Best Practices for Keeping Glass Clean

When it comes to ensuring the best possible dab experience, cleaning cannot be overlooked. Nothing ruins the sublime flavor of dabbing like a gummed up dab rig full of stale old concentrate. The solution is simple: follow our best practices and you’ll never take a stale hit again.

Prevention Beats Cure

Just like fighting disease, prevention is better than cure. So, before we get into the various methods of cleaning, let’s discuss some preventative practices. This way, you’ll have to do a full, deep clean far less often.

First, never leave vapor inside your glass pipe. Always take the full hit because, otherwise, that vapor will condense back into a solid inside your glass piece, making it dirty with resin quickly. What’s more, get into the habit of cleaning the external surfaces of your rig with something like these Terp Wipes. Glob Mops are also perfect for getting at those hard to reach areas of your nail or banger and tight joints. Wiping things down after every dab session will keep your rig looking clean and fresh, and so you’ll only have to do the next step a few times a year.

Solvent Cleaning

No matter how well you take care of your equipment, eventually it will need a good clean internally. By far the best way to go about this is by using solvent based cleaners. Highly concentrated Isopropyl alcohol is advised. We recommend Resolution Cleaner or iLLCOHOL, which are both specifically formulated for cleaning dab rigs. When it comes to cleaning the inside of your piece, pour the recommended amount of product into your rig and close off the openings by using these Rig Caps. Then, shake it until all the residue is removed and empty the solvent out. To clean nails and bangers, simply soak them separately using the same solution. The last thing is to allow your rig to fully dry before using it again. And voila! You’ll be taking clean hits again in no time.

Abrasion Cleaning

Without the use of solvents, the only way to remove oils and resins is by using abrasion. There are a few DIY hacks out there; chief among them is using a large grain salt solution. Much like the solvent method, the salt solution is placed inside your rig and shaken to remove residue. However, here at Dabnation we do not recommend this method. While it does work, repeatedly using abrasion cleaning will ruin the inside surface of your glass pipe with micro scratches and actually make the problem much worse in the long run. So, stick with a solvent cleaner and your glass rig will last a lot longer.