How To Smoke Wax Without A Rig: Everything You Need To Know

If you’re wondering how to smoke wax without a dab rig, you’re not alone. After discovering marijuana wax, the first question most people ask is, “How in the heck do I use this stuff?”

That’s where this article comes in.

We’ll tell you how to smoke wax using simple and accessible methods that even the newest cannaenthusiast is familiar with.

First, though, let’s discuss another pressing question: what is wax?

What Is Weed Wax?

Weed wax — a.k.a. cannabis wax, marijuana wax, or just wax — is a concentrate (or extract) with a much higher THC- or CBD-percentage than regular bud.

Wax is called wax because, in its final form, it looks like earwax (or, more appetizingly, solid coconut oil or thick honey).

Wax isn’t the only concentrate that big cannabis produces. Other, similar products include:

• Shatter
• Budder
• Crumble
• Honeycomb
• And others…

Think of these products as wax siblings: there’s very little chemical variety, and they all just look a bit different from one another.

Of these options, wax is probably the preferred form for beginners. It’s easier to produce, easier to handle, easier to measure, and easier to use.

We’re not saying you should avoid shatter, budder, and crumble at all costs — you may like them better than wax. We’re just saying we’d probably choose wax first because of the reasons mentioned above.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s discuss how to smoke wax without a rig.

How To Smoke Wax Without A Rig

How To Smoke Wax With A Bong

If you’re wondering how to smoke wax without a dab rig, look no further than a similar piece of equipment: the bong.

Bongs and dab rigs are pretty much the same thing except that the dab rig has a nail and the bong doesn’t.

So instead of heating up the nail of your dab rig before taking your first toke, you’ll need to pack the bowl of your bong in a very special way.

Here’s how to smoke wax with a bong:

1. Find one or two nugs in your stash (or break them off a larger bud) that are slightly larger than the diameter of the downstem and insert them into the bowl.
2. Add a few small pieces of wax.
3. Gather another nugget of marijuana from your stash, remove any seeds and stems and, while holding it over the bowl, rip it into small pieces with your fingers. The finer you make it the easier it is to pack in the bowl and the better it will burn. Alternatively, you can use a grinder to shred your cannabis before packing it on top of your wax.
4. Fill the bowl the rest of the way with shredded marijuana.
5. Light up, puff away, and pass the bong around.

When you pack the bowl with wax in the middle, you create an oven-like effect where the wax vaporizes thanks to the burning ganja around it (e.g., at lower temperatures).

These lower temperatures preserve a larger percentage of the cannabinoids, allowing you to inhale more of the good stuff with a single breath.

How To Smoke Wax With A Joint, Blunt, Or Spliff

Thankfully, the dab rig isn’t the only way to have fun with cannabis concentrates — there are other ways to learn how to smoke wax.

Aside from the bong, one of the easiest, most familiar, and most accessible methods is to roll a bit of wax in your joint, blunt, or spliff.

This works well if you’re rolling your own product, but, with a little effort, you can also add wax to pre-rolled blunts and joints.

If you’re rolling a joint or blunt (or even a cross joint) from scratch, cut three or four small pieces of wax off the larger wad and distribute them evenly down the length of your joint before closing.

If you’ve purchased a product from a local dispensary and want to add a concentrate kick to the mix, you’ll have to deconstruct the joint, blunt, or spliff, add the wax, and then reroll everything together in order to smoke it.

It’s kind of a pain to do this because you first have to deconstruct the product before reconstructing it. But adding wax to a pre-rolled joint, blunt, or spliff is sometimes quicker and less stressful.

After adding the concentrate, you can rely on the “memory” of the wrapper to roll up much quicker instead of struggling again and again to form the flat sheet into something resembling a tube.

The manufacturer has done all the hard work for you (i.e., rolling it the first time).

How To Smoke Wax With A Vape Pen

Some vape pens also have the capability to vaporize wax, but be sure to read the specs before you buy.

Most portable vaporizers only burn vape juice or accept specific pre-filled cartridges.

The more expensive ones allow you to increase or decrease the heat in order to vaporize different types of concentrates, including shatter, wax, budder, crumble, and honeycomb.

These types of vape pens are complicated — there are multiple settings you have to tweak before you can smoke — have a steep learning curve, and require lots of practice to master.

Vape pens are certainly an option, but learning how to smoke wax in a joint, blunt, spliff, or bong is a better use of your valuable time.

The Science Behind Wax

As we talked about at the beginning of this article, cannabis concentrates come in many forms, including shatter, wax, honeycomb, crumble, budder, and others.

Though they each have a unique look, feel, consistency, and ease-of-use, they’re all concentrates that have roughly the same THC or CBD potency.

They’re all primarily dabbed — though we’ve given you some other novel ways to use it — and they all provide a powerful, long-lasting high.

The real difference lies in their molecular arrangement.

Fair warning: we’re going to be describing chemical processes in the next few paragraphs, but we’re going to simplify it considerably using a familiar children’s toy. Legos! Okay, we admit that we have a considerable Lego collection of our own, but that’s beside the point.

Legos make a great analogy for atoms and molecules, so we’re going to use that fact to our — and your — advantage. Here’s how.

The Inside Story

The process of regular butane extraction — which is how most commercially-sold concentrates are made — results in an amber liquid that manufacturers can then modify (as in agitate or heat a bit differently) to produce anything from shatter to wax and everything in between.

We’ll talk about butane extraction in detail later on in this article. But first, let’s look at what’s going on inside shatter and then compare that to what’s going on inside wax.

Shatter

The amber liquid produced by butane extraction, if left alone to cool, solidifies into a thin, transparent slab that looks a bit like peanut brittle.

The transparent nature of the shatter can only be described by some pretty heavy chemical jargon. But we’ve got Legos, so we don’t need all the Cs, Hs, and Ns that chemistry relies on.

Imagine all the molecules in the amber liquid as Lego blocks.

In shatter, they’re all stacked nice and neat, one on top of the other, like you’d just finished building a wall. This molecular alignment allows light to pass through and gives the shatter its brittle and transparent format.

Wax

Like shatter after, wax also starts off as an amber liquid after butane extraction. So how does wax end up opaque with the consistency of thick honeycomb?

During the cooling process, the amber liquid is agitated (among other technical processes). This causes the molecules to react in a unique way.

Think back to the Lego block analogy.

In shatter, the Lego blocks are stacked neatly in rows (like a block wall). In wax, because of the agitation, the Lego blocks are a jumbled mess (like you’ve just dumped them out into a pile).

Because the Lego blocks are going every which way and have no semblance of organization, wax doesn’t let light through and has that weird appearance.

The other forms of cannabis concentrate — budder, honeycomb, crumble, etc. — all have molecular arrangements that vary between shatter and wax. All that means is that the Legos are arranged in different ways to produce a different look and feel.

How Wax Is Usually Made

We mentioned butane extraction earlier in this article, and if you were a weed wax manufacturer, you’d probably make your product that way.

But butane extraction is not for the average John or Jane cannabis fan. It’s a very complicated process that requires specialized training and equipment to do right without putting yourself, your possessions, and those around you in serious danger.

Butane extraction involves forcing butane (Duh, right!) through a container full of marijuana buds. The butane acts as a solvent and separates the essential oils (made up of cannabinoids, terpenes, trichomes, and flavonoids) from the cannabis plant.

Those oils held in solution along with the butane are called butane hash oil (or BHO for short). That’s the amber liquid we talked about in the science section.

But you wouldn’t want to dab with this stuff because butane is toxic. That’s why the next step is so important.

Once you’ve soaked your plants in butane and dissolved all the canna-goodness, you allow the butane to evaporate out of the solution. That leaves behind a highly-concentrated oil that, when it dries, hardens into either shatter or wax.

Sounds simple enough, right? It’s not. Butane is highly flammable and can explode (yes, explode!) with the smallest spark. That’s why we don’t recommend using butane extraction at home to make your own wax.

There are much safer ways to produce some dab goo than to risk life, limb, and property trying to emulate the pros and their fancy equipment. Don’t do it!

Instead, try this non-toxic, non-explosive method for making your own wax at home.

How To Make Wax At Home

If you’re keen to cook up a batch of weed wax at home — without the risk of death or loss of property that comes with butane extraction — have we got a treat for you!

In this section, we’ll give you step-by-step instructions for brewing a batch of wax using a much safer solvent: alcohol.

But we’re not going to use just any alcohol. We’re going to use 99-100% pure isopropyl alcohol.

Isopropyl alcohol is a lot different from the vodka you may have stashed in your cupboard. It’s even different from the strongest “over-the-counter” alcohol you’ve been eyeing at your local liquor store (Everclear and Absinthe, we’re looking at you).

Isopropyl alcohol is not meant for human consumption, so don’t, by any means, put it in your mouth. It’s a lot safer than butane as a solvent, but it’s still harmful if swallowed in large quantities.

It’s also important to understand that isopropyl alcohol is flammable. It’s nowhere near as bad as butane, but you don’t want to handle it around an open flame. Needless to say, it’s not a good idea to try this recipe if all you have is a gas stove.

OK, enough with the warnings. On to the DIY.

QWISO

Those in the know (like you are now) call this the QWISO process. QWISO stands for “Quick Wash Of Isopropyl Alcohol.”

Here’s what you’ll need to make marijuana wax at home.

Ingredients

• 2.5 grams of your favorite ganja
• Containers that pour well and are freezer- and heat-safe
• 99-100% isopropyl alcohol
• Metal mesh screen
• Unbleached coffee filters
• Pan
• Hot water

Directions

1) Break up your bud just a bit (not too small).

2) Put it in an oven-safe container and dry the cannabis at 200 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes. Please note: this is not decarboxylation.

3) Once the cannabis is sufficiently dry, put it and the bottle of alcohol in the freezer for three to five hours.

4) Wait (this is the hardest part).

5) Pour enough cold alcohol over the cannabis to cover it by at least one inch.

6) Gently swish the mix for 20 seconds.

7) Separate the bud from the alcohol by pouring through a mesh screen.

8) Set the plant matter aside for now (from here on out, we’re going to focus on the alcohol).

9) Pour the alcohol through an unbleached coffee filter into another container.

10) Squeeze the coffee filter to get as much of the alcohol out as possible.

11) Allow the alcohol to evaporate. You can do this in one of three ways:

1. Place a coffee filter over the top of the container and just give it time.
2. Place the container in a warm water bath to speed the process.
3. If you’re really impatient (like we are), you can put the water bath on the stove at low to medium heat until you see liquid start to evaporate. Be sure not to boil the alcohol.

12) When all the alcohol is gone, scrape the wax out of the container and store it in a glass container or on some parchment paper.

That’s it. Now, all that’s left to do is enjoy the fruits of your labor.

You can also run the original buds through a second wash to get every single drop of the remaining good stuff.

Go back to step five in the directions above. Then, in step six, swish the mix for 60 seconds instead of 20. Proceed from step seven to the end. That’s all there is to it!

If you’re really into the extraction process, you could run the original buds through a third wash, but you’ll have to swish the mix for 180 seconds (or three minutes).

The first two washes will remove the majority of the cannabinoids and terpenes, so don’t be surprised (or disappointed) if the third wash produces very little wax.

The nice thing about wax is that a little goes a long way. So even the trace amount you squeeze out with the third wash might be enough for a hit that gets you nice and high.

How To Smoke Wax: Quality In Equals Quality Out

When it comes to buying wax from a reputable source or brewing your own batch at home, it’s always good to go by this rule of thumb:

Quality in equals quality out.

When you buy (or brew) wax made from high-quality, organic ingredients (like the strains from Budcargo.ca), you get the best possible product that money can buy.

Sure, you can save money by using regs and mids to cook your wax, but that will leave you with a low-quality final product that might not give you the effects you’re after.

For the best wax-smoking experience, buy a quality wax made with all-natural ingredients from a reputable source like Honest Marijuana and try before you DIY.

Our budcargo Wax is the first concentrate that captures the essence of each individual strain in the most honest and pure representation possible.

We derive our wax from the “whole plant” using the highest quality flower, groundbreaking preservation methods, and industry-leading extraction methods.

Because of that, you can rest easy that you have a concentrate that truly resembles the flowers on the stalk and offers the highest levels of THC and terpenes with the smoothness of an organically-grown product. Bud cargo Wax truly does deliver on all levels!

If you live in Canada, find some Bud Cargo— be it bud or wax — and discover what the purest marijuana experience on the planet feels like. You won’t be sorry.

For more information on all things cannabis and to check out our 100-percent all-natural marijuana products, visit Budcargo.ca today.