How to clean a dab rig and banger

So after i broke my latest rig in the ultrasonic cleaner, I went back to my old method of cleaning my rig and nail.

This way of cleaning for me has been so effective. I havent had to buy a banger in about 2 years. I only buy the cheapest of the cheap china quartz and this works on everything. With no tourching, no pitting, and no need to ever replace your quartz with these ultra cheap products. In a second series of this, i will show how you can take a totally chazzed banger and bring it back to like with the aid of cerium oxide. Lets just keep it to keeping our stuff clean for this first installment.

The 2 products i use to keep my stuff clean are Acetone and Dark Crystal Cleaner. I dont get paid or endorsed by any means by these companies. I just found these both work super easy with no scrubbing or no real work. Just drop it in…remove…wipe it down. Rinse with water and use. That simple. You can see how bad my rig got this week with a ton of inexperienced dabbers helped out with my move. My living room rig and banger are trashed. So, i figured it would be a cool little tutorial on “how cheap chinese quartz can last 2 years with probably over a 1/2lb dabbed out of them.”

I realized that Dark Crystal really only works on burnt oil and really takes a gang load of time to coagulate un-burnt oil which it then can be removed. It will do this. It just takes take and this cleaning can really be performed really fast if needed. Acetone does this in second and is super cheap.

So, i first place my banger in acetone just to remove the un-burnt oil which acetone just eats it away. WIthin 2 mins, i flip the bowl to the other end to remove the oil as much as i can from the bowl side of the banger. As you can see after a few mins in the acetone…most of the un-burnt oil is gone and only the caked on burnt oil is left. This is where the dark crystal cleaner works like no other product ive ever seen. I then rinse with tap water to remove the acetone before placing in the dark crystal cleaner. I pour the remaining acetone in the dab rig to clean that out now.

Now i take my banger and place it in my mason jar of recycled dark crystal cleaner. Ive been using this same jar of cleaner for about 2 years as well. I just top of the mason jar as needed and filter out the gunk on the bottom every few months. This stuff is like $13-15 on amazon and i really dont even know if the bottle i have is authentic. From all the stuff i read, the amazon stuff is bootleg but it still works perfectly and ive never had anything work like this. Its almost magic the way it removes carbon deposits from the glass. I will leave the banger in the dark crystal cleaner for anywhere from 1hr to 24 hrs depending on how messed up the bowl is.

I have doubles of all my bangers and rotate them so i really dont have a problem with keeping them in the dark crystal for a few days until i need to rotate them again. When they dont go bad and only cost $13 to begin with. its easy to have doubles and triples of all your chinese bangers. The dab rig with the acetone will just get dumped out and ran under the faucet for like 5 mins.

After i remove from the dark crystal. I just wipe off all the black charred oil with a paper towel…run it under water for a minute or two and use. The dark crystal is all natural and you can drink the stuff but i wouldnt.

You can see from the picture how well this stuff works while my rig aint perfect. It’s pretty good.

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awesome post, thanks for sharing this. I usually use 91% iso and hot water and it takes so much shaking and hot water to get everything off my center down stem. Will definitely try the acetone and dark crystal cleaner

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Soak in sodium hydroxide and ethanol aka base bath or aka pirana solution

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how long do you soak for?..and after watching some videos…this seems pretty dangerous. I understand you dont want to get this on your skin or clothes but accidents happen. This looks like it can potentially harm someone if not done properly.

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Warm ethanol always works a charm for and me. Fill your rig, plug up holes with finger tips, run under warm/hot water (or prewarm your ethanol however you feel is safe) and shake it like a salt shaker. Or add some coarse salt and it’ll help even more. Rinse under hot water

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With acetone. You dont have to shake at all. Nor add salt. Just add room temp acetone and its done in 2-5 mins. Acetone i imagine is cheaper than ethanol…you dont have to warm nor do any work…this is the lazy way.

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I have barrels of ethanol at work. I kinda just grab a jar when I need it… And I don’t like acetone. Plus residuals of ethanol and salt are safer than residuals of acetone, ya?

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if you flush it with hot water for a few minutes, how much acetone residuals could you expect to remain?

Not enough to make a difference, but im no scientist. If your concerned with the acetone residuals, you can always boil your rig after.

I am no dab expert, but wouldn’t the acetone terps be off the hook?

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Doesn’t matter to me. I have a plethora of ethanol at my disposal and it works phenomenal. I still don’t like acetone. Try cleaning with d-Limonene, even stronger and it’s citrusy fresh

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cleaning the rig part is the easy part. I imagine just about any solvent can clean the rig. The banger is another story.

That banger is like 2 years old and gets abused to all hell. I think the part where it will be useful to people is how to clean the banger like that and get it to practically new condition after such usage.

With absolutely no effort.

And im sure this aint the best way to do this…its just so easy and effortless…i thought id share.

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When life gives you lemons, clean with limonene?

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Acetone always worked best for me. Alcohol is expensive and requires too much shaking to sluff off the resin.

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Personally, I wipe after each hit and I have an enail on my banger. I usually break them before they last that long but it’s usually pretty clean. Now, my reclaim buildup. I’ve been thinking about saving it for a looong while and seeing how it goes if I put it through the short path.

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That is my enail banger, and i wipe after each hit too. I only have enails here…cant tell you the last time i used butane for a dab. But im a stoner and leave the cap on sometimes and comeback to my rig like fuck!. Some of my friend do too. Accidents happen when your blasted out of your mind from the second you wake up to the second you go to sleep.

Im sure half of the nastiness from those pics are from my lazy ass plus i have my enail right on the brink of a hot dab. if i dont l clean it in the first 20-30 secs. Its charring the fuck out my oil. I love low temp dabs but i need the hit of a high temp dab to take the daily pain away.

and my fiance lets me get away with a lot of shit around the house…i pick my battles carefully like setting up a short path in the kitchen for 3 days. I dont wanna explain the reclaim oil thing to her. She will just be like dont you have enough oil that you dont need to save the recycled? Oh i can just hear that one going over well…lol.

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I must be in the dark ages still :sweat_smile: I have a banger that came with a rig but haven’t used it due to not having a carb cap for it. I strictly use the HE inifinti TI nail I’ve had for a few years and my enail. Works great, the buildup just scrapes off the nail then i just wipe it out with ISO.

91% ISO is < $1 around here so it’s my go to for cleaning anything canna related

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You have the same style banger I do. I run mine around 650 cause I know the glass dissipates the heat and it’s not a tight contact with the glass either. I usually don’t forget to wipe it but I will forget qtips and put a dab in, walk away to go get qtips and forget about the dab and come back to a burnt banger. When I do that, or when it builds up too much muck, I just put a little bit of water in and let it boil/steam out and it cleans all the nasties away. Keep adding a little bit and wipe it out with a qtip. And it looks brand new. Personal preference, if it’s clean it’s clean.

I have never started keeping the reclaim. It’s just a silly idea to fuck with. Or get a bunch of buddies to put theirs together to get more faster and put it in a 1l spd. So you wouldn’t have to build up that much

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i used to keep the reclaim, shit would make lightweight stoners feel like they were on LSD for the entire day :joy: :joy: :joy:

I just can’t stand the taste of it, so I don’t bother saving it anymore

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Makes great edibles for lightweights too or ones that just want relief and not just being high

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