What's The Difference Between Bongs And Dab Rigs? A bong (or glass water pipe) is a must-have item for all of us who likes to enjoy our cannabis buds, comparing to traditional rolling with a piece of rolling paper, a glass bong can help to filtrate the harmful materials generated from combustion like tar and more, meanwhile cooling down the smoke making it easier to inhale. But since the dabbing game had gone more and more popular in the past few years, most of us are wondering: Can I use my bong a dab rig? Well, the answer is definitely yes but there are a few things we need to consider before we convert our glass bong into a dab-ready piece, in today's Puffing Bird Wiki we'll be walking through some of the points which we think is critical for the decision to turn your glass bong into a dab rig. The Size Of You Bong Size is a critical and straightforward factor. Unlike smoking dry herb which bigger the water pipe the better, dabbing is all about vaporizing the cannabis concentrates and making the vapor travel a distant after being cooled down by water that's relatively shorter than traditional smoke generated by dry flower/herb combustion. Also, dabbing requires you to stir your cannabis concentrates with a dabber or carb cap to keep it moving for complete vaporization, too big of a bong will make the vapor difficult to travel up such a long distance without the help of a carb hole. However, if you have a water pipe that features a carb hole that will be perfect, like this one as shown below: If you have a tall bong which is over 15", we think that it might be too big for dabbing. The Shape Of Your Bong That's right, the shape of your bong plays a crucial role in whether you can convert your bong into a dab-ready piece as well. Themed bongs or novelty bongs are not so great when it comes to dabbing, their joint angle size might not be regular 45° or 90° like most of the water pipes, and the design of the bong might be causing some trouble for you when you try to install a quartz banger or titanium dab nail on it. Typical novelty bongs like the Penis Bong shown below is not suitable for converting into a dab rig, because it has a bowl piece that's fixed to the downstem. We've tried to install a regular 4mm thick bottom quartz banger onto a little animal shaped glass bong but unfortunately, due to its unique design after we've installed the quartz banger on it we find the quartz banger is in a bizarre position which we can't find a proper way to heat the quartz banger not to mention dabbing with it. So you might ask: What type of bong is the best when it comes to dabbing? Typically speaking, a beaker bong would be the best. A beaker bong is very easy to come by in local headshops or online headshops due to its timeless design and minimal functionalities. The simple structure of the beaker bong is the main reason why it's the best for dabbing, a beaker bong is made from a glass beaker body, a removable glass downstem, and a bowl piece. The downstem provides the minimal amount of filtration but can still cool down the temperature of the vapor sufficiently, and the beaker bong's shape is perfect for storing a massive amount of vapor. Tips For Using a Beaker Bong To Dab: 1. Keep in mind that most beaker bongs have a 45° angle joint so get a 45° joint quartz banger to go with, titanium dab nails can do the job as well but you will have to tilt the beaker bong to 45° to keep the concentrates from dripping out. 2. If you're using a butane torch to heat your dab nail instead of an enail, you might want to add an adaptor in between the downstem and the dab nail to prevent the joint of the bong or the downstem from breaking when exposing to a massive amount of heat generated by the butane torch. 3. If you think the vapor is still too hot, add some ice cubes or cold water in the bong to chill the vapor. The Percolators In Your Bong When it comes to percolators if you want to convert your water pipe into a wax rig, there are two rules to remember: Smaller the percolator, the better. Simpler the percolator, the better. Multiple percolators are excellent when it comes to smoking dry herb/flowers because of multiple percolators provides maximum filtration that could filter out the harmful materials like tar generated by combustions. But since we all love the sweet taste of our concentrates, a water pipe with too many percolators could do you no good, too many percolators would filter out the taste and decrease the potency of your concentrates. Here's a video of a glass bong with multiple percolators: Please note that when we are talking about percolators we 're talking about the percolators that are functional, like the swiss percolators, showerhead percolators, and tree percolators...Not the ones that exist in your bong for the good looks only like the flower marble or the ball percolators. In Conclusion When it comes to converting your water pipe/bong into a dab rig/wax rig, there are no wrong answers here, the few points that we mentioned up there are merely experience talking from our foolish attempts in the past few years in the field. I've seen people using a 6" tall bong to take a big fat dab and that's totally fine. Dabbing is all about medicating ourselves and have a great time, it's not rocket science, grab some quality quartz bangers or titanium dab nails from PuffingBird.com and start the adventure of your own!