VladFromOG
Member
The Vapor Volumes 2.00 7.2013
by VladTheImpaler aka JustAFigmentOfYours
Foreword:
Greetings, stoners! My name, when I first emerged in the scene at Overgrow, was Vlad the Impaler, but some of you will recognize me more recently as justafigmentofyours. Whats important is, way back in the mid nineties during the medicinalization movement, I reverse engineered the only real option for vaporizing at the time, the Vapor Bros, and released the plans for free online, in an attempt to help patients to medicate healthily and efficiently without paying a ridiculous $500 for a hacked up soldering iron.
In the decades since, vaping has really caught on, and so has purified concentrates, which is really exciting. Unfortunately, this popularity has led several profiteering individuals and dispensaries to spread a lot of misinformation about the medications they provide in order to charge hefty surpluses.
It is my hope to set the record straight about the various forms of BHO and other highly refined cannabinoids, so that people will stop overpaying for impure, low purity crude concentrates like Rick Simpson Oil, and stop funding the rebranded, oil burning ecigs sold as wax vapes like the Dabbler (For examples).
A lot of what I will write will go against some of the dearly held mysticism involved with concentrate making, but it is based both in a firm understanding of the science involved, and in the years of experience I have gained making BHO regularly since 1998, and I will not apologize for the inevitable upset I will cause by stating facts.
We will begin with a quick primer on vaporization, the process and the reasons for doing so. We will cover the types of marijuana materials that can be vaporized and the different ways to vaporize them. We will then describe the different techniques used to vaporize, examine each ones benefits and drawbacks, and compare the various commercial options on the market. By the end of this work, you will have gained a comprehensive knowledge about vaporizing and concentrates.
Please note that this text is meant to guide those in the medical marijuana community and citizens in jurisdictions where marijuana is legal to consume. Do not handle or use marijuana where it is illegal! Obey all local laws! If you don't agree with your local laws, change them!
Whats new in 2.0:
Complete reworking of the BHO making process. No longer using the tube method, this new method doubles yield and halves amount of butane used.
Also included new hybrid CO2/Butane extraction instructions
Better solvent free oil making instructions.
Debunking: winterization
Plus new reviews and more in depth vaporizer analysis.
Chapters:
Foreword
1) What is vaporizing?
a. A quick primer
b. Why vaporize?
2) The materials
a. Herb
b. Hash
e. Isomerization/Alteration
f. The Myth of Winterizing.
3) The apparatus
a. Skillets (Conduction)
b. Drawn Air (Convection)
c. Forced Air (Convection)
d. Hot Knives (Conduction)
e. Fritted Discs (Convection)
f. Concentrate Bowls (Convection/Conduction)
g. Nails/dabbing (Conduction)
h. Ecigs/VapePens (Conduction)
Afterword
1 – What is vaporizing?
a. Vaporizing is simply evaporating without burning. It can be accomplished by many means, but most methods focus on gentle, indirect heat. Whats important is that the temperature of the item being vaporized never reaches its combustion point, or the temperature at which it breaks down. With marijuana, the actives vaporize at about 300 degrees, and break down at about 500, so when you roast a bowl with a Bic lighter (flame temp:3500 degrees), you destroy most of the goodies. Really, with smoking, the only reason you get anything at all is because the ember formed heats and vaporizes the weed underneath. Vaporizers address this by (ideally) never getting above 500 degrees or by using indirect heat.
b. Because the temperature never exceeds the combustion temp, the active compounds never get destroyed, or broken down into harmful byproducts. Whenever you raise somethings temperature above its combustion point it generates CO, Benzene, soot, and a whole host of other nasty carcinogenic things, and that is true for marijuana, too. By not allowing the actives in pot to combust through vaporizing, not only is the relative potency of the weed increased fourfold, but you also completely eliminate any harmful health effects that you may experience from burning and inhaling smoke. No worries about asthma/emphysema, cancer, or stuffed noses, and your stash goes farther!
2 - The Materials
The type of material you have effects how you will vaporize. Generally, it is desirable to concentrate your weed as much as possible if you want a clean vaping experience; the less plant material is in your pot/hash/oil, the less unwanted combustion will occur and the cleaner your hit will be.
a. Herb – Just good ole' weed. It can be sugar trim, nugs, shake, even leaf – the great thing about vaporizing is that you will get a good stone whatever your starting material, but you will have to use more the less potent/resinous your herb material. Unprocessed, dried weed can be vaped with fritted discs, skillets, or drawn/forced air vapes. You don’t have to do any further processing to use any of these vapes – but each of these will char to a varying degree, and the vapor will be much dryer than hash or oils.
b. Hash – This is the physically separated trichomes of the marijuana plants. There are a variety of grades and types, with purities ranging from 30% to 80% cannabinoids. As these are the trichomes, there are still a bit of plant material, and a large amount of the secondary essential oils like limonene, myrcene, and carophylline are preserved, which can really contribute to a smoother smoke. The trichomes, called keif when loose, can be pressed under gentle heat to burst the resin glands together, forming a play-do like squidgy mass.
You can obtain the trichomes a number of ways – you can shake ground marijuana over a fine screen (100 micron mesh works well for me), which will let the trichomes break off and fall through, which can be collected from underneath. This is the traditional method of making Moroccan style hash. You can rub the buds with your hands until they are coated in resin, then you can scrape off your hands. This is the traditional Nepali style of hash making. Both these ways are very inefficient and aren’t widely used in the west anymore. Heck, if you’re vaporizing, Nepali hash is a bit gross – its got a ton of skin oils and dirt.
You can add ground marijuana (of any grade) to ice water and agitate it for an hour or so, then pour it through mesh buckets (sold online as bubble bags, they are cheap and worth it). Generally 3-5 different mesh buckets are included, of descendingly finer mesh size, so that after pouring your slurry of ice water/pot, the trichomes are trapped in the buckets according to grade. Which grade they will fall into depends upon the size and maturity of the glands on the trichomes themselves, which is why a variety is used.
Finally, there is dry ice extraction. This is a newer technique, and my personal favorite of the physical extraction methods. It takes five minutes and zero prep, and yields the purest concentrate of the physical extraction methods. You will need about 5 lbs of dry ice (this is enough for 1 oz bud), an 80-90 micron mesh bucket and matching plastic bucket, like the kind used for water hash, and either sugar trim or buds – lower quality will not work. Throw the mesh bag in the bucket, and throw the buds/trim and co2 into the mesh bag, then swirl it around. The buds need not be ground, the freezing of the dry ice with grind them into a powder, and instantly knocks off almost all the trichomes. After about 1-2 minutes of swirling, once the bud is ground well, pull the mesh bag out of the bucket, and shake it up and down into the bucket for a few minutes. Immediately you will see a cloud of white powder fall out – continue shaking until the color has yellowed as this is an indication that you are starting to get plant material. This method can yield budder! (more on that later)
After you've got your keif, if you are going to be storing it, you should press it. The reason is that cannabinoids oxidize, and when the keif is separate it has a lot of surface area to oxidize, and the makeup and ratio of cannabinoids in the hash can change quite dramatically over a few months. You can quickly press a small amount by wrapping your keif in shopping bag plastic (this plastic will not stick to hash), and pressing your clothing iron briefly against it while it is on its coolest dry setting (no steam). If its not going to be store long term, the form that you keep it in is purely up to personal preference.
Solid hashes like these can be vaped in a skillet, by hot knife, in forced/hot air vapes, and dry ice hash can be used in a concentrate bowl/wand setup (the other types have too much plant material and will clog the bowl)
by VladTheImpaler aka JustAFigmentOfYours
Foreword:
Greetings, stoners! My name, when I first emerged in the scene at Overgrow, was Vlad the Impaler, but some of you will recognize me more recently as justafigmentofyours. Whats important is, way back in the mid nineties during the medicinalization movement, I reverse engineered the only real option for vaporizing at the time, the Vapor Bros, and released the plans for free online, in an attempt to help patients to medicate healthily and efficiently without paying a ridiculous $500 for a hacked up soldering iron.
In the decades since, vaping has really caught on, and so has purified concentrates, which is really exciting. Unfortunately, this popularity has led several profiteering individuals and dispensaries to spread a lot of misinformation about the medications they provide in order to charge hefty surpluses.
It is my hope to set the record straight about the various forms of BHO and other highly refined cannabinoids, so that people will stop overpaying for impure, low purity crude concentrates like Rick Simpson Oil, and stop funding the rebranded, oil burning ecigs sold as wax vapes like the Dabbler (For examples).
A lot of what I will write will go against some of the dearly held mysticism involved with concentrate making, but it is based both in a firm understanding of the science involved, and in the years of experience I have gained making BHO regularly since 1998, and I will not apologize for the inevitable upset I will cause by stating facts.
We will begin with a quick primer on vaporization, the process and the reasons for doing so. We will cover the types of marijuana materials that can be vaporized and the different ways to vaporize them. We will then describe the different techniques used to vaporize, examine each ones benefits and drawbacks, and compare the various commercial options on the market. By the end of this work, you will have gained a comprehensive knowledge about vaporizing and concentrates.
Please note that this text is meant to guide those in the medical marijuana community and citizens in jurisdictions where marijuana is legal to consume. Do not handle or use marijuana where it is illegal! Obey all local laws! If you don't agree with your local laws, change them!
Whats new in 2.0:
Complete reworking of the BHO making process. No longer using the tube method, this new method doubles yield and halves amount of butane used.
Also included new hybrid CO2/Butane extraction instructions
Better solvent free oil making instructions.
Debunking: winterization
Plus new reviews and more in depth vaporizer analysis.
Chapters:
Foreword
1) What is vaporizing?
a. A quick primer
b. Why vaporize?
2) The materials
a. Herb
b. Hash
- Oils
- The Clean Plate Test
e. Isomerization/Alteration
f. The Myth of Winterizing.
3) The apparatus
a. Skillets (Conduction)
b. Drawn Air (Convection)
c. Forced Air (Convection)
d. Hot Knives (Conduction)
e. Fritted Discs (Convection)
f. Concentrate Bowls (Convection/Conduction)
g. Nails/dabbing (Conduction)
h. Ecigs/VapePens (Conduction)
- Magic/Dragon/Liberty Flight Box
Afterword
1 – What is vaporizing?
a. Vaporizing is simply evaporating without burning. It can be accomplished by many means, but most methods focus on gentle, indirect heat. Whats important is that the temperature of the item being vaporized never reaches its combustion point, or the temperature at which it breaks down. With marijuana, the actives vaporize at about 300 degrees, and break down at about 500, so when you roast a bowl with a Bic lighter (flame temp:3500 degrees), you destroy most of the goodies. Really, with smoking, the only reason you get anything at all is because the ember formed heats and vaporizes the weed underneath. Vaporizers address this by (ideally) never getting above 500 degrees or by using indirect heat.
b. Because the temperature never exceeds the combustion temp, the active compounds never get destroyed, or broken down into harmful byproducts. Whenever you raise somethings temperature above its combustion point it generates CO, Benzene, soot, and a whole host of other nasty carcinogenic things, and that is true for marijuana, too. By not allowing the actives in pot to combust through vaporizing, not only is the relative potency of the weed increased fourfold, but you also completely eliminate any harmful health effects that you may experience from burning and inhaling smoke. No worries about asthma/emphysema, cancer, or stuffed noses, and your stash goes farther!
2 - The Materials
The type of material you have effects how you will vaporize. Generally, it is desirable to concentrate your weed as much as possible if you want a clean vaping experience; the less plant material is in your pot/hash/oil, the less unwanted combustion will occur and the cleaner your hit will be.
a. Herb – Just good ole' weed. It can be sugar trim, nugs, shake, even leaf – the great thing about vaporizing is that you will get a good stone whatever your starting material, but you will have to use more the less potent/resinous your herb material. Unprocessed, dried weed can be vaped with fritted discs, skillets, or drawn/forced air vapes. You don’t have to do any further processing to use any of these vapes – but each of these will char to a varying degree, and the vapor will be much dryer than hash or oils.
b. Hash – This is the physically separated trichomes of the marijuana plants. There are a variety of grades and types, with purities ranging from 30% to 80% cannabinoids. As these are the trichomes, there are still a bit of plant material, and a large amount of the secondary essential oils like limonene, myrcene, and carophylline are preserved, which can really contribute to a smoother smoke. The trichomes, called keif when loose, can be pressed under gentle heat to burst the resin glands together, forming a play-do like squidgy mass.
You can obtain the trichomes a number of ways – you can shake ground marijuana over a fine screen (100 micron mesh works well for me), which will let the trichomes break off and fall through, which can be collected from underneath. This is the traditional method of making Moroccan style hash. You can rub the buds with your hands until they are coated in resin, then you can scrape off your hands. This is the traditional Nepali style of hash making. Both these ways are very inefficient and aren’t widely used in the west anymore. Heck, if you’re vaporizing, Nepali hash is a bit gross – its got a ton of skin oils and dirt.
You can add ground marijuana (of any grade) to ice water and agitate it for an hour or so, then pour it through mesh buckets (sold online as bubble bags, they are cheap and worth it). Generally 3-5 different mesh buckets are included, of descendingly finer mesh size, so that after pouring your slurry of ice water/pot, the trichomes are trapped in the buckets according to grade. Which grade they will fall into depends upon the size and maturity of the glands on the trichomes themselves, which is why a variety is used.
Finally, there is dry ice extraction. This is a newer technique, and my personal favorite of the physical extraction methods. It takes five minutes and zero prep, and yields the purest concentrate of the physical extraction methods. You will need about 5 lbs of dry ice (this is enough for 1 oz bud), an 80-90 micron mesh bucket and matching plastic bucket, like the kind used for water hash, and either sugar trim or buds – lower quality will not work. Throw the mesh bag in the bucket, and throw the buds/trim and co2 into the mesh bag, then swirl it around. The buds need not be ground, the freezing of the dry ice with grind them into a powder, and instantly knocks off almost all the trichomes. After about 1-2 minutes of swirling, once the bud is ground well, pull the mesh bag out of the bucket, and shake it up and down into the bucket for a few minutes. Immediately you will see a cloud of white powder fall out – continue shaking until the color has yellowed as this is an indication that you are starting to get plant material. This method can yield budder! (more on that later)
After you've got your keif, if you are going to be storing it, you should press it. The reason is that cannabinoids oxidize, and when the keif is separate it has a lot of surface area to oxidize, and the makeup and ratio of cannabinoids in the hash can change quite dramatically over a few months. You can quickly press a small amount by wrapping your keif in shopping bag plastic (this plastic will not stick to hash), and pressing your clothing iron briefly against it while it is on its coolest dry setting (no steam). If its not going to be store long term, the form that you keep it in is purely up to personal preference.
Solid hashes like these can be vaped in a skillet, by hot knife, in forced/hot air vapes, and dry ice hash can be used in a concentrate bowl/wand setup (the other types have too much plant material and will clog the bowl)