

• Bad rollers produce bad blunts
• Only rolls one size
• Can develop into snobbish behavior

Many of the pros and cons of the hand-rolled versus machine-rolled debate are the same for joints as well.

How To Roll A Blunt: What’s Inside Matters

If you want to roll the best blunt possible, start with a high-quality, sustainably sourced, organically grown cannabis bud like those from Honest Marijuana.

At our Rocky-Mountain-based grow facility, we employ world-class organic growing methodologies to provide cannabis connoisseurs with the purest marijuana experience on the planet.

We grow our plants the way Mother Nature intended: in organic soil without chemicals or pesticides. We even hand-trim our plants so that they’re organic from the ground up.

Not only does that make all your smoking, dabbing, and edible experiences infinitely better, but it also means that the blunts you roll are better, tastier, and well worth the effort.

So don’t settle for an inferior strain. Get the best strains on the planet — the bud cargo  strains — and experience cannabis the way it was meant to be.