Why anyone wouldn't just get the pre-made cones to roll joints is beyond me...
why would you bake a cake from scratch instead of using a something from box? why brew your own beer instead of buying a six-pack? control. what if you want something bigger/smaller/etc than the shape of the cone? those cones seem like a PITA to pack... how much control do you have over density/tightness?
Also, didn't realize I was doing it wrong the whole time, I always added the 'filter' when rolling the joint...seems so much easier to add it at the end
as a youngin that's what we did. putting it in at the end has 2 drawbacks:
1) the filter can be made too small, so it sits really loose in the joint. you take a puff, and it falls out or sticks to your lips. you're then left trying to stuff it back in to a burning joint.
2) when stuffing in the filter at the end, you can sometimes catch a fold in the paper, push that fold down, and end up blocking the joint. this tends to occur when you make the filter too big, so it's barely smaller that the diameter of the joint. the solution is not to make a big filter, i.e. one that will easily fit in and can unfurl once in place, but then you have the issue of it providing poor filtering and/or drawback #1 (see above).
in both cases, you have an annoying problem to solve just when you were looking forward to relaxing and enjoying a J. i learned to put the filter in while rolling from some euros and haven't looked back since. they also taught me about the reverse roll, but that's frankly more effort than i'm willing to put in most days...
