Your First Reusable Filter: A Quick Guide to Size and Placement

Most rollers run into reusable filters by accident. A friend hands you a roll with something other than paper sticking out of the end, and it immediately feels like a higher quality roll. A few weeks later you pick one up for yourself, and you have a small pile of questions you didn't think to ask up front. What size do I want. How should it sit in the paper. How do I clean it. And is this really doing anything besides looking good.

Here are the answers, written for the person looking to better understand the art of rolling.

Quick answer

Reusable filters come in three working sizes. 8mm fits a slim roll, 10mm fits a standard everyday roll, and 12mm fits a king-size roll. Start with the 8mm if you're not sure where to begin. Place the filter in the end of the paper, with about half of the filter overlapping the paper. After you add your blend, wrap snug to the filter so airflow stays clean.

Why bother with a filter at all

Paper crutches do a job. They keep your blend from falling out, give your fingers something to anchor on while you twist, and soak up some of the moisture from your lips. They also burn at the end of the roll, leave you smoking ashy paper, and often unfortunately turn into a soggy noodle if you pass them around a circle.

A reusable filter solves all of these problems at once. It is much easier to roll with. It doesn't get soggy. It gives a wider, more consistent draw than a crutch torn off a business card. And because you keep it from session to session, the per-roll cost trends toward zero.

The downsides are real but small. You have to clean it. You have to remember to bring it. And if you drop a glass one on tile, you're shopping again.

Size: slim, standard, king-size

Three sizes do almost all the work in the rolling world right now. They line up with three different roll shapes.

The 8mm filter is for slim rolls. You're rolling a small, tight roll, about the diameter of a cigarette. An 8mm filter keeps the roll slim instead of turning into a small cone. Anything bigger forces the paper out into a tube shape that fights the rest of the roll.

The 10mm filter is the standard. This is the daily-driver size, the default for a regular everyday roll. If you're not sure where to start, start here. The Standard tier 8/10/12mm set is the cheapest way to grab all three sizes at once, so you can roll a few at each size and see which feels right.

The 12mm filter is for king-size rolls, usually paired with a king size wide paper. A 12mm gives the roll real presence at the mouthpiece and makes the airflow keep up with a bigger roll.

Placement: how much should stick out

This is the actual technique question, and it's the one most new filter users get wrong on the first few tries.

The short version: leave at least half the filter outside the paper. Roll the paper around the back end of the filter with about half the filter inside. That gives the paper something to bite onto without burying the filter so deep that the airflow has to fight through bunched-up paper to reach your mouth.

People who roll the whole filter into the roll end up with a draw that feels restricted and a roll that wants to canoe because the mouthpiece is balled up around the entry point. They also have less room inside the roll. People who barely tuck it in at all end up with the filter falling out mid-session. About half of the filter inside is the sweet spot. Once you've rolled four or five times with the same filter, your fingers find the right depth without thinking about it.

If you're a wet-mouthed smoker, leave more of the filter outside the paper. It keeps the roll drier and together longer. You don't want the paper becoming wet, so having the filter stick out a bit helps with that.

Care, briefly

Rinse it after a session, or at least before bed. Let resin build up for a week and you're soaking it overnight in isopropyl alcohol. The simplest routine: shake out the ash, dunk the filter in a small jar of warm water with a drop of dish soap, swirl, dry. A few minutes in the freezer makes stubborn resin flex out cleanly.

Schtips makes a three-size set in 8mm, 10mm, and 12mm out of a heat-resistant material that handles repeated cleaning, and packs into a small glass storage jar. The set covers the slim, standard, and king-size range so you don't have to commit to one size before you've figured out which size you actually roll most often. Reusable, made in Colorado, and durable enough that you can stop thinking about it. If you want a more detailed design, the Premium and Signature tiers carry the more intricate art on the filter.

The purpose of a filter

Pick a size that matches the roll you want. Leave most of the filter outside the paper. Clean it before it gets gnarly. Follow these tips (heh), and your rolls will be much more smooth and enjoyable.

The reason rollers have tilted hard toward reusable filters in the last year is not really a mystery. They are a small upgrade that pays off every time you light up. Once you've rolled with one for a week, going back to a torn business-card crutch feels like a substantial downgrade. Get the size right, get the placement right, and the filter stops being something you think about and starts being something you just roll with.

More questions on care or sizing are answered on the Schtips FAQs page.