Testing THC Content

Kaptain Kron said:

this to me does not say breeders it says the testing companys that are testing our buds are wrong please tell me how this is not worded that way im not trying to fight im stating facts and i happen to be ina bad mood and its coming out in my typing.

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ahhh here we go a twist of words. Cause I never said "testing companys" lol Your right it was my fault for not specifying the company But i didn't say testing company nor breeder company. I just said I wanted to check "company's" figures. I guess reading it I could see how you thought I was implying testing companys, but Im not.

Felder said:

Alot of people are unfamiliar with procedures and alot of scientific principles and methods. Ignorance is not a crime, it is a lack of knowledge. Stupidity....well there is just no excuse for that. I think the original poster was just unaware as labs are a bit of an anomally to the normal world, people in white coats tend to be a bit of a mystery to people, but underneath...we are all just like everyone else. We like our smoke, our drinks and our plants...we just play with lasers at work.

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Why would you try and attack my intelligence when you clearly don't know who I am or what your talking about. As just discussed I never questioned your cute little friends in white coats rather the corporations that make money off of the buying of seeds.

I did not attack your intelligence. As a matter of fact I defended it. Being unaware of something is not stupidity. If you think I was then re-read what you quoted there. I know nothing about you, you are 100% correct, I was trying to clarify due to the fact that you asked a question and defend the fact that you weren't "stupid" perhaps just unaware. Perhaps I was incorrect in my assessment.

Now if you were asserting that breeders were simply stating 75% THC without having the cannabis actually tested then yes I agree with you. That is marketing. But for those who will believe such marketing without proof to back it up then they deserve to get their money taken for an inferior product for believing such hype without doing the investigation and the research into it to see if such claims are backed up with scientific evidence. If someone is too lazy to do the work then I have no pity for them.

Also I doubt that most breeders shell out the cash to have their strains tested, what do they care, a pretty picture and a good write up have sold seeds for years. So I am very suspect of any breeder putting that kind of tag on their product.

Finally it is just common sense that tells us that there is variation in any strain you are growing so any specific claim on a certain strain has a degree of error to it due to phenotypic variation, care, nutrients, growing medium, etc.

I understand you may feel attacked in this thread but all I have done is try to help with some of the knowledge I have, never once did I attack you, suggest you were stupid or lacking in intelligence, I was merely trying to shed some light on the subject at hand.

and even if they said it was a huge amount of THC chances of most growers achieving it is another question )

ill be honest and take the heat it was actually me questioning your intelligence but i jump to conclusions alot part of my disability and your wording wasnt excellent you cleared it up i understand what you mean and agree why do they lie to us? He really did defend your inteligence sir

You need a gas chromatograph and an analyzer probe. The whole setup will cost you about 8-9k. I actually have one, its an HP 5890 II GC dual, with an FID. Ive used it to test cyclic terpenes and thc before. its not as easy as you think, and you need knowledge of how the machines work unless u want to chuck down 21k for the complete automatic ones. I would NOT recommend buying one unless you have worked in a lab before.

theinhibitor said:

You need a gas chromatograph and an analyzer probe. The whole setup will cost you about 8-9k. I actually have one, its an HP 5890 II GC dual, with an FID. Ive used it to test cyclic terpenes and thc before. its not as easy as you think, and you need knowledge of how the machines work unless u want to chuck down 21k for the complete automatic ones. I would NOT recommend buying one unless you have worked in a lab before.

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Props to owning one of those and posting on this site. You probably have a pretty cool job (or hobby).


Okay, so I just googled this thread and have to bump it. I majored in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering in college, and have good knowledge (and practice) of analytical chemistry techniques. I am not convinced that you need a GC or FID to test the percentage of THC in bud (or more specifically, solution). At least not for the precision I'm looking for. I'd only want comparative measurements.

The reason I'm even looking for this information is because I'm interested in finding good solvent extraction techniques, specifically different types of fatty acids (oils) and sugar alcohols like glycerin. So a good scientist needs a comparative quantification of how much THC is dissolved in the solution.

I'm thinking the best choice is UV-Vis spectroscopy. A lab instrument would still be prohibitively expensive, I agree, but luckily we all already have very good light radiation detectors: our eyes! I've seen on TV that sometimes when they catch a smuggler or someone with lots of plant material, they test it with a field kit that turns a different color to make sure it actually has THC and isn't, say, a mistaken hops dealer selling to friendly homebrewers. From what I've seen on TV, it reacts with THC and turns blue. They grind up a little of the bud, drop a solution containing this chemical in it, and if it turns blue it has THC. I assume that the more THC, the more of this blue product is produced. That seems like enough for me.

Tell me if my logic isn't sound, but couldn't you:
1) extract equiv mass of bud in set volume of each of the oils
2) dilute samples with a clear solvent to bigger equiv volumes, to a point where all the solutions were fairly clear (as opposed to green, or wtv color a negative blank would be) to your eyes to prevent "noise"
3) drop equiv amount of this dye solution in it
4) rearrange the translucent containers from darkest to lightest (highest to lowest), as seen to your eye from the same vantage point with the same light source. I figure some may be very close, but you have the freedom to experiment with light sources and angles. I think I even have a glass prism I could use as a diffraction grating... And mark different spots against the wall and bust out a calculator, if I chose (or was forced) to be rigorous.

I found on google that this chemical is known as "Fast Blue B" (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/480177)- it's $63 for 10 g (which is way too much mass for this, but a whole lot cheaper than a GC setup) but it's backordered on Sigma-Aldrich, and I don't think they or any chemical or biotech company ships to residential addresses (and I don't blame them!). It also seems that the field kit (packed columns with this stuff on the media) is not for sale to normal, non-cop people.

Perhaps the chemist I quoted, or one of the other chemists/smart people on this thread, can think of a solution (no pun intended)?? Is there a way for people to get non-sketchy, non-regulated, but specialty chemicals like this? To be used for good science, not as precursors for consumption, like all the meth-head idiots that ruined chemistry for all non-professional chemists! I think this is the answer to the original poster's, and my, question. (Adding that to compare flower buds you would just vary the "strain" of the buds in step 1 instead of varying the solvent - maybe someday I'll tell you the best one, haha. If you had numbers and good optic knowledge of prism measurements, you could divide by the mass of bud you use, you would get what I would call "% THC", although it would truly only be a reduced variable and empirically good for other measurements taken using the same technique... OR you just keep "standards" - in your fridge? - of solutions you thought were "really weak", "average", and "exceptionally strong")

Thanks for any advice