How to clean vape parts and reclaim resin

vtac

vapor junkie
Staff member
In addition to containing sticky oils, vapor is warmer than most parts in the air path so condensation occurs. After repeated use you'll notice a golden resin building up. There are a few ways to reclaim it.

wand-resin.jpg

Cannabis Vapor Condensate

Alcohol dissolves the resin which can then be used in a tincture or evaporated leaving the resin to vape.

If you plan on making a tincture, use alcohol safe for human consumption. Everclear, vodka, or another high proof distilled beverage.

If you plan on evaporating, use Isopropyl alcohol as it should evaporate the most cleanly. 99 or 50%, it doesn't really matter, higher percentages will work faster, the remaining percentage should be water only. Read the label. Grain alcohol contains trace amounts of sugar which can end up in your resin. Other alcohols contain bittering agents and nasty shit you don't want in your resin. See below for evaporation methods.

Scraping is an easy method that can work well with some heavily coated pieces. Use a suitable tool such as a bamboo skewer or bent paperclip. Chilling the piece for 30 minutes in a freezer prior to scraping helps loosen the resin. Video

Fats such as butter and cooking oil can be heated and used to melt the resin for use in edibles.

Heating glass parts gently with a torch works well for oil vapes. Video

How to clean specific parts

Various glass parts: Extreme, Vapolution, etc.

Soak the parts in a tall glass or ziplock bag until the resin is dissolved, scrape with cotton swab etc., if necessary. Cover the glass with plastic wrap to prevent evaporation while soaking.

Wands: SSV, DB, VW, etc.

I like this method because it's fast.
  • Cover the bottom of the wand tightly with plastic wrap and rubber band or hold it with your finger
  • Scrape any thick spots around the bowl with the blunt end of a bamboo skewer
  • Fill wand half way with iso and cover top with plastic wrap and rubber band
  • Shake the hell out of it until it starts to look clean
  • See Evaporation below
Frickr has an easy method for cleaning wands using an air pump.

PD tubes
You can use the supplied purple cleaning bottles to soak the tubes. Personally I like to use the wand cleaning technique described above. An eye dropper is perfect for filling the tube, just hold both ends with your finger and thumb and shake. Rinse with hot water.

Whip tubing
Personally I don't use alcohol on whip tubing because of the porousness; it can affect the tubing causing it to smell like alcohol and there's a possibility of plasticizers leeching into the alcohol if you plan on reclaiming the resin. You can get a long screw with a head slightly larger than the inside diameter of your tubing and push it through to squeegee out the resin. Easier if you cut the tubing into smaller sections. Check out Spiral's thread on this.

Evaporation
  • Pour the liquid through a filter (optional but will result in a cleaner product) into a pyrex pie plate
  • Place the pie plate on a pot filled with hot water to speed evaporation DO THIS OUTSIDE, THE FUMES ARE TOXIC AND FLAMMABLE
  • Once the alcohol has fully evaporated, scrape up the resin with a razor blade






Optionally you can gather the resin on a pin and gently heat it with a torch. Let it drip into a dish and stir. This should help remove any traces of remaining alcohol.








Any resin left in the plate after scraping can be salvaged by rubbing with butter for a snack.







Freshly scraped straight from the wand..

How to vape the resin
Topic for another thread.
 

jklasd

Well-Known Member
vtac im at work so cant read this but i know this thread will be very important to this forum. good job sir :)
EDIT: very nice read vtac, finally a good thread about this. gonna be a popular thread for sure.
 

owin

Well-Known Member
Going to have to try this next time I clean my wands. Thanks vtac.
 
owin,

SpiralArchitect

? & beyond
Excellent write-up V! :D


I just wanted to add that creating enough residue for a decent yield of good hash isn't something that will happen fast. Unless your vaping copious amounts a day, let it get nice and thick before going through the arduous (but rewarding) process of reclaiming the resin. I usually wait until I can't see through the glass wall.
2jczmkk.jpg

Large:




More information:
Previous discussion on FC
Vtac's work, again... :D


Wandhash discussion on Marijuana.com
 

vtac

vapor junkie
Staff member
Updated OP. If you have anything good to add don't be shy.
 
vtac,

jklasd

Well-Known Member
can we stickey this? it would be awesome to have the information based threads stickied for quick research. information such as this gets losts rather quickly, and the search, although the title for THIS thread is pretty easy to find, is sometimes difficult.
 
jklasd,

Samsquanch

Vapor Astronaut
Nice info vtac , myself , I use a small diameter wand exclusively for the reason of collecting this vapo gold , when the wand get to the point where the goo :brow: is about to roll into the tubing , I sit the small end of the whip into a 5 gram glass vile , then I just run it into the vile by heating the whip from the bowl slowly down to the end , I personally find that with this method , by not entirely removing all the resin from using heat rather than cleaning with iso to clean new glass , encourages a faster collection of resin , as well as a tastier hit , I also gotta agree with owen , this is good shit , better than any oil I have ever come across , happy vaping :D
 

ErbsMan

Well-Known Member
Yeah,
Ive done the exagt same thing with my AVB, running it through a coffee filter,
and wow.
Got a small ball of the most potent hash ive ever smoked.
This stuff just doesnt stop vaping either!
First time try a success, very pleased :ko:.
Is it just me or does it taste like honey?
 

stuartambient

Well-Known Member
ErbsMan said:
Yeah,
Ive done the exagt same thing with my AVB, running it through a coffee filter,
and wow.
Got a small ball of the most potent hash ive ever smoked.
This stuff just doesnt stop vaping either!
First time try a success, very pleased :ko:.
Is it just me or does it taste like honey?
Not sure , what is it you've done with your ABV that is the exact thing ?
 
stuartambient,
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The_Other_Shoe

What's Going On?
Sunday, I ran my friends whip for him with my 99% iso and I ran probably an ounce of ABV for him with some more, he let it sit out overnight next to the fan to evap, next day he said he would give me some since I helped collect it. So today (weds), I went over to pick up my couple grams as usual and to get a little of that oil. So I drop him off after school, and he comes running out, and apparently, his grandmother cleaned his room for him and tossed the oil thinking it was trash, I blame him though, he had the oil wrapped up in a Now and Later wrapper, of course it looks like trash. No big deal as I am about to clean out my PD tubes, one of the reasons I had the iso on me when I was over there Sunday. Sigh, the difficulties of still living at home (I'm not trying to elicit any sympathy just saying what happened, sorry for it coming off in a complaining tone if it does).
 
The_Other_Shoe,

stuartambient

Well-Known Member
I did a bit of scraping last night. Things were apparently clogged up or at least more noticeable opening after I did the scraping. I think at some point my screen was not in right because some material found it's way down into the wand and tubing.
I loosened something like .5/g of black and oil covered clumps. :o
I formed it into a rectangle cube and then sliced off a tiny piece. I tried it in both a glass piece, and the vape. For me it must be vaped because it is extremely harsh on the throat. It seems though either way, a little piece will go on forever. How crazy is that :peace:

SA
 
stuartambient,

hereatlast

Well-Known Member
I've been getting very resiny clumps right behind my elbow (v3 Extreme). Not sure if this is technically the wandhash everyone talks about (the rest of my glass is getting that purdy reddish/amber color :ko: ) but I generally scrape it out every couple days and dump it out, can't wait to run iso through all this stuff.
 

stuartambient

Well-Known Member
hereatlast said:
I've been getting very resiny clumps right behind my elbow (v3 Extreme). Not sure if this is technically the wandhash everyone talks about (the rest of my glass is getting that purdy reddish/amber color :ko: ) but I generally scrape it out every couple days and dump it out, can't wait to run iso through all this stuff.
On the DBV hands free, there is some really dark brown and lighter blond oils all up and down the wand.
But the real well seems to be sitting in the tubing right at the bottom of the wand and passed it. It's pretty dark :ninja: Also highly grounded powdery coating of weed throughout.
 
stuartambient,

mflores213

Well-Known Member
hey guys quick question didn't know if to post a new thread so ill just post here...


So I QWISO my vape poo/and mz stems(first time trying). Let the iso evap. Now I was wondering how do I scrape with razor? do i scrape AS IS or do I freeze it a lil then scrape it with razor?

........


Nvm works like a champ
 
mflores213,

jackstraw62

Low temp deadhead vaporist
I use a bong and I am an old hash maker . true test for a solvent is anything left after evaporation of solvent is not good. I get the stem warm with my gun and push the goo out with a aluminum tent stake.mix with some herb or abv and have fun. Don't forget the screens I reverse them and vape with no herb on them and it was thick.of course they were pretty sticky. I will probably use 91% iso on my glass bong and down-stem. my iso-2 used 100% iso for extraction. (either bought or distilled) of course they used a hot water extraction to remove tars and terps which the use of low heat minimizes :2c: :cool:
 
jackstraw62,

jeffp

psychonaut/retired
great thread and thanks.
i think for me for safety reasons i'd prefer to go the tincture route.
can someone elaborate on the specific steps required to do this right?
 
jeffp,

AgentGraves007

Well-Known Member
an observation about wand hash: based on the fact that very little debris or resin seems to be accumulating in the part of the whip closest to the mouthpiece (of my da buddha/DBV), and tons of particles are in the wand, and then a little bit in the whip next to the wand, I assume that the majority of the wand hash is NOT THC/CB* vapor resin. This is because, I assume that if it were, why wouldn't there be more accumulation in the whip near the mouthpiece, since surely the THC/CB* vapor is flowing through that part of the whip as well (otherwise the effects wouldn't be felt). Does this argument make sense?
 
AgentGraves007,

max

Out to lunch
What's in the wand and tubing consists of both particulates that get through the screen, and condensed vapor. Condensation occurs when vapor hits a cooler surface. The wand gets more accumulation simply because the vapor hits it first. As the wand gets coated with sticky condensed vapor, any particulates coming through will stay in the wand if they make contact. The whole whip is like a multi stage filter (although that's not its purpose). Like any such device, more stuff will be trapped in the first stage and less in the last. Does my answer make sense?
 

AgentGraves007

Well-Known Member
yep, makes perfect sense, altough the end of the whip near my mouthpiece should be MUCH cooler than the end near the wand, right? That's b/c the heat is closest to the wand end. So based on the coolness factor alone, there should be more resin, but there's not. so it's like you say, filtering it somehow, which i don't really understand how, since the vapor coming through the mouthpiece-end of the whip is obviously full of thc vapor, otherwise i wouldn't get baked....so that leads me to think that most of the buildup is probably not condensed thc vapor. do you see what i'm saying? .e., i think that my argument would force me to conclude that the reason wand hash is so good is MOSTLY b/c of actual particulates/trichomes that come off the packed bud, rather than thc from the condensed vapor. so i'm not saying wand hash isn't great, but i guess i'm just nitpicking about what exactly we are harvesting. Or, for some reason the condensation is just much moreso near the wand end, but why is that, since the vapor travels through the whole whip, and the whip is surely cooler near the mouthpiece than near the wand?
 
AgentGraves007,
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hereatlast

Well-Known Member
This might be an explanation: the condensation occurs when the warm vapor touches the cooler glass surface, by the time the vapor has reached your mouthpiece it has cooled down considerably.

I've definitely got debris in my elbow and I'm kinda astonished it makes it through the fairly tight screen. Sometimes you can see a green piece, meaning plant matter I guess? I can't wait to harvest...


Does anyone have experience soaking Tygon 3350 in ISO? I wouldn't be using the tube again I'm just wondering if its worth it/safe with ISO or if the Silicone will leech into the end-product. :uhoh:
 
hereatlast,

AgentGraves007

Well-Known Member
yes, i have to assume then that the vapor just cools down a lot as it travels down the wand. it's very good, really, that it only seems to really condense on a little bit of the wand. otherwise, we'd proabbly be better off with shorter whips. i was wondering what would happen if you, say, halved the length of the standard DBV whip?
 
AgentGraves007,

technate

Well-Known Member
I find a straw works well for cleaning my wand. I usually get a nice eraser tip amount each time.
 
technate,
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