How to clean a weed grinder
First Time Cleaning
Before using it for the first time, it is a good idea to clean your weed grinder. Start out by unscrewing each of the 4 pcs and inspecting them. Sometimes there could be small flakes of material left from the manufacturing process or from the screen edges. Wipe the grinder down with a little isopropyl alcohol and use a q-tip if needed to get into the grooves. It is now ready to use.
Cleaning After Use
Frequent cleaning isn’t necessary, but if the kief clogs the screen or makes the weed grinder difficult to turn you may want to clean it. Before cleaning, you will want to collect as much kief as possible. A trick for this is to place a piece of paper on a table and tap each piece of the grinder on the paper thus shaking off the kief. If there is a lot of buildup, you can place the grinder in the freezer for 15-20min prior to this as it will help loosen it up.
Once the bulk of the kief has been collected, use a toothpick or fine tipped object to remove as much as you can from the grooves. You can try flicking the screen with your index finger, but be careful not to dent or damage it. Finally, wipe the grinder down with ISO alcohol and use a q-tip to get in the grooves.
just a suggestion on cleaning. i’ve found a small plastic bristle paint brush (like the ones you get from those cheap water coloring sets) to be an excellent way to fully and thoroughly clean your grinder.
Alternative cleaning method: For heavily used grinders :)
1. Take glass container and fill it with just enough alcohol to submerge the largest part of your grinder of choice (I used a sharpstone).
2. With the grinder fully dismantled take each piece and soak each grinder tier individually, give each one a gentle shake and stir. *(soaking too long, or shaking to hard will ruin the finish of the grinder, and contaminate the finished product.)
**3. After each tier has been cleaned, your glass should be filled with a dingy green solution, pour the good stuff onto a glass dish. *(This expands the surface area to cause quicker evaporation).
4. Once all the alcohol has evaporated you will be left with the kief and potent resin that once inhabited every nook and cranny of your grinder. Enjoy.
**To speed up the evaporation step: Take a separate glass dish, fill it with steaming hot water, and set the glass with alcohol mixture in it on top.
I find cleaning them quite easy.
1. Use a decent detergent, normally used for cleaning floors….Obviously diluted a bit, strip grinder and submerge overnight.
2. In the morning, take it out and using a pipe cleaner, just give a gentle rub.
3. Wash the grinder out and dry.
4. Grind more weed up, skin up & toke away. Or just use a vapouriser for added bollox’dness.
Listen to smok3y, this is how you economically get stoned. why waste what can be smoke by simply washing it and dumping it down the drain?
What about the alcohol, does it affect the kief? i mean it was soaked in the stuff for 10s of minuets. It seems very clever, and if its safe im doing it now. But having my kief soaked in alcohol to me sounds dangerous. Do you know if a tiny bit of grease gets on your cigarette it can kill you instantly and if not it will give you brain damage. That’s effed up. So I’m not so sure about the alcohol soak. Please someone prove me wrong and show me that it disappears completely off my smokies…
O Yea:
THC is soluble in alcohol which is why it’s used to clean the grinder. Alcohol evaporates much faster than water. Leaving it out to let dry on a dish evaporates all of the alcohol leaving the THC behind. As long as you leave it out long enough so that the dish is dry, you’ll be fine. Hash is commonly made this way and I’ve never heard of anyone dying instantly or having brain damage.
O Yea- You cant die from getting a little grease on your cigarette and inhaling the smoke. If this were the case there would be a ton of dead mechanics all over the place and warnings everywhere about this problem.
Dont believe everything you hear.
Masshole has the gist about safety with the alcohol method
Get some certified super pure food grade ethyl alcohol if impurities is your concern. It ain’t cheap and not easy to find though. Cheaper, but not as pure and not sure how good it works: EverClear 190.
smoke that shit. soak it in iso for 45 seconds shake it good, dump it out on a plate, let it evaporate. NOM.
just done the alcohol method, used surgical spirit, 95% proof….i have keif, and a yellow residue everywhere, it still stinks of surgical spirit, its been about 24hrs….any hints or clues? have a messed it up by using wrong stuff? no patient enough? i’ve done the steaming boiling water a couple of times…..many thanks everyone! hope its smokable soon :)
thebunk – you don’t need to go crazy, don’t over think it. Just simple 91-99% isopropyl alcohol is all you need. If you feel it isn’t really drying as quickly as you would like take the solution outside pour it onto a baking sheet – glass preferably and put a fan near it on a low setting – after it has dried there should be nothing but green “grease” looking stuff on your sheet – scrape that off and enjoy.
im using an electric coffee grinder. how to clean?
Im using electric coffee grinder too, need to know efficient method of cleaning and collecting!
This Guy + Disjuan: that just fucks everything up. Buy a real grinder
Argh, Timbo! Not everybody has access to everclear, its banned in some place.
hot water from the kettle ( red hot ) soak grinder for 5 minutes, i use a plasic straw as it goes soft in water and give it the once over 2/3 minutes … and make a cuppa with the hot water when done :)
lol just get a toothpick pick all the resin weed etc etc out of it and then smoke it and wen ive picked all the stuff with a toothpick i use a old toothbrush and scrub it under some warm water and leave to dry for 30 mins or use a hairdryer if i need 2 use it quickly again :)
Alcohol method is great for cleaning pieces as well. If you are finding the alcohol is taking too long, here is something I have done several times. Put your oven on WARM or the lowest setting on the knob, just above off. When its warmed up (NOT HOT!!) you can place the glass dish with the alcohol (90% or higher, less will take longer as it has a higher water content) and keif solution on the middle shelf of the oven. Leave the oven open just a tad so that the vapor can escape. Depending on how much alcohol was on the plate, you have just cut the trying time to 1/10 as long as it might have taken at room temperature. Be aware that alcohol is EXTREMELY flammable at higher concentrations, so it is important to exercise caution when doing this. I am a chef, so I do lots of cooking with these materials and know the dangers involved. As long as you keep it warm and not hot it should be fine.
I just use a tooth brush and warm water and with the screen i just scrape it off with the scraper and run under water warm
i want all my kief to be smokable, i haven’t yet touched my grinder, but i’m thinking of using a very small peice of wool, i’ve also tried using fine threads to poke the kief out of the screen. my screen is caked so if anyone knows of some type of mesh screen scrubber, let me know
Hello from Scotland, my favourite is Sensi Star, and it’s all about the grower and the set up, not where you are in the big wide tiny world. Not having much luck with the freezing and tapping method for the top part of my grinder, it is my first grinder (So much waste for over 16 years!), and I wish to attract as much THC goodness into my lungs as I possibly can. I have some moonshine or potato wine that my crazy Irish neighbour gave to me. I am intrigued by the alcohol method but unsure on how successful I will be. My girlfriend is perhaps better at this sort of thing than me, I’ll wait for her to come back from work! Any more advice greatly appreciated!
if you just soak each piece for about a minute each in some isopropyl alcohol and then use a tooth brush when its still wet all the caked keif and tar will come off extremely easily, just did it and got my grinder looking like new in about 15 minutes
dude you can do just what I do to clean my screen. Take a straw and light the bottom of the screen and it will burn the kief, then as you are doing this use the straw to suck up the smoke you clean it and get high at the same time. ONE<3Love
i got high for the first time today well no i didin’t actually get high for some reason any ideas why?
dude most people don’t get high their first time smoke again and i know you’ll feel it, that or your getting bunk ditch weed, and I mean incredibly bunk.
To get really high try breathing in some air after you take a hit. It mixes with the oxygen and gets you higher. Also, you could find a really hot chick to give you a shotgun i always love shotguns haha
Use a good drink like Absinthe with a very high Alcohol… Mix 4 parts to 4 parts of grinder… A gentle shake and stir (muddle)… pour add a little sugar and warm water and Enjoy ;-)
You could also try swallowing some of the hits this way the smoke will sit in an air bubble and the THC will be slowly absorbed. you’ll probably end up burping some smoke out.
gonna get some isopropol next time im at the store. would using a double boiler (two pots placed on top of each other, used for melting chocolate) speed up the evaporation process.
Def follow smok3y’s post above… i just did it and i could’ve sworn i got all the kief i could get by picking at it with a bamboo skewer, but when i soaked all the pieces of my almost clean grinder, i got some of the most potent stuff on a pyrex plate right now – a better high than most times i’ve smoked regularly.
Thanks and nice post smok3y! :D
TheBunk, your using 95 proof alcohol for drinking that is 45% alcohol! I believe they are talking about isopropyl alcohol which is 91%-95% alcohol. If your going to go it with a alcoholic beverage i think everclear would be the one to use because it is 190 proof or 95% alcohol.
So that vodca you made yours with wont evaporate nearly as fast as what these guys are talkin about cuz it has half as much alcohol. I hope your batch works out alright.
Alcohol method works great and u can do the same thing with any sort of pipe too. To evaporate the alcohol just putit on a flat bottom glass plate in a room and light it on fire. As long as there’s no wind and nothing extremely flammable near u the fire will contain itself to the plate…it takes a few minutes but u will be left with a plate full of resin. Just use a razorblade to scrape it off and smoke it. Make sure u rinse out ur grinder/pipe with hot water before u use it again or it will taste like crap. I do this all the time when I’m desperate to smoke :)
Ohyeah u have to use 90% isopropyl alcohol or higher or the resin will still be wet and the filler in the alcohol wont burn off
About the soaking in alcohol and evaporation method. Would it be possible to soak in tequila or mescal or something and then drink the kief/alcohol combo? I just tried a THC tincture today it is fun stuff but I am not sure how its made.
wow i got som really good ideas from this kinda scared of setting a fire but for good smoke will take the chance i think i have some pyrex bowls
does the alcahol method work with the plastic grinder that comes with the volcano
i like to put a dime in my chamber and shake it every once in a while to get my kief through the screen
I usually soak my glass pieces overnight in Iso, I figured this would work, doing the evaporation method right now…but damn if it didn’t clean my grinder to the way it looked when I first bought it…lol…very good thread…
Hey it’s been a while since I had any chemistry, but I’m pretty sure Isopropanol is pioson at the levels you’d be exposed to if you use it as a solvent for something you later smoke. It’s fine for cleaning, but you’d be well advised NOT to smoke the leftovers. A much safer alternative is Ethanol (grain alcohol). Won’t work quite as quickly, but it is safe to smoke afterwards. Also, my grinder cleans up real nice in the dishwasher.
Peace
purls: We’re talking about Isopropyl alcohol, not Isopropanol. LTR
I have to assume trolling ^^
As far as the screen and loose Keef on the rest of the grinder, i usually just clean off a spot on a smooth hard surface, (i.e. wood table, counter top etc.) and slam each peace (both sides if applicable) on it. then i take a business card or rolling paper package and scrape it up off the table! Never quite figured out how to get the caked on “hash” from the teeth without scraping some of the aluminum off with it.
WOW… Why are you using alcohol in the first place? The way I do it: I keep a dime on the screen in the grinder so all of the kief sticks to it. Then i get tweezers and simply put the dime in my bowl and toke. If you’re careful, you can tilt the grinder so the dime slides around and collects the kief. Just don’t knock it off the walls or the kief will fall off. This will be the best “dime” you ever smoke. Haha… get it? Cuz I’m referring to a dime-bag. Ahhh… i make myself cachinnate.
And thats not the only reason I use the dime. It can be used to tap off excess kief stuck in the screen without getting your natural body oil from your fingers onto the screen. Thats no good, because it makes the kief stuck to the screen and your fingers. This is done by simply shaking your grinder while the dime is resting ontop of the screen after done grinding your reefer.
alcohol and sea salt. equal amounts in a baggie. throw parts in and shake. clean stubborn areas with solution-soaked q-tipps. inexpensive and easy so you are sure to “keep it clean” often!!
What about a wooden grinder? Any ideas? Its my fav and dont want to ruin it. Help! Thanks :)
Just use a hard teethbrush to clean the shit out of your grinder.. Collect some kief and bake some brownies ;)
Bump! to budda93′s question. I really love how my wood grinder gets the job done, but it’s sticky as all hell after a year of use.
just throw the shit away. suck it up and get more.
interdental tools make great grinder cleaners especially if yours is miniature like mine and they’re tiny enough to keep in a thc compartment – if you haven’t seen them before they’re like tiny pipe cleaners people use to clean their teeth :)
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i used 70% percent iso alcohol did i mess this up?