Quartz Nail or Titanium Nail—Which is Better for Dabbing

Question: Dear Dabby, which is better for dabbing a quartz or a Titanium nail? I’ve heard you can drop orange hot quartz into cold water with no effect due to the coefficient of thermal expansion (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.

Dabby: That’s right, quartz holds up to temperature changes far better than glass, and is super pure. It’s one of the reasons they use quartz in headlights. It can get extremely hot then cool off a whole bunch of times and be ok. Of course glass, quartz, ceramic, or anything else that isn’t Titanium is going to eventually break. It just happens. But there is one downside to the TI nails.

As far as all TI nails being equal, you are correct. There’s a LOT to learn about titanium alloys when it comes to taking dabs. The problem is that most of this material comes from China and it’s difficult to be assured of it’s grading or composition. Unless someone wants to fund a large scale study analyzing the different popular brand TI nails sold on the market, and seeing exactly what their composition is, I wouldn’t hold your breath. You simply cannot know for sure the composition of your TI nail. If people want to be super safe, then quartz is safer. Or maybe a healthstone…it has the word ‘health’ in it’s name!

Sincerely Scientific,

Dabby

Have a question about dabbing? Get it to us so we can ask Dabby—a Washington-based sceintist who runs a popular dab lab in the Pacific Northwest. Email your questions to us at stuff(at)stuffstonerslike.com, tweet or FB ‘em.

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Alice says:

August 25, 2015 at 1:07 am

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