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How to Choose and Use a Weed Grinder

How to Use a Grinder

Do you have a great bud waiting to be smoked? Do you want to make the best possible joint with that bud? Well If you want to look like a professional at using cannabis or impress your buddies, then you need to learn proper weed grinding procedures. There might not be a lot of discussion about this important piece of equipment, but it’s essential when it comes to rolling a geat joint. No cannabis consumer should be without a good quality cannabis grinder in his stash box.

What Are Weed Grinders?

A weed grinder is a pretty simple tool to operate and learn how to use. It is a type of cylindrical container that has grinding teeth attached or manufactured into it. They are used to grind your cannabis buds into smaller pieces. If you choose the correct type of grinder, you can also collect kief. Kief is a great topper to your joint, bong, or cannabis pipe with loads of other uses as well.

Parts of a Marijuana Grinder

No matter how intricate or simple your weed grinder is, it will have three basic parts to it. First, you have the chamber where you place the buds to be ground. Next will be the teeth that will grind up the cannabis. Lastly, you need a lid on the top, so everything stays contained once you start grinding away.

You can buy cannabis grinders in a wide array of shapes and sizes. You may desire to know more about the differences before you purchase the right one for you. Generally the three most common types of cannabis grinders:

  • Two-Piece Grinder with One Chamber
  • Three-Piece Grinder with Two Chambers
  • Four-Piece Grinder with Three Chambers


Let’s examine each of these grinder types in a little more detail, so you can choose which one will suit your needs the best without breaking your wallet.

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Two-Piece Weed Grinder

If you just want a simple device to break up your buds, you may want to purchase a grinder with only a single chamber. It consists of only two pieces: a bowl and a lid. By placing the lid onto the bowl, you have created a chamber. The bowl can be as large as a hockey puck or smaller than the top of a pop can. Many people prefer this simple type and its ease of use. Its compact nature makes for less surface area to clean as well.

Three-Piece Marijuana Grinder

Visualize a standard two-piece weed grinder that has a lid and bowl. Now imagine putting another chamber underneath it. This extra chamber separates out the smaller pieces of cannabis that are already small enough for consumption. The topmost piece or the lid may contain pegs or teeth that can help further the grinding process. Next, you have the grinding chamber, this is where you will place your buds. The teeth in this chamber further break up your weed.

At the bottom of this chamber, you will have holes where the smaller pieces of bud can fall through. The holes are only large enough to allow a certain size of ground bud to fall through. Once the bud particle is small enough, it can fall into the final collection chamber. After grinding a few times you just unscrew the chamber and collect enough weed to use.

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Four-Piece Marijuana Grinder

In this weed grinder, you have a kief collection chamber that has a small screen instead of small holes. Beneath the chamber for weed collection(the one with the small holes), you will find the kief chamber. When you grind your cannabis, the pieces will fall through to the collection chamber. Also, the agitation of the grinder causes tiny, dust-like pieces to fall into the final chamber. This fine powder-like material is called kief.

Why Should I even bother with a Weed Grinder?

For sure you have seen people who chop up their weed with household tools commonly found in junk drawers everywhere. For example, small art scissors are very popular. Many people even use their fingers to break up the buds into small enough pieces. However, employing a cannabis grinder delivers several benefits that you wouldn’t find using other methods. Here are some of those benefits that you may not have thought of.

1. Getting Kief

The best thing about using a weed grinder is that you can collect the kief and enjoy this concentrated form of cannabis. This cannabis concentrate contains an abundance of cannabinoids and terpenes to enhance your cannabis experience. Kief particles break away from your buds while you are grinding. Just think of kief as being a higher potency and purer part of the buds you have in front of you. This higher potency is why so many people add kief to their joints, vape pens, bongs, and vaporizers.

If you are considering the purchase of a grinder to break up your buds, then you may want to think about how having that extra kief chamber might come in handy. It can cost a little more, but you may find that its benefits justify that extra little cost. Through utilizing this cannabis concentrate, you will be saving money every time you grind.

2. Potency

Breaking up your herbs make them even more potent, allowing you to either get a stronger buzz or use less weed. The reasoning is simple: When you grind your buds, the pieces are more evenly sized. That helps you increase the available surface area and allows the weed to burn more evenly.

Grinding your weed into smaller consistently sized pieces will make your joint less likely to canoe. Canoeing refers to the uneven burning of your joint which leads to huge waste. So, grinding will give you a more consistent and slower burn.

Lastly, grinding also reduces the contact between your skin and the buds. Some of the trichomes will stick to your skin, and not even make it into your system at all. When you utilize this simple and effective tool, you get to enjoy every bit of the product.

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3. Better Smell and Taste

When you grind your buds into smaller pieces, you will be releasing the aromas and flavours of the strain. That may not seem like a big deal at first when you just wanna smoke a bowl and get high quickly. However, enhancing the flavour can help you have the best possible cannabis smoking experience.

Other Benefits

When you utilize this very simple apparatus to grind the bud into pieces, it will save you a tremendous amount of time than if you had to do it by hand. That time saving alone will allow you to start smoking sooner.

Surprisingly you should also know that by using a grinder you can actually save some of your money. When it is evenly ground, you do not add as much of it to a joint or bowl when you smoke. You can stretch a bud or two of your favourite strain even further this way.

Grinding helps reduce the amount of smoke emanating from the joint, which might not seem like the best concept to you at first. But when the pieces are ground smaller, they will be more likely to burn evenly and completely. That will reduce the amount of smoke that would normally drift into the air from the end of your joint. When the cannabis particles do not burn evenly, you might not get as high, and the extra harsh smoke can cause you to cough more.

Finally, a grinder can act as a place to transport your buds safely. If you are attending a social gathering with your bud buddies, it looks much cooler to carry your buds in a grinder. The hardened chamber will also help to protect the party favours better than a plastic baggie might. It is much tougher to break a weed grinder than a plastic bag.

Bonus Tips for Choosing a Grinder

You may want to add the words zinc or aluminum to your online search for a weed grinder. These grinders tend to be more expensive, but many marijuana consumers feel they are worth the premium.

Look for a grinder that has a design consisting of a lot of holes and teeth. The extra holes and teeth make it easier to twist and break up the cannabis.

How to Use Your Grinder, Step-by-Step

It isn’t hard for new users to start grinding their cannabis as the pros do. By using the easy steps below, you will soon be enjoying a smooth, even smoke.

use-a-grinder-step-one-diagram
  1. Load Your Grinder

First, remove the lid. Now, gently pull the bud apart and break it into small pieces as shown in the photo. You want to use caution here, as touching it too much may cause the trichomes to stick to your fingers or fall to the floor. You do not want to put any buds in the center of your grinder. This is because the middle is occupied by the central post of the grinder. If you put it in the center, it will impede the grinding process and leave some buds not processed.

use-a-grinder-step-two-diagram
  1. Begin to Grind
    Now, place the lid back on the chamber. This will stop everything from flying all over the place while you operate the grinder. Hold the bottom with one of your hands and start rotating the top or lid with your other hand.

The resistance will be higher at first, but this doesn’t mean that you are doing it wrong. Just keep rotating and twisting until it begins to move more easily. Keep going until you do not feel much resistance at all.

  1. Agitate the Grinder
    Before you remove the lid on any of the lower chambers, you should gently tap it against your hand or a hard surface. This tapping will help to dislodge your cannabis from the teeth, so it goes to your collection chamber. That will also help agitate the particles and allow your kief to pass through the final screen.
  2. Collect the Cannabis
    The tapping is done, now you can separate your grinding chamber from the rest of apparatus and remove the ground cannabis. If you have only used your grinder a couple of times, there may not be very much kief yet. However, you can still see tiny bits starting to collect if you look at the kief chamber. Once you have used the grinder a few dozen times more, there will likely be more kief for you to collect.
  3. Using Your Cannabis
    You are only limited by your imagination with what you can do with your buds once they are ground up. The most popular by far is rolling up a joint, which is made easy when your weed is evenly ground. You could utilize it to pack a bowl or even make a cup of cannatea. Or try out one of many cannabis recipes, and enjoy using the herb in different edibles. If you are patient and dedicated, you may want to manufacture an isolate, oil, tincture, or extract.
step-four-diagram

Tips for Using Your Grinder

Once you have used your grinder a few times, you will most likely understand the basics. Now, you can move on to learning how to get the best grinding results.

To ensure that the final product is a fine consistency, don’t overfill the chamber. Appropriate filling ensures every piece of bud gets processed by the teeth.

You will also want to release some of the kief before opening the grinder. You can just flip your grinder upside down a few times to do this. If you want to boost the effectiveness of the kief collecting aspect of your grinder you can place a sanitized coin in your kief collection chamber. When you agitate the grinder, the kief will be more likely to separate from the surfaces of the grinder.

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Tips for Cleaning Your Grinder

With proper consumer maintenance, your weed grinder is likely to last for years. After using your grinder, you will want to clean it well using a soft bristle brush. When you clean your grinder, you will help prevent it from premature wear or rust. Avoid using harsh chemicals to clean the grinder. Metal cleaners or other harsh chemicals can ruin the tool.

You should also scrape the interior surfaces of the grinder. If you have compressed weed stuck there, then you can soak the chamber in some water before scraping. Once it is dry you should reassemble it, then keep it in a low humidity safe location.


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