This is some awesome info Jack. I totally saw some stuff left over on the leaves that i threw out, and was trying to figure out some ways to get as close to %100 of the usable THC off the plant material as i could. one thing that i was going to invest in was a mini wash machine, they run about $85 new. It will bring up the price of materials a bit, but i think this would do a lot better (just put it on a 30-45 min cycle). It probably wont cycle fast enough to push everything off, but what r ur thoughts on something like this to move the plant material through?
moto,
That definetly looks like it might have some good possibilities. I remember reading something 5 or so years back (probably in High Times) about a large out door grow operation down in Central or South America where they were using a full size washing machine to make hash. And they just weren't using trim but also doing some loads with the whole plant.
Basically they were just loading the tub with plant material, water and ice and letting it run thru a wash, rinse and spin cycle and having it discharge into large barrels to let everything settle out. I seem to remember they had a picture of a good size pile of big hash pucks they were getting from this process.
I think we've already come to the conclusion that the electric blender is not a good idea because it chops the plant material up to fine and makes it to difficult to seperate from the trichs.
The more I think about that little mini washing machine the more I'm liking the idea. Maybe the initial agitation might be a little weak but there's nothing saying you couldn't first beat the trim in a 5 gallon bucket with the paint mixer and then dump that into the washing machine and run it thru the mini-washer next (maybe several times). I think the spin, rinse, spin part of the cycle might do a lot for helping get the trichs free and isolated. You could have the mini-washer discharge thru a strainer into another 5 gallon bucket and let that stand over night for settling. And then immediately put the material you strained out back in the mini-washer for another go around and catch that discharge in another bucket. And so on and so on until you figured out where the point of dimishing return was where you weren't getting any more trichs off the material.
And who knows, maybe the more gentle agitation of the mini-washer (if done for a longer time or multiple times) still might be sufficent to break the trichs lose with out breaking the plant material down so fine to where you end up with less of it in the final product. Fuck oh dear man, I think you just might be on to something with that mini-washer.
What about putting the trim in some of those fine meshed "ice-o-later" bags I've heard about and then putting that into the mini-washer. You'd get the trichs to wash out of the bag but yet keep 99% + of the plant material out of the water you wanted to settle the trichs out of.
More later.
