Are you a bud connoisseur? Many people who smoke, vaporize or cook with medical marijuana prepare the flowers before use. This entails either crushing the buds in a grinder, mashing them with your fingers, or cutting them up with scissors.
Let’s look at the benefits and drawbacks of these three methods.
Grinder:
+ The grinder is a handy invention for anyone needing to obliterate their herbs into fine powder. A grinder requires little effort and can do a fairly good job of breaking apart the bud. Some grinders come with a stash compartment built in.
– Grinders are hard to clean. While grinding, a lot of the most potent pollen from the plant ends up stuck in the teeth of the grinder. This can be difficult to remove, and is not something you would want to wash away. Grinders can be wasteful for those that like to conserve.
Cost: around $20 online with shipping
Using your hands
+ If the bud is dry enough, rubbing it between two fingers should do the trick. More humid bud that has not been cured properly or missed an extra day hanging will not break up easily with your fingers.
– The only downfall of using your fingers is you will inevitably end up with pollen on your fingers, so if you need to be discrete it’s best to not physically touch the bud.
Cost: Free!
Scissors
+ The real connoisseur, according to insider sources, use scissors to finely chop their buds into pieces. With scissors, you get to thoroughly clean the bud, ridding it of sticks and stems, excess leaves and any other debris you may find. The scissors that work best have needle point blades and equal size finger holes. The main reason connoisseurs like to use scissors is that they do not waste a flake of good bud while chopping. Buds will not be stuck in a grinder, or mashed into your finger, they will be where it counts, in your stash tin!
– Not sure if there are any, except that eventually they will need cleaning. Unless you have a jar of oil, alcohol, or this new jar of cleaning solution, cleaning the resin off the scissors can get sticky.
Cost: around $15-20 online with free shipping