Twenty-Two Smoke Shop Terms to Know

Before making your next selection in our online smoke shop or any other store, it’s important to fully understand your options. With hundreds of our best pipes, water pipes and accessories available for online order – and thousands for sale from our Denver-area locations – that’s no small feat. Unless you’re an industry professional, reaching fluency in head shop lingo can be easier said than done. Our team is happy to answer every question you may have when you stop into our local smoke shops, but that’s not too helpful after business hours if you’re looking to buy online right away.

If you’re new to the smoke shop scene, or a little hazy on the latest lingo, fear not. Our smoke shop writers are here to help with our online guide to smoke shop terminology with quick explanations of these twenty-two common phrases.

  • Adapter – This simple attachment converts between is used to protect your piece from a banger’s excessive heat. Adapters can also change the angle, size and sex of your piece’s joint.
  • Ash Catcher – This adapter filters smoke from a water pipe, lowering the amount of tar which enters its main chamber. Ash catchers are meant to keep your water clean and free of unwanted debris.
  • Atomizer – A vaporizer’s heating element is also known as an atomizer. This is the component of a vaporizer that actually does the vaporizing of your ejuice. It’s heated by an electrical charge, and that heat is transferred to the dry herb or wick material, releasing the smoke or vapor.
  • Banger – A type of quartz nail used for smoking concentrates or herb.
  • Beaker Bong – A type of bong which is typically created from a lab beaker or shaped like one. Before smoke shops like ours were online and on every corner, access to glass pieces was much more limited. In those days, science lab glass was often modified and used in place of legit water pipes – hence, the original beaker bongs.
  • Bong – The most known form of a water pipe. Bongs generally have tube-shaped mouthpiece, a stem rising at an angle from the water inside through the bong’s outer wall, and a bowl to hold smoking material.
  • Bowl – The bowl-shaped component of hand pipes or water pipes in which smoking material is placed, lit on fire and inhaled.
  • Bubbler – These water pipes use downstems to draw smoke through water from the device’s bowl. This cools the smoke just prior to inhalation, giving users a more enjoyable smoking experience. They’re named for the bubbling of water when users inhale.
  • Carb – The tiny hole on the side of your pipe is best known as a carb. When smoking, users cover the carb with their finger or thumb while the herb in a bowl is heated and inhaled. When the carb is uncovered partway through smoke inhalation, cool, outside air can follow the built up smoke into users’ lungs.
  • Chillum – A small, straight glass hand pipe. Chillums don’t have carbs. Their size and structure make the experience of smoking a chillum closely resemble the use of a joint rolled in paper, but unlike rolling papers, chillums don’t add flavor and they’re reusable.
  • Cone – Some rolling paper brands like RAW offer pre-rolled cones. Fill these cones with your ground-up legal herb of choice, and they’re ready to smoke.
  • DabberDabbers are smoke shop accessories used to scoop concentrates onto your nail for use.
  • Diffused Downstem – Unlike traditional downstems (which we’ve defined just below), diffused downstems have slits on their bottom surface to filter their smoke, much like a percolator would.
  • Downstem – Downstems direct smoke from your bowl slide downward into the water of your water pipe, where it’s then filtered.
  • Dugout – Dugouts are usually compact devices made of metal or wood. They usually contain a small compartment for the storage of dry herbs.
  • Dry Piece – Many smoking devices use water filtration. Those that don’t – like chillums, sidecars, and sherlocks – are otherwise known as dry pieces.
  • Filter – A filter – otherwise known as a screen – helps to separate herb material from the remainder of a pipe. Without a filter, fresh or ashed material would easily fall through to a pipe’s interior and be inhaled by users along with smoke.
  • Glass Blunt – Glass blunts are a category of hollow, simplistic glass hand pipes. Each contains a smaller hollow tube in its interior which also functions as the glass blunt’s mouthpiece. To use a glass blunt, pack the interior straw with your desired supply of herb and push the mouthpiece tube forward as you smoke. This pushes the ashes from the pipe’s interior, removing them as they appear. The appearance and functioning of glass blunts resemble standard variety paper blunts and other forms of rolled paper.
  • Hand Pipe – As their name suggests, these pipes are compact enough to fit in a user’s hand. While hand pipes are most often made of glass, other hand pipe materials are also common including metal and silicone.
  • Incycler – A type of recycler bong for consuming dry herb and concentrate.Like other recyclers, incyclers use a two-chamber system for filtration. However, most recyclers have two adjacent chambers, while the second chamber of an incycler is housed inside of the first.
  • Inline – Inlines are also known as the “sideways stems” of water pipes and ash catchers. They usually have multiple piercings throughout their surface.
  • Lathe Made – “Lathe made glass” is created using a specialty glassblowing process in which creators blow through a tube known as a “lathe” onto pieces as they’re formed. The use of lathes lets glassblowers add unique shapes to the structures of their lathe made pieces.
  • For explanations of more essential smoke shop terms, stay tuned for next month’s follow-up guide!

    Our Smoke Shop Has Everything You Need!

    Online or on-site, 710 Pipes is here to answer all of your smoke shop questions from A to Z – and to sell you the best products on the market today. We offer a quality selection of smoke shop products and accessories including hand pipes, water pipes, vaporizers and so much more! Our Northglenn and Denver smoke shop locations are both open seven days a week. Denver University students get 10% off with a valid student ID!

    Still staying indoors in the name of social distancing? If you’re over age 21 in Colorado or other legal U.S. states seeking quality pipe shop products, our online smoke shop has several options available for immediate purchase from the safety and comfort of your couch. You’ll also find exceptional prices on hundreds more of our popular products – all deliverable straight to your doorstep. Whether you’re shopping online or onsite, 710 Pipes is proud to provide you with the very best pipe shop products on the market today.

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