If you’re in a pinch and have a bit of leftover weed, you can use this handy guide to learn how to make shatter or turn it into rosin. This complete guide will teach you everything you need to know about turning your bud into hash, saving you money at the dispensary.

How to make shatter at home the easy way 

There are a few ways to make shatter at home, but in this guide we’ll be focusing entirely on the easiest methods. Making shatter and rosin at home involves the same steps, which we’ve outlined below. However, we’ve also included a more complicated alternative that you can use if you want the full experience of making shatter with butane.

How to make DIY shatter and rosin 

Luckily, you only need a few things to make concentrates at home, and one of them is kief. You can get kief by running your leftover weed through a 3-chamber grinder with a kief collector or by using the strenuous method of running flower through mix micron bags that you can use to further refine into rosin or bubble hash. But once you have your kief, this method is an easy way to make shatter or rosin at home.

how to make shatter with hair straightener

You will need: 

  • Weed buds or kief
  • Parchment or wax paper
  • A hair straightener or iron
  • Oven mitts

How to make rosin and shatter: 

  1. Start by pouring your weed into a neat square shape onto a piece of parchment paper. If you’re using wax paper, make sure the wax side is facing down and not touching your kief. If you’re using ground-up weed buds, a finer grind will result increased oil extraction.
  2. Fold the paper around the kief into a tidy square package. Feel free to use tape if you need help holding it closed, and trim off the excess paper with a pair of scissors.
  3. Wrap this square into another square of parchment paper
  4. Turn your straightener or iron to the lowest setting — somewhere around the 350 -300 degree range — and allow it to heat for a few minutes.
  5. Press the straightener over the square kief package, taking care to hold it down firmly and clamp it shut tightly. Use the oven mitts if required to avoid burning yourself.
  6. Remove the paper from the hair straightener and unfold it. A honey colored substance should have been squeezed out of the kief. Continue this process until you get all of your kief pressed.
  7. This is a cannabis oil, which can then be scraped into a silicone puck for use as rosin dabs, or it can be laid on a flat surface to harden into shatter.
  8. Dab it up!

How to make shatter using butane 

If you want to go for a more authentic experience and feel like taking a risk, you can technically make shatter at home using butane. However, this method isn’t exactly recommended since it can be pretty dangerous. When working with gasses, you’re always running the risk of blowing yourself up — especially with butane, which is highly flammable and explosive.

What you’ll need: 

  • Flower (dry, not fresh)
  • Long glass extraction tube
  • Butane
  • Coffee filters and clamps
  • Glass dish
  • Convection oven
  • Vacuum pump

How to do it: 

  1. Pack an ounce of flower into the glass extraction tube. Make sure it’s packed in tightly, but not so tight that the butane can’t saturate all of your weed. Take care to avoid air pockets, too, and make sure you’re doing this outside in a well-ventilated area.
  2. On one end of your extractor you’ll find a small hole, and on the other side you’ll find a cap with a filter. Slowly spray the 12 ounce can of butane into the tube through the hole at the top until its empty. As the liquid gas travels through your weed, a thick, green-gray oil will drip through the filter. Make sure you use a glass dish to collect this oil that’ll turn into shatter.
  3. Fill up a double boiler on a hot electric stove. Seriously, don’t try this if you have a gas stove. Place your glass container on top of the double boiler and allow the liquid to evaporate. This purges the butane from the oil you collected in step two, making it safe to dab. Make sure you allow all of the solvent to boil away before dabbing, since residual butane can make you very sick. Your shatter will be finished when it stops bubbling.
  4. At this stage, you’ll have a thick amber-yellow oil with trace amounts of butane still left over. You’ll have to purge it one more time before you can smoke it by using a pressurized vacuum pump. The pump removes any leftover liquid butane using a 3 cfm one-stage vac pump. Lay the shatter down in a flat dish inside the chamber, and allow the pump to suck the air and butane out through the pump. Make sure the pump you use has a temperature gauge on it so that you can avoid burning your oil.
  5. Once everything is purged, you can allow the shatter to lay flat and harden. Then it’s good to dab.

Just keep in mind that we don’t recommend or endorse using this method. It’s on the riskier side, and we don’t want you to get hurt while trying to make hash. The stuff is like $20 at a dispensary, and you’re going to spend a lot more than that on the equipment you need to make it using this method anyway.

At the end of the day, making shatter and rosin is easy when you opt for the hair straightener method. It leaves behind a natural product without trace amounts of leftover chemicals or explosion risks. So with that said, give it a try and happy dabbing.

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Ben Walker writes for Stoner Things, covering the cannabis culture from a unique perspective. He doesn't just offer insights into the world of weed, but also provides hands-on reviews and tutorials for the latest products. With a decade of experience spanning cultivation and market trends, Ben advocates for informed and responsible cannabis use. His work goes beyond navigating the ever-changing cannabis landscape; it's about education and community development done right, coming from a place of knowledge and respect. If you want to stay up-to-date with cannabis trends and learn from an experienced guide, Ben's work is an invaluable resource.

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