How To Take Care Of Your Bangers

It seems like just the other day that we were smoking from titanium nails and the idea of quartz bangers wasn’t even upon us. A lot has happened in the last 5 or 6 years though, quartz bangers have become the standard in South Africa for consuming concentrates. But something a lot of newcomers don’t yet know is that there are specific protocols to follow to get the most out of your quartz banger and ensure it lasts you.

Heating Your Banger

Holding a torch in a single position on your banger will cause uneven heat distribution that will cause issues both in extracts not being hot enough to vaporize and getting stuck on the banger once it cools, and then even worse for the banger, you could end up more easily burning instead of vaporizing, which can cause even more issues in your banger’s longevity.

The best way to heat your quartz banger is to move the torch gently around the banger to achieve as much heat distribution as possible. This will let your concentrate vaporize evenly and not burn or be left unvaporized.

Temperature

Another important thing to always remember is that if your banger is too hot – instead of vaporizing the concentrate, it will burn it – which is not only terrible for your banger but also not too great for your health. Judging temperature is something that comes with experience, and you can start to learn, with modest accuracy, how hot your banger is. This method is hard to nail down, and it’s not going to give you results quite like you could get off something like a Termpometer. DO NOT hit dabs with your banger glowing – hot dabs are a bit of a meme, but only really funny if you have the money to invest in new bangers.

For high-quality extracts, you will get away with low temp hits at around 80’C, whereas less pure extracts will require more heat. There’s no rule to this, as it really is about judging how your extract burns. Start at lower temps and raise it if you need to – rather use a cold start if needed than chazz your banger.

Glob Sizes

While you can theoretically take quite large dabs, a warmer banger will be needed for larger globs. Similarly, you can typically get away with lower temperatures if you’re hitting smaller dabs. Lower temperatures will give you a more flavourful experience, so there is an argument for taking multiple smaller hits over one larger one, where you are more likely to burn your dab or have it dry without vaporizing.

Placing the Extract

While it may be tempting to run your tool across the walls of your banger when taking a hit, this should only be done if your banger has a wall thickness that matches the base thickness. Otherwise, the thinner walls cool down too quickly, your extracts don’t completely vaporize, and you end up with more cleaning work. Instead, try and get your extracts to drip onto the base of your banger.

Using Carb Caps

It may seem obvious to some, but carb caps are an essential part of a dab rig. Taking hits without a carb cap will allow far too much cool air into your banger bucket and cool it down far quicker. Not just that, but carb caps can help move air into the hit at directions, allowing your extracts to be spread more evenly across the base of your quartz banger.

Cleaning Up After EVERY Dab

Bangers aren’t the laundry, you’re not going to be able just to ignore cleaning your banger after use, at least not if you want to keep it working as it should. If your banger was too hot, you’d notice that there was black residue on the banger. This shouldn’t occur but is more prone to happening with low-quality extract due to the higher level of contaminants. High-quality hash rosin will often leave little to no residue when used in the correct size and at the correct heat, for instance.

Use a cotton swab/earbud to clean the banger of unvaporized residue. If the extract remained under its combustion temperature, it should get good results. We then also recommend following up your swabbing with an isopropyl alcohol swab after the banger has cooled down. Isopropyl alcohol has a very low evaporation temperature, so you will typically need to wait about 5 minutes.

You should ensure to remove as much residue from the banger after each hit. Ideally, your banger will look new after each cleaning. But if not due to incorrect temperatures or extract type, you may need to do regular full isopropyl washes – we recommend doing this around every 2 weeks regardless.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can’t I just burn off excess extract?

It may be tempting to simply burn off the residue from the previous dab, but there are problems with this. While it can make your banger look cleaner because it requires such high heat in order to get burnt off, you can also end up causing problems with the banger. While quartz is non-porous, the easiest way to notice the problems in burning off dabs is by using a swab on a new banger and then doing the same on one that has been burnt off a number of times. The more a banger is heat-cleaned, the harder it will be to cotton swab it clean, to the point where it may just no longer be possible. So we recommend best practices from the start.

What Strength Isopropyl Alcohol Do I Need?

Anything from 91% upwards should be ideal, though the higher the percent, the better. You can get away with longer percents, but you will loose out a bit on some cleaning power.

How Big Should My Dabs Be?

The size of your dab should be determined by how well your banger holds heat, thicker walls/bases can allow for slightly larger dabs since they retain heat for longer.

We hope that this information helps you keep your bangers clean and allows them to last for years to come. Should you have any other inquiries related to this topic, let us know in the comments.