Over the last several years, vaporizing waxy concentrates for inhalation – also known as dabbing – has become one of the most popular ways of using cannabis. Wax concentrates are extremely potent. A single rice-sized dab can provide the same effect that you’d get from a long smoking session – and since dabbing has almost no smell, you can enjoy the experience in complete privacy. If you’re thinking about buying your first dab rig, you definitely aren’t alone because many others are doing exactly the same thing. The only problem is the enormous level of variety – there are so many devices for dabbing that you might feel a little overwhelmed when you try to pick just one.
In this article, we’re going to help you get through the process of buying your first dab rig. There are three main types of devices for dabbing. You can buy an electric dab rig, a manual dab rig or a dab straw. Unlike with some categories of vaping devices, the three types of dab rigs are very different from one another – so it’s particularly crucial for you to choose the right one for your situation. We’ll help you make that decision by comparing dab rigs vs. dab straws in this guide.
First, though, how do today’s electric dab rigs compare to their older manual counterparts?
Wax-based cannabis concentrates have been around for quite a while. Today, they’re available in many dispensaries and vape shops. In the past, though, people used to make their own concentrates – and they needed a way to vaporize the resulting wax. A traditional dab rig is a fairly large contraption made mostly from glass. It has a heating element that’s made from a material such as titanium, stainless steel or quartz. You use it by warming the element manually with a butane torch.
Once the element is hot, you’ll put a dab of wax on it, drop a glass bell over the top of the heating element and inhale through the bell’s mouthpiece. Because heating an element with a butane torch makes it extremely hot, many manual dab rigs have built-in bubblers. With a bubbler, the vapor passes through a column of water before you inhale it. The water cools the vapor, which helps to decrease harshness.
Although manual dab rigs are popular among a certain subset of vapers who prefer doing things the old-fashioned way or simply enjoy admiring high-quality glassware, they’re not best for most people due to the fragility of the glass and the inconvenience of heating the element with a torch. The only real benefit that manual dab rigs provide over electric ones is that they work even when a battery isn’t available.
An electric dab rig is essentially a miniaturized version of a manual dab rig, and the primary difference between the two is that the heating element is powered by a battery instead of a manual torch. The other difference is that with an electric dab rig, you put the wax on the device’s element before heating it up – not after.
Electric dab rigs come in two primary styles. There are desktop units – which provide a bit more power – and portable units, which are shaped more like vape pens and are a bit easier to transport. Both types of electric dab rigs, however, work in much the same way. You put a little wax on the device’s heating coil, and then you place a mouthpiece over the coil. Next, you’ll either turn the coil on in brief pulses to melt the wax, or you’ll use the device’s automatic preheating function if one is available. You’ll then vape until all of the wax is consumed.
Just like with a manual dab rig, the heating element in an electric dab rig can become very hot during use. To alleviate the potential harshness, an electric dab rig will often have a built-in bubbler or an attachment that allows you to connect it to a full-sized water pipe.
A dab straw is much the same in principle as a traditional dab rig – but with a dab straw, the heating element and the mouthpiece are on opposite sides of the device. Instead of loading your wax into a chamber at the top of the device as you would with a dab rig, a dab straw has a heating element that points down. That allows you to turn the element on and touch it directly to your wax while inhaling through the mouthpiece on the other side.
Dab straws may be a little less portable than some other types of dab rigs because you need to transport both the device and the container in which you store your wax or oil. With a dab straw, though, there’s no possibility of leaking because the material that you’re vaping never leaves its container.
No single type of dab rig is right for everyone, and that’s why so many different types of devices are available. We’ll conclude this guide by discussing the main benefits of dab straws and traditional dab rigs, and that’ll help you decide which type of device is right for you.
