BHO first run ?help?

Hi guys new to the forum...not to pot. anyway lately I have been getting concentrates but where I live its pricy so I want to try a BHO run for the first time myself...I have done a lot of research into this but still have a couple questions...so first I have 2 glass tubes 1 of them is 1.25 inch in diameter and 6 inches long being the first time I want to do a smaller run just a few grams to make sure everything works right before I fill this tube up...do I have to fill the tube all the way or could I only fill it half way or I have a much smaller tube its a extension tube for a large water pipe but I oculd make that work right? also do I grind the bud up like if you were rolling up or just pack the buds in there? So lastly I don't have a vacume container to purge the butane... however I do have a vacume sealer and bags so I was thinking put the glass plate in a bag and vacume it that way I could put something over the top of the glass pan so the bag wouldnt suck down onto the concentrate but still let the air be sucked out??? or can I skip the vacume all togather! THANKS SOOO MUCH!!!

If you don't have a proper vacuum and a spot outside to do all the blasting I wouldn't even think about making BHO. There are much safer options to get great concentrates. I'm not trying to be negative, I know you asked for advice on making BHO. I you are gonna do it make sure you don't cut any corners, that's how people explode!!!

It's just really not the best option for home extraction imho. For home solvent extractions I would strongly suggest looking into QWET or QWISO.

Personally I make qwiso because I you do it right you get an awesome concentrate, it's also easy, pretty fast, much safer then BHO to produce. And 91% iso is a cheap and clean solvent I can buy at the store near me .

I will have to look up qwet and qwiso….I have room to do the bho out side I have read stuff of not using a vacume chamber but put it in another container of hot watter and purge the butane that way but not sure how good this would work

is QWET and QWISO give you a product with as high THC levels as a BHO would?

DoDo Knife said:

is QWET and QWISO give you a product with as high THC levels as a BHO would?

Click to expand...

Absolutely just as high. All these solvent methods are similar in concept just different in execution and details. In the end if you follow all the steps you can get a great product from any of them. For me qwiso has become my choice, others prefer qwet, others prefer bho. Bho works better I think on large scale, but I think a properly made qwet/qwiso extract is usually better quality honestly. I run relatively small scale batches (1-2 ounces at a time per jar) that I try to make as nice as possible.

Rosin pressing is another very popular way to make delicious extracts that doesn't involve any solvent.

I'm not anti BHO, but I think it's the most dangerous option that involves the most work to get a clean product. Unless you need to run large scale.

ok thanks I will deffinitly look more int the qwiso and qwet before I go and do anything with rosin I just haven't had much luck I only tried the hair straightener thing with 2 or3 grams at a time and I just don't get near as much as I should barely anything comes out and sometimes its a huge pain to get it off the paper

I had the same results with the hair straightener technique . Thus part of why I havn't switched from making qwiso, I get really nice concentrates cheap and easy.

Some light reading before starting:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150707132552/http://skunkpharmresearch.com/butane-safety/

https://web.archive.org/web/20150707165440/http://skunkpharmresearch.com/booming-bhotards-the-explosion-of-explosions/

At one time we had the open blasting process posted on SPR, but took it down as noted above. Simply because too many brothers and sisters ignored the good advice in the butane safety post and hurt themselves and others.

Here is how to easily build a relatively inexpensive Lil Terp passive extractor:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150709083934/http://skunkpharmresearch.com/passive-butane-extractor-and-reclaimer

Unless you can afford to buy a closed loop BHO system, I would suggest starting with a QWET extraction.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150707173953/http://skunkpharmresearch.com/qwet-extraction/

In answer to your questions, a column should be packed firmly, whether it is close loop or open, to keep the LPG from just picking the easy way through. Part of that packing can be coffee filters or other inert material to just take up space.

With either you can either grind or break up lightly. You get denser packing and higher yield grinding, but a higher quality extract just breaking it up lightly and reducing the number of ruptured cells exposed to the solvent.

A vacuum sealer won’t pull low enough and you must control the heat, so here again is an area where you need proper equipment. You can easily build a vacuum chamber, but will need to obtain a suitable pump.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150707213811/http://skunkpharmresearch.com/diy-vacuum-purging-chamber

We have the best luck around 115F @ 10,000 microns/~-29.5” Hg.

DoDo Knife said:

Hi guys new to the forum...not to pot. anyway lately I have been getting concentrates but where I live its pricy so I want to try a BHO run for the first time myself...I have done a lot of research into this but still have a couple questions...so first I have 2 glass tubes 1 of them is 1.25 inch in diameter and 6 inches long being the first time I want to do a smaller run just a few grams to make sure everything works right before I fill this tube up...do I have to fill the tube all the way or could I only fill it half way or I have a much smaller tube its a extension tube for a large water pipe but I oculd make that work right? also do I grind the bud up like if you were rolling up or just pack the buds in there? So lastly I don't have a vacume container to purge the butane... however I do have a vacume sealer and bags so I was thinking put the glass plate in a bag and vacume it that way I could put something over the top of the glass pan so the bag wouldnt suck down onto the concentrate but still let the air be sucked out??? or can I skip the vacume all togather! THANKS SOOO MUCH!!!

Click to expand...

High, fresh new member and welcome to RIU

hey guys so just tried small bho and qwiso the qwiso still needs to dry the bho I did the double boiler kinda set up but the end product isn't what I expected it a very hard cystal like powder stuck to the glass its actually hard to get off the glass so wondering why that happened any thoughts?

When I make qwiso it typically drys to a white crystal in the dish. Then I use a razor and scrape it up and press it together in a piece of parchment with my fingers or a gently warm bottle to smooth it out. Usually it become a shatter type texture.

Bho can easily into shatter, I don't know what kind of heating process you did, or how hot you got it, but I would imagine you just have a shatter type product. Scrape it and smoosh it together see what happens. I would think it would REALLY be best to vac purge it still. I really hope you weren't double boiling it indoors, and that you weren't using a high heat source.

UPDATE!!…..

Ok so here is what I did.....I took exactly a half oz of bud (wich fit perfect;ly in the glass tube) blasted it with vector butane....waited till all the butane stoped bubbling till NO ACTIVITY then brought it inside and did a double boiler set up on a portable stove burner in the basement (I am a custom knife maker my garage and basement is really a small knife/ machine shop and I use forges and HIGH temp oven so I have a "fire area" just a safe area to do things like this) the water I kept at 110-120...so no real vacuum pump so I kept it on the stove burner for a few mins when it started to thicken up good I took it out I have a vacuum sealer I made a rig that I can place over the glass dish and vacuum out the air...it did puff up a lil but I suspected the vacuum pump isn't strong enough so back to the double boiler set up......started getting kinda foamy and I had read if you mix it up it restors "clarity and color" but eventually it came out what I would imagine a butter-y kind thing but by the time I got it off the glass onto the mat it dried a lil more and now its like what I would imagine crumble would be (never got butter or crumble before always wax and shatter like) so from 14 grams of bud I got about 2.5 grams plus there is maybe another half gram still in the dish.....

OK I also did a QWISO.....
So I took 12 grams of bud (same bud as the BHO I only had 12 grams left and I didn't want to introduce another strain into the mix for these first 2 runs) I didn't put it in my grinder I just broke it up by hand and not as much as if you were rolling up just little buds. I read that you can also take those lil buds and not break them into pieces but kinda just peel it open a lil bit so the ISO can get in there easily than a dense bud...…..I put the buds in a water bottle I cut the top off I have liquid nitrogen for heat treating steel I use to make knives so I poured some into a pan and layed the bottle of alcohol in it and the water bottle with the bud into it....shaking both up every couple seconds to get it evenly as cold. I read the colder the better....I didn't let it get so cold that a bud would shatter into pieces like glass if you droped it on the floor but it was colder than the freezer would have gotten it and yeh I am lazy and that seemed to be the quicker option ok so next pored enough alcohol in the water bottle of buds just enough so the surface of the ISO came to the surface of the bud. I shaked LIGHTLY for exactly 30 seconds. Then I poured it through a metal strainer and 2 layers of coffee filters....gently squeezed out the stuff traped in coffee filters but I didn't squeeze it as hard as I could cause I read it could get plant mater in the mix so yeh it all got poured into a 7inch by 9 inch glass pan it was a lot of liquid about 3/8th inch to 1/2 inch in the glass pan.....I covered it with cheese cloth and let it sit over night...again I read something its better to let it dry slow and not use heat and lets say I know there are other "things" that the slower you go the more you get so I thought that may apply to this too. But this morning I woke up and absolutely nothing evaporated.. I am sure some did but not a noticeable difference. so I took this down to the double boiler kinda set up and started with the water at 120 and it really wasn't doing anything....jumped online and looked at what temp does ISO evaporate they say a couple didffernt things (probilly depends if your at sea level or not) but they all said betwee175-180 F I didn't go that high I went to 140 deg F that seemed to be the magic number where it started evaporating and then bubbleing toward the end. I also put it in the lil vacuum rig I made and it had a lil bubble up under vac but not much again I need a better pump.

CONCLUSION AND QUESTIONS!!
So the BHO I got 2.5 plus about .5 in the glass still. end product looks like hard-ish crumble....the ISO came out where it looked similar to the bho like a crumble but there is 1 big difference than the BHO...the ISO will melt just from the heat of your hands I put a lil bit on some parchment paper and warmed it with my fingers turned into a darker color and all the pieces melted togather...the BHO does NOT melt back down like that I put some in parchment paper and when my fingers didn't work I held it to a hot light bulb it got softer (temporarily) but wont melt back down likie the ISO...I will say the iso I got a lot less with 12 grams only got about 2 grams total so not as much as the BHO. Oh and the BHO even surprised me on this but it is damn good!!! ...

Questions
1. the quality of the ISO is ok a lil harsh on the lungs maybe some alcohol still in there?
2. if I leave the glass not 100% completely scraped when I do the next blast into that it should desolve and add to the end product right?
3. I deffinitly want to play with different consistency's just for easy of handleing how do I control what the consistency it will be in both BHO and QWISO?
4. I have a very accurate heat treating oven its made to do high temp soaks of steel at 1900-2200 deg F but its still dead on accurate even at low settings....so would it be better if say instead of putting it in the double boiler kinda thing at 110-120 F can I just put it in this oven at say 115 F ???
5. I am going to order a vacume pump and maybe a chamber or I may make the chamber myself....a lot of what I have seen to buy is round chambers that I don't think my 7x9 inch pan would fit into so that is why I was thinking of making a square chamber myself...any sugestions on the pump? and maybe where to get a chamber that my glass will fit in?
6. (last one promiss!) any tricks tips on how to get the stuff off the glass both of these runs comes out hard stuck to the glass not soft wax-y stuff so scraping with a razor blade little chuncks are flying all over the place....not a lot but a loss is a loss no matter how big.
7. HAHA I LIED really last one! what is lets see the average % of THC in concentrates like this? is there a way to make it even more refined...like would taking the concentrate I just made and either put it in ISO or butane letting it dissolve aand then evaporating it out again that wouldnt make it any better would it?

OOPS LIED AGAIN 1 more question lol.....I am wondering since I have access to a lot of liquid nitrogen I can use it somehow I have heard of flash freezing the bud and putting it through screens but can you do anything else interesting with liquid nitrogen? I think I remember it can be used as a solvent but it might have to be pressurized??? not sure any thoughts

Sounds like some good experiments . My only 2 cents on the qwiso process is if you simply use a fan blowing over the dish you can get much better evap. I set mine next to my dehumidifier exhaust so the exhaust moves over the filtered dish. I get can evap a full quart of alcohol to a dry crystal/oil film in 24-36 hours this way. No real heat applied, other then the warm air. Not using heat retains more terpenes and I think results in a smoother product. I think you should also experiment with running fresh frozen material vs dried material thats a fun one .

I like your make shift cryo process. What did the alcohol wash look like after you finished? Was it fairly clearish/tan/amber colored or did it have a green tint?

Did you only do one wash on with the alcohol? I don't know if a second wash will do anything with butane, but I always do 2-3 alcohol washes. The A grade is delicious, the B grade is ok, the C grade is for edibles. So if you got 2 grams of A grade, I would bet you would get another .75g of B grade and maybe .5 C grade.

ok am I right to assume letting the iso evaporate over a day and a half like you do would give you a bigger yield than heating it like I did? that's the biggest thing with the iso I didn't get nearly as much...I didn't know I could wash it again I am going to do another run tomorow and ill put new bud in and also throw in the once washed stuff.

the alcohole deffinitly had a bit of green tint to it well at least until the end of the evaporation then it got darker.....

yeh I have a big 35 liter dewar (special 2 walled container with vacume seal between the walls that will hold liquid nitrogen for a LONG time if you put it in anything but it evaporates pritty quick that's why I was wondering if it could be used as a solvent in place of butane or iso because it would automaticly purge out in room temp in just a few mins I have to do some research I thought I read something a long time back that it would work but has to be pressurized so ill have to study the topic a lil I guess then if it seems possible then a test batch

have any recommendations for a vacuum pump and chamber I would ideally like a chamber I could put the glass right into.?
Oh you know the dab mats I got one from the smoke shop its the size of a sheet of printer paper.....if I was to lay it in the glass plate could I spray onto that so I wouldnt have to sit and scrape from glass for a hour lol but if I put that in the glass and prayed on it can I still do the double boiler kinda thing or is the mat not supposed to get hot??

The slow evap wont be higher yield of THC no. Not using heat will mean you don't evap terps. You got roughly 3 grams from 14 with BHO so thats about 21% return, with Iso you got 2g from 12g which is only 16%. So definitely a difference in initial yield, I do think the second run with the ISO would probably narrow that gap drastically though. If you do your washes right the first 2 washes won't have any green tint. Here is how I make oil, it hasn't changed much in the last few years once I got a result I liked. https://www.rollitup.org/t/thundercats-groooooooow.131193/page-134

DON"T MIX THE ONCE WASHED BUD WITH THE NEW BUD IT WILL DESTROY YOUR QUALITY. I do all three washes back to back while the material is still wet and has touching the alcohol for the least amount of time. The longer it is touching the alcohol the lower the quality will usually be because it breaks down more chlorophyl.

ok thanks yeh I am going to give it 1 more try before I decide what is better for me...what sorta vacuum do you have I am thinking about getting one since the chambers are round and assuming a 5 gal. chamber would be the same size as a standard 5 gal bucket I can fit my glass plate right into a 5 gal bucket....but what about pump I found one on amazon 5 cfm single stage made by suncoo it doesn't say how many HG it will pull in a 5 gal chamber.....any thoughst?

I don't vac anything, I only make qwiso , and while I havn't had it tested, the results I get seem completely clean without a need for vac purge. Its my understanding that alcohol doesn't bond the same way as butane, so it purges much easier at a normal atmosphere. My dabs never sizzle, pop, flash, or do anything weird, and they test just like the plant they came from. Typically the A grade gets nothing but compliments when I get to share it. The B grade I keep for dabbing myself at home or work because its admittedly not AS tasty, but still never tastes like alcohol or anything, just not at smooth or brightly flavored since most of the terps are in the A grade .