I never made a pipe, but I did make a good bong bowl out of stuff from the hardware store
Mine didn’t look quite like that, but I made one back in the 70s. It had a genuine bowl, not an improvised one. I used it for smoking old school hash (Lebanese, Moroccan, etc.). Where I lived weed was uncommon but hash was not.
We pooled our money together and took a trip to Menards when I was 15 to make one.
I remember going to another hardware store first and the employee told us to leave, but the guy at Menards gave us advice - telling us to use brass instead of copper
Thank god for Menards!
Mine was all brass. I got the parts from a “general” store run by a hippie couple. They sold incense, roling papers, that sort of legal stuff. If they got to know you they’d show you the under-the-counter bongs. The pipe parts were out in the open, though. I can still the remember the smell in that place, it was… groovy.
I put one of these together for a coworker from the supplies in the maintenance shop. Personally I was already a vapor snob so I never tried it, but he reported that it worked well.
I definitely didn’t take advantage of having a key to the shop during off shifts. 
Never built one but blazed it many times. Thank goodness for Vapes. 
The local Ace hardware where I grew up used to have the individual pieces and sink screens in bins next to each other in the plumbing aisle so you could easily build them before paying 
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My builds from my youth were always simple carving a bowl in a fat stick and drilling a channel down the center. I was always looking for the perfect piece of wood for this. Once enough resin built up they worked quite well.
Did anyone else carry little sections of tubing just wide enough to hold a few mm of cigarette as a bowl, to turn bottles into shotgun pipes ???
Shotguns (or shotties) were so popular locally at one point you could just walk into the hardware store and ask them for 6" or so of shotgun pipe and they’d know exactly what you wanted lol
Make one in the 70’s, no. 
Few dedicated head shops, but the local record store had a section in back of “Pot paraphernalia,” an expression of the time. A chamber pipe was thought best, as you could hide a roach or hash in it. Along with a Bic, you were good. Bought a bong and hoisted it up via rope to my room.
So when my first DHV sucked (Arizer XQ2, sorry) I got another chamber pipe off ebay. 
Spectacular for nostalgia… Hits hot and harsh, next to today’s Frolic. I keep two tackleboxes for herb stuff, one for smoking, one with vape parts. 
The smoking box reeks. Yuck. Ash, tar, ick. I try not to open it.
No Jetsons flying car yet, but. We have drive-through weed, if you’re sick enough.
CR
Still waiting for my damn flying car! They promised us we’d have them! Now I want one with a UB built into the dash
Shit, now I’m designing the layout in my head. Spaces for all kinds of vapes, airtight glove compartment for stash and parts/cleaning, ih where the cig lighter would go… This is a real sickness y’all have infected me with 