Healthstone: Heat Gun or Torch?
By: Mat Lee
As most of you know, I recently moved to Washington to become a weed refugee dab lab rat. Today marks the end of my first week at work, and I’ve already learned so much. Everything I thought I knew about dabs was pretty much wrong. I mean parts of it were sort of right. It’s reminiscent of a giant game of telephone, or grapevine. Everyone gets certain known basics pretty much correct, but somewhere down the line things get all jumbled up.
I’m working on putting together a top list sort of thing about things people get wrong about dabs. Here’s where you come in. I need you all to email me or leave a comment down below with all the crazy, wacky, silly, smart, intelligent or wack shit you’ve ever heard about dabs. I’ll sift through them and dig out the best ten to present to our resident scientist. We’ll write it up, possibly record a video, and present it to you shortly after. Sound good? Good.
Anyway, in this video, you’ll see me testing out the new 18mm male Healthstone vape slide I ordered. As I mention in the video, they are a bit spotty to find locally, at least in Washington where I was. It’s really hit or miss with the Healthstone. Some stores are all about them and will always have them in stock, both the 14mm and the 18mm size. Some will have absolutely never heard of them and give you a weird look when you ask about it.
A Healthstone is completely inert, meaning it won’t produce any smoke or vapors themselves. The dab absorbs into the stone, then vaporizes out once it gets hot enough.
If I can give you some advice, stay away from the 14mm. I’ve had nothing but bad luck with breaking them. The 18mm is nice, plus it will fit most normal size bong stems. Assuming they are 18mm. The other thing to watch out for is the male and female ends. This might seem like duh, but you would be surprised how many people have to make a second trip to the head shop to get an adapter because they accidentally bought the wrong one.
Trust me, if you are into dabbing, and I assume you are if you’re reading this, get yourself a Healthstone. It doesn’t even have to be super fancy scientifically made dabs like the Tangie. You can use a Healthstone with pretty much anything… Except for resin. Don’t ever put resin on your Healthstone. Swim has heard of putting DMT on a Healthstone with a little dab for a one shot blast off if that sort of thing allegedly tickles your fancy.
The two places I would recommend online are Aqua Lab Technologies, and High Priority Glass. They have the best selection, are in stock more times than not, and the prices are decent, especially compared to what you would normally find walking into a head shop brick and mortar.
As you’ll see in the video, at least with the type of tangy crystal clear goodness that is the Tangie, a heat gun is more than sufficient to get a nice vape going through the Healthstone.
The heat gun is a warm summer breeze compared to the weapon of choice everyone I’ve ever seen take a dab in my life uses. The torch is the equivalent of dropping a nuke on an little pile of kief, the heat gun is like a gentle whisper waking the Tangie up like the sun rise started its shine through the curtains and lovingly caressed its lover’s face. It’s nice. It’s breakfast in bed after a wake and bake the morning after you re-up nice. It’s chilling on a Sunday morning nice.
Sure the torch gives you giant fat hits and makes you cough a whole bunch, but are you really getting more high? Must one cough to get off? I say nay, though my lungs say otherwise. The hit from the heat gun tasted much better and quite a bit less harsh than the hit with the butane torch. Apparently that has something to do with what is called a Terpene Bloom. I’ll get more into that in another article perhaps. I’m still trying to wrap my head around all this knowledge coming at me.
The torch still gets the job done, and will always hold a place in the hearts of stoners as something we like, but heart aside, the lungs of this stoner only want the heat gun.
One last thing I did want to mention. Up here in Tukwila Washington on April 19th is something called the Dope Cup. This is the fourth annual, and they let people judge for a hundred bucks. I was thinking of going and covering it for Stuff Stoners Like, and maybe even dropping the cash to be a judge. Is that something you all would be into hearing about? I can film and capture audio, plus write and take pictures. If Dope Cup is something you would find interesting, drop me a comment. Thanks for watching and reading. For Stuff Stoners Like, I’m Mat Lee.
Leave a Reply
28 Responses to “Dab Etiquette—The Best Way to Use A Healthstone”
Mat Lee
Be sure to hit me up with your dab myths here in the comments. We have some unfettered access to pick the brains of two of the smartest scientists working with cannabis and extracts today. Cutting edge stuff. What do you want to know, or what are some of the things you’ve heard?
Nigel
When you torch or ‘gun’ the nail, is it better to do so from the side, or from the top so it heats the nail evenly? I’ve always done it from the side because that’s how I learned. But I don’t see why you couldn’t heat it from the top.
Melt
You can drop orange hot quartz into cold water with no effect due to the COE of quartz being 0. Also all ti nails are not equal. the patina they end up with are related to the purity of the metal
JohnnyLongDabs
Is there a specific temperature one should be heating their dabs up to for maximum efficiency? I think the healthstone-heatgun combo is probably the cleanest. I wonder what the best temp is, and what temp the heat gun gets to & holds at?
Mat Lee
Awesome questions, I have just received our answers and will be writing this up in the next day or two. Definitely post some more questions if anyone has anymore.
Bigsampson
3 flame torch lighter is recommended.
Anonymous
Triple flame cigar lighter
mat
I guess for portability that would be a bit better than a larger torch. But I’m definitely in love with how the heat gun evenly warms the stone to vape temp. I’ll definitely have to get a little micro torch though. Any recommendations on a nice long lasting one? All the shitty gas station ones I see don’t seem to last very long before they break.
Dab Rigs
I would like to cite your work on my website and blog at rawrigcity.com. Dab Rigs
mat
Sounds good, are you going to send me some cool dab rigs to try out?
Anonymous
Is a healthstone not as clean as a ti nail due to the butane you would inhale lighting it to the healthstone
mat
I would say it’s a toss up between the TI nail and the healthstone as far as being clean. This is assuming you are using an electric heatgun like I show in the video to take dabs from the healthstone. You also want to make sure your TI nail is actually TI and not some other, cheaper metal that may not react well to higher temperatures.
Sean
I use a triple flame and hold it a little ways away directly over the stone and it is very smooth. I try not to torch the stone, but rather heat it evenly and a little slower than most everybody I see.
mat
People definitely like to get crazy with their torches. I actually dabbed with someone today that had a timer on their phone set so they knew exactly when their quartz nail was the right temp. Good stuff.
matt
I hope someone is still answering these questions, I need advice!!! Im making my own vaporizer and originally planned on using a tiny glass bowl to hold the herb, and heat up the glass with a torch or another heat source till it reaches the proper temp to vape… After seeing this im curious if a tiny stone bowl would work better? I assume stone would hold the heat longer than glass could, and heat up more uniformly as well. I have a perfect sized stone bowl but im not sure what type of stone it is… Is this safe? Will this stone impart anything into the herb/vapor when its heated up? Are there types of stone that are not safe to heat up like that? Im thinking I may even be able to regulate the exact temp that the stone gets heated up to, if I just place it on a hot plate and set to my desired temp… Maybe convert a soldering iron or woodburner into a “stone heater” lol
-If any1 responds to this THANK YOU!!!
Mat
The healthstone is completely inert. Not sure how you would make one hold actual herb but anything is possible. Definitely make sure whatever stone is used that it’s completely inert when heated.
Sarah420
Hello,
I have two questions is the health stone a specific stone and would you have any ideas of a way i can incorporate granite with the dab setup and or process?
Mat Lee
I’m not exactly sure to be completely honest. All I know is that it’s some sort of inert stone. It reminds me of lavarock or pumice but I don’t think it’s that. As long as granite is inert at high temperatures I don’t see why you couldn’t use it. It has to be porous though.
Drew
It’s a carbon inert stone! Happy smoking!
Daniel
You do not need gas powered flame. Light a hempwick. Twist up two cords for fat fire, hold over loaded bowl and suck. No poison to your brain. Be sure to safely estinguish fire.
Anonymous
I like using a small jet lighter
Mat Lee
Those work ok but you are still applying a flame to the dab material. I feel like once you take that first heatgun rip you won’t wanna go back to the torch. Unless you can’t find an electrical outlet.
Anvilyears
I would like to thank you for posting a video dabbing with a heat gun. I have been experimenting with one as well and found it to be the cleanest and nicest tasting way to do a dab. Everyone I know says it’s nuts because your breathing the off gasses of whatever the heat gun produces. I believe the heating element to be a metal of some kind and not sure if there is any off gasses or not. Have you looked into this as well?
Mat Lee
That’s interesting. I never really thought about it. I suppose it depends on the metal and the temperature and what it off gasses. We started doing it more out of necessity. Couldn’t use a torch in the lab for obvious reasons, but we always used heat guns, the healthstone was a perfect platform for it and walla. Heatgun healthstone dabsl rips.
Anvilyears
Thanks for the reply.
I have a quartz banger and a carb cap that I use to cook my concentrates in. I just today even tried some flower in it and wow… looks like we have here a complete vaporizer with the ability to select the heat by duration of exposure to the heat gun. Quite happy with this set up and would only like to know the difference between heating elements for my heat gun and say the volcano or some other line of vaporizers. Thanks once again for the reply and if you hear any thing about bad off gasses from heat guns please keep me in the loop. Happy toking
mat
I will definitely look into it and see what I can find out. I did try to use the heat gun on a quartz nail but ran out of patience. Some applications simply require a torch lol.
tryacid
I just got my basic male at a local shop to try out. I’m not a fan of using butane and had a heat gun. It works great
Casedeez
Bro go to the dope show or whatever it’s called, can’t recall cuz all the comments I read and then forgot the name. So you should go to that and definitely judge it also. Only cuz it would be fun and since I can’t go you could and then I could see and read about it. Sick plz go. Oh. Also was gonna add that the oil one ends up with, good, bad, par, it’s all a direct reflection of what was used l. There are other factors that come in to play like extraction process, solvent, purge methods, but they mainly change appearance slightly and concistency a bit, but dankness… I’m that comes from the product you start with. Put in gold, get platinum. Put in bronze get silver. Also, if you are making your own, anything you foliate with, whatever residual is left on that plant material will also be concentrated. Could make one very sick so know your chit before you be blasting. Iono how I got so far off tangent, oh yeah. Health stone in ti nail seconds before staring this. So go to the dope dab show and lemme me know how rad it was.