My 1st bubble run or How not to make bubble

I recently got some bags and couldn't wait to try them out. I had 35g of super crystally trim from a couple different plants that I had saved to make bubble with. I was gonna save up a bunch of trim and do a big run, but I figured I better start out small for a first try. That way I could make mistakes and learn on a small amount without worrying about screwing up a large amount of material, so I went with a 35g first run.

I wanted to try making bubble by hand stirring the first time and then maybe later move to using a mixer. I figured I would introduce less contams(broken leaf) with this method, and it would give me a baseline to compare for when I used a mixer.

Since it is winter here and we had gotten some snow I figured I would use snow instead of ice. This turned out to be a mistake!!!

(Note to self: Experimentation is good, but do NOT when doing something for the FIRST TIME)

The bags I got have 4 sizes; 220u, 90u, 73u and 25u

I put the bags in the bucket starting with the 25u, then the 73u, then the 90u and finally the 220u.



Here is a look inside the bags before and after adding snow

http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler...inside_bag.jpg
http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler...snow_added.jpg

I added some water

http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler...ater_added.jpg

more snow and water

http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler..._and_water.jpg

threw in the trim

http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler...trim_added.jpg

more snow

http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler..._more_snow.jpg

and finally some more water

http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler...more_water.jpg

Here is what it looked like after mixing with a wooden spoon for 20 minutes by hand

http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler...for_20mins.jpg

I began to question the wisdom of using snow while I was stirring. It was like stirring a Slushy from 7-11. How was the resin going to settle in a slush mixture? Not very well I think.

After letting the bucket/bags sit for 20 minutes, I pulled out the 220u bag.

After all the water drained there was a mass of snow and plant mixture in the bag. I set the bag aside.

I pulled out the 90u bag, and sprayed water on the outside and inside of the bag to get any resin off the bag walls. This was done over the bucket.

http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler...t_pull_90u.jpg

I lightly sprayed some water in the bag to get the resin to the center of the bag, then I set the bottom of the bag on some paper towels. The paper towels sucked the excess water out of the screen and resin and made for easy scraping with a credit card.

I put the 90u resin on some cardboard

http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler..._cardboard.jpg

then I repeated this for the other two bags

http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler..._cardboard.jpg
http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler..._cardboard.jpg

All three grades wet

http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler...dboard_wet.jpg

and chopped and drying

http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler...nd_chopped.jpg
http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler...90u_drying.jpg
http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler...73u_drying.jpg
http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler...25u_drying.jpg

Now comes the bad news, the yeild from the first run, those three piles combined, was a disappointing .5g (half a gram)

The trim I used was super crystally and should have yeilded a lot more so I was pretty bummed out at this point and didn't take any more pictures.

I put the bags back in the back, added more water, no more snow, and stirred for another 20 minutes. I pulled bags again and got about another .5g (half a gram).

I said screw it and tossed the plant matter in a bowl, cleaned out the bags and hung them up to dry.

The next morning I was getting ready to throw away the moist trim in the bowl when I noticed that it seemed to be still really covered in resin. I decided I would try to make some iso to see just how much goodness there was still left in the material. I figured there had to be a bunch since I only got about 1 gram out of two bubble runs.

I put the moist trim in a jar, added 99% iso, shook for 30secs and drained/strained the trim. The trim really held the iso so I did squeeze it to get it all out. This did darken the iso a bit.

I put the bowl in front of a fan and after it evapped it looked like this

http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler..._with_snow.jpg

Once the dish was scraped, I ended up with 1.75g of hardened oil.

So the total from the trim was approx 2.75 grams of resin products.

I don't think snow works very well with hand mixing, I don't think it has the physical force to efficiently knock the resin glands off the leaves. Snow might work well with a mixer, but it will be a long time before I try it haha.

I think snow keeps your liquid slushy and doesn't allow the resin glands to settle to the bottom very well either.

I do need to get a 2nd bucket so I can put the bags into it for the 2nd run and pour the water back through the bags to minimize losing resin.

I do plan on doing another run hand mixing, WITH ICE, as soon as I get more trim. I will try to take pics and make a followup post when I do.

Any comments, suggestions, critiques, etc are greatly appreciated.

Was it fresh frozen trim or dried trim?

The ratio I usually find that you get from running material through bubblebags is approx 5-10% of total DRY material weight. This means that if you're using fresh frozed material, you have to divide all your numbers by four, to compensate for the added water weight. If it was dry trim, you'd most likely get between 1.7 and 3.5 of hash by the time everything's dry. If it was WET however, it'd be like the equivalent of using 9 grams of trim, which would give you between half a gram and a gram of finished product.

But yeah, I think you're gonna find that the snow melts far faster than ice, as it's a lot less dense than ice, and has more surface area for the water to touch and melt. I thought about using snow a couple days ago, but just the thought of all the factories within 20miles of my house made me think otherwise....

I'd like to see a run with the same amount of the same kind of trim, with ice instead of snow.

The trim was dried and covered in crystals.

I purposely kept only the best of the best of the trim for the purpose of having very high quality material to use for my first time. From previous experiences with these strains and making iso, I know I would have gotten over 3g if I iso'ed that 35 grams.

Actually the snow didn't really melt, it was a very fine snow. I actually kept adding more water as it melted down, but it pretty much stayed slushy for the first round. It wasn't until the second round that it was pretty much all water and no slush.

I think a mixer might beat the trichs off the leaves when using snow, but I don't think the snow itself has enough 'body' or force to do the job like ice does.

I am pretty picky when it comes to saving trim so the next run will be similar in terms of quality and strains. I will take some pics of the trim next time too.