What Is a Wax Pen? How to Smoke Wax, From Dab Pens to Rigs

A wax pen (also called a dab pen) is a portable vaporizer built to heat cannabis wax, a BHO (butane hash oil) concentrate packed with cannabinoids and terpenes, until it turns into vapor you can inhale. Wax has an opaque, creamy look a lot like beeswax, which is why it's also called honeycomb, and depending on its final color and texture it goes by names like crumble, sugar or budder.

Like every extract, wax is made with a technique that separates the plant's trichomes from the rest of the plant material. The result is a resin with much higher concentrations of THC and CBD.

How is cannabis wax made?

Making wax is very similar to making shatter and other types of BHO.

First, cannabis trim and buds are soaked in liquid butane to strip the trichomes (the white, resinous crystals loaded with cannabinoids and terpenes) away from the plant matter.

That produces a cannabinoid-rich mix, which is then heated to purge off as much butane as possible. Shatter is left to heat and sit undisturbed, but waxes are usually worked during the purge, and that's what gives them their unique texture.

The most common ways to work wax during the purge are whipping, shaking or stirring it. Depending on how it's handled, you end up with anything from a crumbly substance that looks like solidified honey (often sold as sugar wax or sugar crumble) to a silky concentrate sold as budder.

Heads up: the idea that translucent concentrates are purer than opaque ones just isn't true. Whether a concentrate is see-through or not comes down to whether it was agitated during the purge.

How do you smoke wax?

Figuring out the different ways to smoke wax isn't complicated. Just keep in mind that some waxes are especially runny, sticky or hard to handle, which can make them a bad fit for a joint, a vaporizer or a hash pipe; for those, you'll need an oil rig. Here are the main ways to smoke wax:

Mixing wax with flower:

You can take drier waxes like crumble and sprinkle them into a regular joint or onto a bong bowl for an extra hit of cannabinoids. If you know your concentrates, though, you'll notice their unique flavor is hard to pick out from the flower's.

Hash pipes:

There are plenty of newer pipes on the market that let you try different ways of smoking wax. From budget to premium, you can find a good one and skip investing in a fancy (and pricier) vaporizer or rig. Just make sure the pipe you buy is made for solvent-based extracts, not only for kief or regular hash.

Vaporizers:

Vaping wax is the best option for anyone who wants to avoid the health risks of smoking. Traditional dry herb vaporizers can't handle extracts, but some newer models can.

Most of these are portable, and some people say the cheaper ones produce weak, disappointing hits; that usually happens because they don't get hot enough to properly vaporize the concentrate.

If you're going to vape wax or other solvent-based extracts, do your homework and find a decent model. Your best bet is a pen designed specifically for wax.

Dabbing:

Extracts like wax are often called “dabs” because dabbing is the most common way to consume them. Dabbing takes specialized gear: a “nail,” a torch and an oil rig (a dab rig).

So how does it work? The nail gets heated with the torch (or electrically, if you have an “e-nail”), and a small amount of concentrate goes on it. The heat turns it into vapor, which you inhale through a specialized pipe that usually uses water as a filter.

Are wax and wax pens safe?

BHO concentrates get a lot of criticism these days. There are stories of explosions caused by amateurs trying to make hash oil at home, which has fueled growing concern. Overall, the worries center on the safety of both making and consuming a product produced with a volatile, potentially dangerous substance.

On top of that, since in many places there are still no rules guaranteeing that wax and shatter are properly purged so you get a clean, reliable product, there are real concerns about consumption safety too.

Some of the concern is warranted: these extracts can contain up to five times as much THC as flower, which raises questions about dosing and the potential for overdoing it.

All of these concerns are legitimate, but we think they could easily be solved through legalization, regulation and good information. That way, everyone, whether they consume or abstain, could be confident that concentrates are safe and reliable and get accurate information about them.

So if you're thinking about trying concentrates, read up first and go easy. They can be very strong. And if you want to learn how to smoke wax, a wax bong or a wax pen is the way to go; both are made for this kind of extract.