yes way too much
no your just wasting tane, the only thing that would reduce yield is the low quality starting material, moisture still in the starting material, and improperly packed tube (too tight, too loose) there may be a couple other factors, I'm just giving you the most common.
I dont think anyone has posted a written tutorial so here is an excellent one that i used when i first started making the BHO...I already had 15 years experience making oil with my iso2... so this was childs play.
Butane Honey Oil (BHO) extraction is an extremely dangerous activity. Butane is flammable, explosive and can potentially contain poisonous and harmful chemicals. Undertaking BHO extraction may result in serious bodily injury, or Death. The information provided on this website is strictly for educational purposes and in no way do I encourage its production or use.
Safety
Butane is Highly Flammable and ALL extractions are to be done Outdoors Only, doing extractions indoor is extremely dangerous. There have been accounts of people blowing up their houses, kitchens, and bathrooms doing Butane and other solvent extractions indoors!
Butane gas is heavier than air and will pool in low areas, if left to collect butane gas becomes flammable when it reaches 1.8% to 8.5% concentration in air. A small breeze will keep the butane from being able to pool and become dangerous.
It is recommended you take every precaution possible. Wearing Safety Equipment such as Eye protection, as well as gloves and always keep a fire extinguisher near by.
Nothing is more important than your safety!
Do all butane extractions Outdoors.
Never Smoke, have an open flame or source of ignition around when doing any kind of extraction, even outdoors
Avoid static build up and even a small spark in the right conditions can be dangerous.
Butane & Health
It has been talked about a lot lately, some brand of butane add a smell to their butane. This smell is usually added to the butane so that humans can detect leaks, you will find it in large amounts in cheap butane, or camping butane. It can also potentially be in "Clean" butane such as Colibri.
These chemicals are usually Mercaptans or Sulfur Dioxide (Rotten Egg Smell), using cheap butane with high levels of these is harmful. Do not use cheap butane or camping butane. It can also be harmful to use "Clean" butane, so do so at your own risk.
It is not known what the effects of residues in butane honey oil are; it's not even known for sure what if any residues are left over in butane honey oil after the butane is purged.
Only a Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometer can give us the info on what's exactly is in our BHO. The search is on to find somewhere to get a sample tested. Until then, be aware of the potential health risks and judge for yourself if it's worth it.
Butane Brands
Not all butane is created equally; there are 2 different types of butane that make up the most common brands of butane. Isobutane and N-Butane.
Most cheap brands use Isobutane (2-METHYL PROPANE) and is more toxic and hazardous than N-Butane. For making Honey oil N-Butane is what we want, it extracts better and leaves very little to no residues in the oil.
Other brands use a mix of the different types, and some, like Colibri, use propane as well as Iso and n-butane
Boiling Points
ISOBUTANE: -11.7 C
N-BUTANE: -0.5 C
No source of pure N-Butane has been found available in stores, only through Gas Supply Companies.
The best brand of butane I have used is vector Butane. I highly recommend vector, and you should be able to find it at most Fine Cigar and Tobacco Shoppe's. Below is a list of other brands that are good for making Honey oil with. If you cannot find vector try to find one of the butane brands listed. And by all means avoid Ronson, Bernz-o-matic or other butane not listed below, they add smell to their butane and this smell is left behind making the oil taste very bad.
Other Brands that are good to use:
COLIBRI, LUCIENNE, NEWPORT, CORA, CTC, COLTON, DUNHILL, DAVIDOFF, FACKELMAN, WIN, NIBO, SAROME, CALOR GAS MATCH, UNILIGHT, K2, SUPERGAS, VENTTI.
This is by no way a complete list, and there is no promise this info will always be correct, manufactures can change recipes at anytime. This list is the brands that carry the "Near Zero" impurity label, which means they are not supposed to have more than 15ppm of impurities, what they are is not know.
When you purchase the butane make sure you find the largest size of can you can. I use the 300ml cans of VECTOR. Most places only carry the little 2oz cans, these are not enough. You will need at least 8oz of butane for every 1oz of plant material.
If you find a brand that's not listed you can do the mirror test to check to see if it's ok to use. See Below.
Mirror Test
Take a mirror or piece of glass and spray some liquid butane into it. A good amount. (You may need some pliers to press the nozzle in) Wait about 5-10mins for the butane to evaporate and check the mirror for a white residue. The residue also smells bad. Don't confuse water condensation for residue. Also even Colibri leaves a very slight residue, but it doesn't smell. Check for Smell.
Plant Material
This is the most important factor if you wish to achieve high quality honey oil, Good fresh dried uncrushed bud makes the best honey oil, and you should easily achieve clear oil using uncrushed buds.
Grind them up and do a second extraction to get a lower grade "B" wash, not as tasty or clear like the first batch.
Butane extracts the smell from the plant material, so if you have some great smelling buds the oil will also take on that smell. If you use bad smelling or tasting plant material, you will get bad tasting oil.
Using crappy plant material can also result in low yield and oil dark in color.
Plant Material-|-Recommended amount Butane-|-Estimated Yield
(this is debatable)
1oz High quality bud-|-12oz-|-3-6g
1oz Average bud-|-10oz-|-2-4g
1oz low grade bud-|-9oz-|-2-3g
1oz high quality trim leaves-|-12oz-|-3-5g
1oz trim & leaves-|-10oz-|-2-4g
1oz fan leaves-|-8oz-|-1-2g
Extraction Tube
The extraction tube should be no wider than 1.5", I find " to be the best. The tube should be made of Stainless steel (okief extractors are one of the best )or Thick glass Only (local glass blower can easily make one), although I do NOT recommend it you can use a copper tube if you cannot find stainless or glass, but only if you clean the tube well before each extraction. Copper tarnishes and the tarnish can potentially be extracted by the butane.
Avoid ALL Plastics, brass, steel and galvanized steel pipe, these all can contaminate your oil and make you sick...please dont be a cheap bastard, if you can afford to buy butane you can afford a ss turkey baster.
most people find a cheap stainless steel turkey baster works very well with little modification. It holds about 1/2oz of bud and can yield 2.5-3g of oil from oz of good bud and 4-5oz of butane.
Some people like to build a contained extraction tube with valves to hold the butane in and let it sit in the plant material for a long time to maximize extraction but this is unnecessary. An open ended tube where the butane can flow through and drip into a collection dish is the easiest to build and makes much better oil. Allowing the butane to sit in the plant material will make your oil greener.
most people use a " by 9" Stainless Turkey Baster tube with a screw cap top and a small hole for the butane nozzle. Use a drill to make a 7/64" hole. Leave the bottom Open Ended, a paper basket style coffee filter, and stainless steel screen or metal window screen will be attached here when the tube is filled with the plant material. Use a Hose Clamp to attach your filters.
Honey oil is very sticky and it's a lot easier to scrape it up from a flat bottom dish with square sides or one with out corners but I have yet to find the perfect dish, Make sure your collection dish can hold at least 500ml of liquid.
Extraction
Make sure your plant material (Leaves, Trim, Stems, or Buds) are very dry, the dryer the better. If you want clear honey oil with a lower yield, pack the tube without grinding or breaking up the plant material. The butane will extract the high quality oil on the outside of the plant material then unpack the tube, Grind up the plant material into a powder, you don't want any chunks in it, it should a coarse powder, and re-extract a lower grade oil.
The better the starting material the better the oil. If you use males or just fan leaves don't expect awesome oil. You can also use butane extraction to salvage moldy buds.
Fill the extraction tube full with the powdered plant material; avoid making air pockets in the tube. I like to fill the tube a little then pack it down and repeat until the tube is full.
Don't pack it to much and try to make sure the tube is full, if you don't have enough plant material to fill your tube then try to get a smaller tube. Air pockets let the liquid butane expand to gas and lower the efficiency a little.
After your tube is filled then you can place your screen on the bottom, mesh Coffee filter works well.(see my comment above)
Find some way to mount the tube on a stand or get an oven mitt as the tube gets very cold, and you won't be able to hold it with your bare hand for very long.
Once the tube is filled and prepared its time to get your collection dish, tube, butane and stand or glove and venture outdoors.
This is the most dangerous part of the whole process:
Find a safe, secluded place where you can do the extraction. Hold or mount the tube over the collection dish and place the nozzle of the butane can in the hole you made in the end cap. Release the entire can of butane into the tube, it will take anywhere from 30 secs. To 1 min for the liquid to start to drip from the bottom of the tube into the collection dish. If no liquid comes out of the tube and you have used an entire can then get another can, Packing the plant material to tight can cause a build up of pressure and stop the butane from flowing, if this happens do not let the pressure build to high and take your time.. Eventually the butane will make its way out the bottom. If the butane starts to come out the top hole then slow the release of butane into the tube.
Continue to empty the can until its just releasing gas (you will hear the difference), remove the spent can. If you are extracting more than 1oz get another can. I usually run 1 6oz can as my tube will hold about 1/2oz of plant material.
After the last can is emptied I blow into it and let the tube drip for another few mins, the liquid in the dish should have a golden color to it. It may be hard to see.
Evaporation
I like to bring a thermos filled with boiled water to my extraction location along with a frying pan so I can do the evaporation step outdoors. It should only take about 15-20mins to evaporate it all.
Place the collection dish into a larger dish or frying pan filled with hot tap water or water that was boiled and watch the butane start to bubble. The hot water will get cold quickly so change it often until the butane/oil mix starts to thicken up.
I recommend you do another heating with hot water to make sure all the butane is evaporated.
once all the liquid has evaporated off you'll have to release the gas trapped in the oil, you can do this by continuing with hot water purging or you can use the vacuum sealer method. (this model pump n seal is the most easy/convenient to use)
basically you drop you initially purged dish of oil into a mason jar and attach the pump, as you pump it pulls all the oxygen and butane out of the oil evident by the rising /puffing of the oil) when it no longer puffs, you're done.
if you choose the hot water method just be careful not to overheat or evaporate for too long. The longer you apply heat the darker your oil will get. Once the oil no longer bubbles from boiled water then its usually ready, no more heat is needed.
The oil might still bubble when a lighter is applied but this is not butane gas bubbles. It's just the nature of the honey oil.
If you find your honey oil gets hazy or cloudy it is usually cause by trapped butane, do another purge to get the last of the butane out.
Once your done evaporating the butane, the honey oil can be smoked. you can scrape the honey oil into a dish, keep it covered in a dark place for a few days - the honey oil will harden and you can chip it off, it will be solid but melt when heated. (what i recommend, if you do decide to budder it just make sure you store it properly and smoke it quickly)
Handling, Storing and Smoking:
use a razor blade to scrape up the oil from the dish. or You can leave the oil in the collection dish and scrape it as you smoke it as well, make sure you cover the dish with plastic wrap so no dust and other things get stuck in your oil.
Depending on your collection dish shape, it might be difficult to remove all the oil from the corners. I found a little tool that works very well for getting all the oil from the dish. It's used for mixing paints and it looks like a little flexible knife that can bend to get in all the corners. It's called a Palette knife and you should be able to find that at an art supply store, I also use small flat and curved wood chisels..they get almost every bit of it.
)
) Worth it IMO.
