Why am I not getting melty dry sift?

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Originally Posted by anhedonia

Another question....Does it matter if trichome stalks are in your final product? Do they melt as well?

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It's always been a personal goal of mine to extract simply just the heads. The times that I achieve this goal, the results are definitely far superior. However, still some trains simply don't melt, even if you just harvest the 'heads'.

Making full melt dry sift is a much harder task that making FMCD bubble hash imo.

Keep up the hard work, someone's gotta do it.

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Originally Posted by anhedonia

Still no full melt.... I compensate for that by crumbling dry frozen trim up onto the contaminate screen.... All of my sift burns instead of melting.

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I wonder why....

As soon as you crumble your starting material, you are dooming yourself. This introduces fine particulate, the enemy of meltiness. Trim is also not first quality material to be starting with.

Try this: (In a walk in freezer if you can, with all materials and tools pre-frozen) Take a nicely trimmed and cured good sized bud with lots of crystals on it, put it on top of the first screen.... gently roll it from 1 side to the other a few times.... remove bud... get fresh bud, roll it gently back and forth a few times.... keep repeating... GENTLY rolling.. not bashing, shaking, scraping, rubbing, carding or whatever... Then you will have the best chance of obtaining the product you seek.

Yes, the yield will be much lower than if you crush or crumble your starting material, but the purity will also be way up. In the concentrate game, the more pure your final product, the less yield you get. If you go for quantity, then you sacrifice quality, period.

Yes purists (ie Bubbleman, Sunkman Sam, ond others of similar taste) consider capitulate stalks contaminant as the essential oils and thc are contained in the trichome heads. Most folks would be happy to have just heads and stalks and no other contaminants, which should hopefully still be pretty melty in the bowl.

Hope this helps some,
YBG

Thanks for the info. And when I say trim I'll tell you what Im talking about. I cut all debris leaf off, all water leaves and tips of larger bud leaves that dont have resin on the ends. All that doess is prepare the bud to be trimmed for hash. Then all buds that wont fill a bowl when dry are tossed in the pile. I then put the trim in an herb dryer (no heat) for a few days until good enough to make hash.

ive been having decent results both lightly cutting up (joint consistency) OR grinding(pulverizing) buds to flour consistency in a coffee bean grinder then running it through the screens on the screen set. it takes longer for me to clean when its a flour consistency as i have to push alot more through the bottom screen while the trichomes catch (i feel its a more advanced technique but could possibly yield more)

where as if i cut it rough like with scissors i find i still get a decent yeild and can clean it up faster as well as the bottom collection plate is decent smoke too.

as far as i have noticed trichome stalks DO NOT melt. maybe some strains they do but yet to find this.

glad your still working hard to achieve the full melt kief you will be happily rewarded when you do as you will get faster and better at it quite quickly.

also i would recommend going bone dry bud/resin(cured/dried for a month at least from harvest so the resin isnt sticky) over cold. i prefer for my own dry extraction to get the bud so dry it crumbles if you squish it slightly and resin feels dusty rather than sticky almost like a gritty fine dust on your fingers after chopping some bud up rather than sticky.

hope that helps keep us updated :) i know you can make the melty.

oh ya i havent used cold hardly at all but have fine results without. i used cold once in 2006 i think with a tumbler and never did it again cause it created a mess with condensation when i pulled the dry trim from the freezer. a walk in freezer/fridge should avoid this. i have yet to try this. but personally if your freezing it then pulling it into a warm environment for tumbling or sifting i wouldnt do that. if you want a direct suggestion to try.
-i would first get bud and resin BONE dry like ultra super duper dry crumbly dry(no sticky)
-i would then scissor/crumble it to joint consistency(not powder) over top screen
-card back and forth lightly keep lifting screen checking for green tinge to the gold powder(if going for yeild)
-then card/flick the resin across the screen and lay it flat surface area along the screen like buttering toast then scrape into a pile again and repeat slowly on the 107 and 70 to avoid melting or clumping on the card edge.
-and most importantly START MAGNIFYING! like 200x magnify or more.

nice to see your still stoked on getting full melt kief :) its well worth it in my opinion :) keep us updated if you need more help or if you get your technique down show us the melt. peace.

Search through Kif It Kunta 's posts, he gets into a lot of the finer details about dry sifting.

Here is just one:

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Originally Posted by Kif it Kunta

Anhedonia - don't give up! I know you can produce excellent quality dry sifted hash..try the following dry sifting method with your Bubble Box....also check out other dry sifting threads here at fmb.com...and I'm sure you will get there.


Probably the easiest way to get melty dry sift is to do two "runs", the first for quality (melty) and the second run for quantity (to remove all the resin heads from the material)....lets deal with the quality run, the aim is to separate about 10% ~ 20% of the resin on the material on this first run through, this should be done gently with bud that is dried, cured and properly stored for several months or more for best results.

Remove the three mesh frames from the Bubble Box, as they are easier to work with that way.
Lightly grind or break up frozen buds over the top screen, a few grams at a time.
Use a massage vibrator on the side of top of the frame or tap the side or top of the frame with a padded drum type stick or simply pick up the frames and use a very gentle horizontal oscillating action for a minute or so.
Lift up the top frame, and over a container, plate or tray you have nearby, up turn the frame and tap the wooden frame a few times to remove the lightly sifted material and then lightly grind another few frozen over the top mesh and repeat.
Once you have worked the material, use the Bubble Box card to scrape up all the powder that has fallen through the top mesh onto the second two meshes and put this on the top mesh that has previously been tapped out upside to make sure it is clean.
Use vibration with carding, tapping, oscillations or carding until about 3/4 of the kif has passed through the top mesh.
With a 20x or 30x magnifying glass check out the stuff that remains on top of the mesh, this should be mostly non-active stalks and broken up plant matter with a small % of resin heads.
You can resift the fall through again through the top mesh, monitor your progress with a magnifying glass, but make sure you stop before you add more contaminants to the lower meshes (it's best to not allow the crap in rather than try to remove it later which is why a vibrating stack of frames alone won't produce great quality dry sift) A magnifying glass is an asset to the dry sifter.
Remove the top frame and set it aside.
Use a combination of vibration with scraping a card over the second mesh until about 3/4 has passed through this second mesh screen. Repeat this again, making sure to up turn the screen frame and tap it several times to clean it, then scrape up the dry sift on the 3rd mesh and resift it on the second mesh frame until about 3/4 has passed through again.
Now that the resin is sitting on the third mesh, use a combination of vibration and a plastic card screed the resin to and fro over the mesh. The round shaped resin heads larger than 70 micron will remain about the mesh, the bits of leaf and stalks will eventually get broken up by the carding action and will pass through this third mesh screen. This takes more time than all the other steps put together.
Keeping working the resin over the third mesh until about 20% ~50% has passed through the mesh while monitoring your progress with a magnifying glass.
The stuff that passes through will be mostly non-active stuff with some small trichomes. The resin that stays above the mesh will, depending on your technique and the quality of the starting material, be mostly resin heads and will bubble and melt.

and once that's done, rework the material through the box to separate all the remaining resin heads. I usually grind the material more finer and card it through the top two meshes several times...resifting while monitoring your progress with a mag glass will improve this rough kif into decent quality hash that will form into a solid with thumb in palm pressure....it's my opinion that if loose dry sift won't form into a solid form with just thumb pressure then there's too much rubbish in there and not enough resin heads.

There's a lot of satisfaction from producing and inhaling hash with such purity. A pea sized amount of this loose resin powder that you've cleaned over the 70 micron mesh will give an excellent buzz that will hard hit your forehead and warm your ears and will be 15 times cleaner for your lungs than the bud it came from. Since this resin is so pure you can inhale and hold it longer than bud, much like vaping.
The best thing about smoking quality dry sift is that you will wake up in the morning feeling fresh and clean, not hung over from inhaling lots of hay which you get from burning bud.

A good way to use your mag glass is to scoop up a little bit of material or resin on the Bubble Box card and hold it close to a light and then check it out.

Happy Hashing!

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Hey, thanks for the replies! I'll be making more with some blue dream and afgoo at the first of may. So I'll try some of these new suggestions. Bought a 30x jewelers loupe today. I have a little jar of some jack herer hash that I never sifted over the 70u, but when that gets here I'll dump that pile onto the 70u and clean it with the proper magnification. I really doubt that stuff melts though.
And thanks again for the help.

you might wanna go even higher magnification but hopefully that loupe will help.
i know ive said it a bunch but the usb microscopes are the way to go hehe you dont have to squint or look into a small area you can put it full screen on your computer and look at it on your computer screen full size its really easy and you can keep it perma focused kinda if you go for super close ups where you lay it flat against the table and i just use a small peice of white paper for the slide and do a small pinch under it quickly check put it back keep sifting etc works super good and fast. just an idea :) heres the microscope i use if your interested.

Veho VMS-001, 20-200x Magnification USB Digital:...
Veho VMS-001, 20-200x Magnification USB Digital:...

i just used google and it came up with UK but im sure you can find that model on amazon locally :) good luck and i hope your new strains will have nice sized trichomes that catch easy on the 70u :)

-when you get down to the 70u pile it all into a pile and get a slip of white paper nice and clean. scoop up a small small amount that would fit under the microscope. look at this under the microscope (or loupe if it works) and if you use a usb one take a picture or memorize and note the head:contaminate ratio. put the kief back on the 70u to clean more.

-use the same method(technique) your trying to evaluate and clean on the 70u then after 5-10 minutes of gentle carding using the SAME method to eliminate variables. scoop a small amount up again with clean white paper again check under scope the head:contaminate ratio is it better or worse? it should most likely be more heads and less contaminate.
-repeat this till clean(if ratio improves each time magnified) OR change technique till it cleans it faster etc.

i also should add that when im cleaning the kief on the 70u ive noticed lately without magnifying that its usually done when the pile stops shrinking or starts shrinking very slowly. it has taken me many cleanings to be aware of the rate at which kief contaminate ie capitate stalks etc fall through(i still magnify). but the pile basically stops shrinking(shrinks real slowly) when the heads are left. hopefully soon ill make a breakthrough and be speed cleaning the sift scalable to large amounts haha :) once i do ill let you all know how if i get it super fast :) peace :)

heres 200x vs 50x or so. to give you an idea of why i like the usb :)

200x
http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler...efdrysift3.jpg
50x
http://www.fullmeltbubble.com/galler...efdrysift6.jpg

Very nice shots, and good luck getting your stuff to bubble!