How to work with rosin??

[MinnBobber]

I'm finding out (the hard way) that rosin is very sticky and difficult (for me) to move around.
If it is on the tool from scraping parchment,, your whole load ---how to place it on parchment and not leave so much on tool?

How to load it later, as in take a small portion (very difficult) from the rosin glob?
How to get that small portion to stay in the Vap Cap (again--it all wanted to stay on the tool)?

I also tried brief stay in freezer to make it less sticky, would that help to portion out and load?
Not for me, LOL. Take parchment from freezer and, plunk---my tiny motherload of rosin just fell
out of parchment onto the floor---f#ck.
Quick pick it up with fingers and make a mental note that it immediately gets sticky on warm thumb
and now it is stuck to thumb. Repeat after me---rosin is fricken sticky

That really hurt when I stuck my rosined up thumb into the Herbalizer at 445F to not waste that good
rosin
I had to scrub the thumb many times to get what remained on my thumb after moving the "now reduced motherload" to parch paper.

Any hints on dealing with this sticky creation?

 

[psychonaut]

I will take my collection on the end of the dab tool, stick it between a folded piece of parchment, and gently twist the dabber while grabbing the rosin squeezed between the parchment, and pull the dabber out slowly. the rosin is now contained in the parchment and you should have dry fingers.

From that point you can load it off the parchment into a glass container for storage. I like the little lip balm containers with the wide mouth. It's easy to get your dabber in and you can generally get it out easily unless its really runny.

Something that can help, take some rosin out of the container, and transfer it to a scrap piece of parchment. You can fold the parchment over that lil slab of rosin you took out, smash it down some to thin it out, and then take your dabber to carve a lil bit off for your session. When you're done, put whatever's left back in the original container.

 

[MinnBobber]

Thanks for all the help @psychonaut ,

- I guess practice will help too. I tried the "grab the dabber with parchment technique" but too much stayed stuck on the dabber. Dabber also had some contours/curves that might have made it hard to get full parchment contact??

- thinning out the glob seems like it will help a lot, to separate out one dab. I was trying to coax a little off, got none, then too much, then try to put some back, a mess.
I'll need to work on getting the tiny dab to stick to the VapCap tiny conc screen I crafted. That sticky shit wanted to pull the screen out

I may try something like the Haze V3 tiny conc pads (white cotton??), shaped like a sub sandwich. Rosin on that pad and pad into VapCap. They don't look as reusable as my wire conc screen but probably easier to accept the dab???

Still amazed by the intense smell of the rosin---it smells so good!

 

[shredder]

I'm finding out (the hard way) that rosin is very sticky and difficult (for me) to move around.
If it is on the tool from scraping parchment,, your whole load ---how to place it on parchment and not leave so much on tool?

How to load it later, as in take a small portion (very difficult) from the rosin glob?
How to get that small portion to stay in the Vap Cap (again--it all wanted to stay on the tool)?

I also tried brief stay in freezer to make it less sticky, would that help to portion out and load?
Not for me, LOL. Take parchment from freezer and, plunk---my tiny motherload of rosin just fell
out of parchment onto the floor---f#ck.
Quick pick it up with fingers and make a mental note that it immediately gets sticky on warm thumb
and now it is stuck to thumb. Repeat after me---rosin is fricken sticky

That really hurt when I stuck my rosined up thumb into the Herbalizer at 445F to not waste that good
rosin
I had to scrub the thumb many times to get what remained on my thumb after moving the "now reduced motherload" to parch paper.

Any hints on dealing with this sticky creation?

Best bet is to not touch it, and if you do keep some purell close by. Alcohol cleans up rosin very well.

I use a small rather dull knife to scrape rosin off my scraping tools. And I use wax cutting tools to scrape that I bought off amazon. It helps to have more than one scraping option, because rosin varies wildly IME. I store the tools in folded parchment paper to keep them clean.

You can also hold the tool near a flame and let the rosin melt off, like in a pen for vaping.

I make fairly large batches at a time. So as I scrape I put the rosin on a small silicone pad for collection. Then I can mix up first and second squeezes by folding the pad and kneading the rosin in my hand as my body temp gently heats the rosin, and then weigh the rosin as a whole before making up grams for patients.

 

[invertedisdead]

Put a cold pack from the freezer under the parchment to collect easier instead of putting the rosin in the freezer. It's generally easier to handle when cold.

It is challenging to load SS mesh with sticky extract, especially in a Vapcap since the bowl is so small. that's why I like being able to just take a dab. I'd suggest hitting the mesh pad with a lighter for a second to warm it up and then apply your rosin so it will melt and wick into the mesh; especially if you are heating cap side down in an induction heater.

 

[Hackerman]

Nitril gloves....

I can remember back in the 60's when we harvested and trimmed, all the stuff that gathered all over our fingers was later rubbed off and called "finger hash". Then, the scissors were cleaned and smoked and we called it scissor hash. LOL

Now, it's all a pain in the ass and when it gets all over, I would just as soon have it on gloves I can throw away. Plenty of bud to smoke. I don't need to smoke my finger oils any more. LOL Same with rosin. I use gloves, mostly.

As for tools, I like glass tools (I use a liquor swizzle stick) but I recently got a free tool kit from DabPess.com for buying the press and it came with stainless tools. I used them last night and I really liked them.

Like the someone said, different tools for different consistencies. Here's my parrot swizzle stick collector.

 

[GreenDragon]

Dab Dude Finger Tips
Silicone non-stick finger tip covers.