Concentrates for Noobs - Q&A

Why not heat your dabber to let the drop fall in your bowl?

I have tried heating the Dabber and it seemed to just boil on the dabber instead of falling off. The stuff I am working with is like a very sticky caramel. I'm finding the prep a dab ahead method and let it refreeze before dropping it into the bowl to be a suitable method for myself. If I had a nail I am sure I could skip this step, but I am perfectly happy with it now.

I still need to figure out the on the go. The toothpick suggestion is a great one. I just would have to figure out how to get the wax into the pen without making a huge mess...maybe a silicone jar is the answer...for now I will practice more at home and not worry about the on the go.

2nd "Live resin" try (sorry I prefer to dont post pictures cause my non-friendly country..):

A lot better than my first batch (it was made from 80% trim/20% flowers), I lightly packed the 20g tube with 60%trim/40%flowers (only the tiny ones) and got a decent amount (0.7-0.8) of the clearer shatter I ever done, taste fabulous also!

This batch convinces me, I love Live Resin!

To resume I made 3 batches(all from the same strain, Killer Kush):

1st: +24h in the freezer, bigger yield, dark color but taste as grass!
2nd: 3h in the freezer, decent yield (as written before), light color and amazing taste (but more flowers here)
3rd: no freezer at all, smaller yield but amazing taste but, surprisingly, darker in color

I plan to turn all my trim+small flowers in Live resin, I would like to freeze some buds for later but since the long freeze time is not really good I hesitate....

All my attempts produces a nice solid shatter, not sappy at all, curious to see how it will change with time.

I saved the blasted buds, dry it and I'll try a 2nd blast, I'll report my results soon.

I am really new to concentrates and so I am not really understanding what the effect is from the consistency. I do not make my own, but live in a state where mj is legal. i have a medical card, but there are no local dispensories, so I resort to recreational shops.

What are your recommendations for good concentrates?

I use a Haze vaporizer and love it. I have trouble getting oil into the cans because it is soooooo sticky. How do you do that in a manner that does not waste this expensive substance? Does freezing or refridgerating help?

How long should it last? I seem to get clouds for several sessions even from just a little. Is it still good until it stops clouding up?

What is a nail? Is that the the thing you use to put it in the can?

Oce again, sorry for asking stupid questions, but this seemed like the right thread to ask them.

Thanks.

Good Concentrates? When buying, try and ask the person in shop about the purging process used for the concentrates they have in stock, to try and gauge how much knowledge the people selling you the product have about concentrates. You will want to find a place that reassuringly knows about their oils and how they are made; this will be your go-to shop for extracts. Solvent based extractions would likely be labeled shatter, wax, budder, etc. and usually lists what solvent was used in extraction: ethanol, butane, isopropyl, co2 etc.

Then you have solventless stuff for sale, such as bubble and rosin, which can also be great finds. The world is your oyster I suppose.

Never used a Haze, but folks have recommended using an ice pack to better handle sticky consistencies. Just put the concentrate jar/parchment paper on top of the ice pack for a few seconds and then a dabber should be able to better handle it.

Speaking of which, a good dabber can really help with loading those concentrates which are tough to handle with fingers. This is likely what you are thinking of as a nail from your posting. Check out this thread:
http://fuckcombustion.com/threads/concentrate-dabbers.5421/
To give you good suggestions/ideas for how to use a dabber. You can put a bit of concentrate on the tip for instance and then heat the rod right above to get it to melt and drip into your haze can for instance.

As far as how long it lasts? Well, that is subjective. I personally chase flavor, and so micro-load expecting 2-4 good rips. Even with a little bit, you will get vapor for quite a while with residuals, but you reach a point of diminishing returns fairly early on imo. Experiment, and find which methods you prefer.

A nail is essentially a torch or electric powered concentrate rig. Usually utilizing a 14 or 18mm male to female joint on a water piece. Usually a nail has a little dish that takes the place of a bowl, and you heat the dish up with a torch or through electricity. You then use a dabber to place concentrate into the dish, which vaporizes the product and is drawn through the water piece with your inhalation A dome or carb cap is also often utilized much the same way a carb or pull stem is used with old school combustion bongs.

These stoners can visually describe what I'm talking about:

Hope this helped a bit.

Thank you for the information you provided. It was helpful. I think I will try to refridgerate or use an ice pack on the oil to see how that works, as you suggest,

Having watched the video, I can tell you that you should try out the Haze portable for efficiency. I use a much smaller dab than they did, resulting in much more vapor abnd good medication. Really efficient, but I am fairly light weight.

Do you have a preference on shatter versus oil or other concentrates?

Well, that was just a random youtube video that I found.

I personally prefer shatter for my needs. I can easily make it for one thing, but the main reason is that it is easily handled. I can break it apart like rock candy, hold it in my hand to soften and flatten it etc. without worrying about it sticking. Also not sure how much tastier it gets, as I am blown away by the flavor already...

That being said, my next major foray is into dry ice bubble, followed by rosin-press, so my opinion might change after that. Just gotta get some time/gear together.

I got the Pollen Master and so far the results aren't as I expected. I tumbled dry popcorn sized buds frozen first, for 30 minutes and only got back 14g from a total of 1 hour of tumbling. That's a yield of 12.5% which is lower than with QWISO which I'm making from it, no idea what the final numbers will be but it's gonna be some pricey shatter. There were still some nuggets left so I'm guessing there's still trichromes inside so I'll try doing a normal run and see what it yields. I need quantity over quality for the dry sift for alcohol extractions, I might try to figure out a way to do hybrid runs and use the Pollen Master to reduce the bulk of the plant matter.

First run using ethanol resulted in a green tinged liquid, super disappointed. May try to get a UV light to improve it or worse case use it for edibles. I shook for 2 minutes and the kief had a lot of green in it apparently. It also had more exposure time while filtering too. The next run I just shook lightly for a minute and then filtered and got a much better color.

I found an old tennis racket protector and re purposed it into a makeshift dry sift screen in about 5 mins with a 1/4" drill bit.

I just picked up this domeless nail from a head shop, but I don't remember what brand they said it was. Does anyone recognize the logo?

I made others attempts about live resin, one from a local strain of sativa gave me a very low yield but an amazing fruity acid taste, and another from an hybrid from an unknow indica designed for indoor and something else (it grows outdoor and look like nothing, very small, bad health and flowers are very stranges), it produced a decent yield also and very special and unknow taste (at least for me).

This strains are not clouds maker for vaping but produce tastier concentrates than the seeds I buy!

So this has been a learning experience but I think I'm starting to figure out my new tek using the Pollen Master, QWET and SlickSheets. Within 6 hours in the cupboard the green tinge disappeared and turned into a nice golden colour. Yields from the first two batches (separate strains) was 5g shatter from 14g of kief and 7g from 18g. Only did a single wash of under 3 minutes and then into the buchner, wasn't sure if a 2nd wash was worth the hassle. I re-froze and crushed up the buds I had left and ran it for a few hours with 10 nickels inside this time and got another 34g of kief so my final yield shouldn't be too bad in the end. It's very dirty kief but the main point for me is to reduce the amount of product I have to work with to reduce evap time and make ethanol more affordable. Also washing buds can get a bit messy which is not ideal when trying to reduce contamination.

The first batch was an un-named kush, likely Afghani, bit of an earthy smell but nothing special. The finished shatter on the other hand had a very strong smell to it and a complex spicy taste to it, hard to describe. I think it was my best tasting and smelling shatter so far. I found it to be a lot smoother than my QWISO which I'm thinking may be due to using the ethanol over ISO.

The SlickSheets are interesting to work with and I really wish I had moved to them sooner. I make a "boat" for the alcohol solution inside my flat vacuum chamber and just run the heater. Once the alcohol has evaporated, I carefully pull a vacuum until it's more tacky. Then I take it out and place on an ice pack briefly and start folding it over, pressing it, freezing again and ripping away. I do this until it's the size and shape I want and then I purge some more before flipping it onto another smaller sheet to finish it. The ice pack makes it super easy, less than 30 seconds on it and the top sheet should peel right off. Benefits compared to scraping are next to no losses since there's no transfer between mediums and less auto-buddering during purge since there are no nucleation points created due to scraping. First batch came out crystal clear and the second batch is promising so far.

I'll try to get some pics up soon, though it's kind of dark gold so it's hard to really see the clarity of it as you can in person.

Basically I did not have any wax experience until last week. I didn't know about handling it at all, but learned quick that it is very sticky and soon found out what a dabber was. I now have a Santa Cruz Shredder Cookie Cutter coming to me for use with my winterized wax and shatter, both of which I am storing in the fridge. I figure all I need to learn how to do now is get a nice small dab off for my Haze can. Any advice on how to use my dabber proper is well appreciated.

I have maybe a bit more specific of a question, unsure where to post it but this seems like a great place.

I live in a nonmed state, but through the grapevine, I hear my meds are grown/processed out in A legal state. I have no way of verifying, but everything is supposed to be pretty kosher.

My wax, is BHO, and it dabs very well. Tastes good, great hit, etc. off of a rig.

I recently got a Cloud Evo, and utilized their nail attachments. Obviously this is much lower temp then a TI nail, but they do get hot. The nail attachments work great if I put a little bit in, or just take it all in one hit like I'm dabbing.

But, sometimes; basically every dab out of the Evo has had this happen (the amount is questionable) I'll get one good waxy tasting hit followed by a bunch of gross tasting vapor/smoke. Tastes like process materials lol smells weird, tastes weirder.

If I load a little dab in the Evo, this doesn't happen as much. Never have experienced it with a dabber. So, the ? I have is, what is this stuff and how can I stop it fully? Is the stuff I'm not clearing just burning off in the Evo and producing this smell? Is the wax not purged well? Is this all the vapor left over typical (that tastes bad?) Is the Evo just sapping all the great taste in hit 1 and then the remains are just gonna taste bad? I'm very unfamiliar in all of this, just wanted some insight

For what it's worth I'm not too concerned that it's bad for me...when I use the rig this doesn't happen so I'm inclined to believe their ok. Just curious as to why and if it's normal or not.

HellsWindStaff said:

I have maybe a bit more specific of a question, unsure where to post it but this seems like a great place.

I live in a nonmed state, but through the grapevine, I hear my meds are grown/processed out in A legal state. I have no way of verifying, but everything is supposed to be pretty kosher.

My wax, is BHO, and it dabs very well. Tastes good, great hit, etc. off of a rig.

I recently got a Cloud Evo, and utilized their nail attachments. Obviously this is much lower temp then a TI nail, but they do get hot. The nail attachments work great if I put a little bit in, or just take it all in one hit like I'm dabbing.

But, sometimes; basically every dab out of the Evo has had this happen (the amount is questionable) I'll get one good waxy tasting hit followed by a bunch of gross tasting vapor/smoke. Tastes like process materials lol smells weird, tastes weirder.

If I load a little dab in the Evo, this doesn't happen as much. Never have experienced it with a dabber. So, the ? I have is, what is this stuff and how can I stop it fully? Is the stuff I'm not clearing just burning off in the Evo and producing this smell? Is the wax not purged well? Is this all the vapor left over typical (that tastes bad?) Is the Evo just sapping all the great taste in hit 1 and then the remains are just gonna taste bad? I'm very unfamiliar in all of this, just wanted some insight

For what it's worth I'm not too concerned that it's bad for me...when I use the rig this doesn't happen so I'm inclined to believe their ok. Just curious as to why and if it's normal or not.

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For Evo related stuff, the VapeXhale thread is usually a good bet and I believe the topic's been covered there before. The gross taste is likely from the waxes and lipids or any other contaminants in the oil and should be normal in most cases. To get better tasting vapor, turn your unit on and set it to between 9 and 12 o'clock, when it goes green drop in the VXN and start pulling slowly. When the light turns red, cut the power and keep hitting it until the vapor dissipates and then turn it on and up for normal cleaning after. As a bonus it should keep your VXN's cleaner too.

Mr. Gweilo 420 said:

. I would love to see a thread called @ataxian 's surf tales You ever surfed Mavericks?

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I have had a good life for sure!

I have a disease call SCA that is late on set.

Medicating with cannabis is effective and natural.

Concentrates are the scrapes of the cannabis harvest.

If you make shatter well your ahead of the game.

Today it's becoming cheaper and cheaper.
It's not worth making any more?

I just buy it now days.

Making it perfect is tricky.

2016 we could have complete legalization so the price will drop even further.
My family is involved in the surfing world in a big way.
I watch from one of our boats from the channel of a reef break.

Many of my friends surf Cortes Banks, Todos Santos, Mavericks, Jaws, Dungeons and a few other spots around the planet.


Thanksgiving it's North Shore Action!

I know I sound cynical about cannabis however this is why:

Cannabis is a weed!
To make it into a money making industry is wrong!
Cannabis is easy to grow.
You don't need anything special to grow it?

If you live north inside growing is important.

In sub tropical climate growing outside is amazing!

When I say cannabis is the "HOLY GRAIL" I mean it!

Newb Question, Should I purchase a nectar collector or a Dab Rig? Any input is valued. Thanks

Not really familiar with the nectar collector's personally, but I don't like their form function/look at all which is why I never grabbed one. I don't like the idea of heating up the end and getting a separate dish to put my dab on, as all my dabs are in one container. So I'd say get a rig.

Has anyone heard of a brand called Linx Vapor? I saw an ad for their wax vaporizer and it looks pretty cool.

Modnote: Astroturfing is against the rules and very uncool. Not a good way to introduce yourself into this community.

HellsWindStaff said:

Not really familiar with the nectar collector's personally, but I don't like their form function/look at all which is why I never grabbed one. I don't like the idea of heating up the end and getting a separate dish to put my dab on, as all my dabs are in one container. So I'd say get a rig.

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I second this. It looks like they would be fun for fast dabs (The ones I've seen have a thin Ti tip, so less heat up time), but i just don't see the advantage of one other than size over a rig. I suppose it does offer an easy way to get some quick reclaim, most look easy to clean.

Anyone else got some input on a nectar collector over a rig?

I use a nectar collector very often. Basically feel it hit's about as hard as a rig, although it's probably a little harder to get a huge dab in comparison, but only in terms of technique imo. You have to angle the tip a little so there is a gap for the material to pass under, or you risk vaporizing the dab on the outside of the straw and wasting it. And because it is a thin nail, it cools much quicker, and you don't have as much time as with a rig.

But...it's really very useful for that quick 30 second from cold start to full lungs dab experience, and when you have the technique down, it will hit you just as hard as a rig. At like $20-25 for one from dhgate, every dab enthusiast should give it a shot!

Also very very easy to get at reclaim with nectar collector, and I find it the tastiest way as well.

Question:

Why ti nail hits are smoother than quartz nail hits (for me) while quartz taste a bit better (but quartz make me cough a lot more)?

I use 490-510 with quartz and 530-560 with Ti....

Hello everyone, I am a noobie and have questions! I tried reading through this forum but couldnt find anything on it.

When shatter is vaporized, does it leave oil residue in its travels? Meaning I have seen rigs and they have oil residue from the start almost to the end, the question revolves around the shatter vapor going into the lungs and possibly leave residue behind, especially when not using a water piece, ex. Pen or desktop vape, no water.

I have searched the internet as well for this and I know its all mostly new stuff or refined but theres not much info on it, so I wanted to hear personal opinions.

This also goes around that I have read about people using larger dabs than I mostly do and their breathing becomes forced and more difficult, could this be due to this?

Im thinking more of the longterm effects. Possibly?

I have a few questions. I have access to co2 extracted sap. Do I need to decarb this in order to blend it in with oil/butter to male edibles? the first time I opened the silicon container it got a bit messy and I had some on my fingers, not to waste it, naturally I ate the sap. It did get me somewhat buzzed.

If I do need to decarb, how do I go about it? I have no need to vape it and collect reclaim, as I dont really like the high from vaping it and thought that edibles would get me more of a body high than just a head high that comes from vaping the oil. Thanks in advance.

TheMadDabber said:

When shatter is vaporized, does it leave oil residue in its travels? Meaning I have seen rigs and they have oil residue from the start almost to the end, the question revolves around the shatter vapor going into the lungs and possibly leave residue behind, especially when not using a water piece, ex. Pen or desktop vape, no water.

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... i would only assume yes. if you get residue on your glass your most likely getting the same in your lungs