Making oil: Straining myself to death

The vacuum funnel deal. If not, why wouldn't everyone have them who do regular alcohol extracts. I'm genuinely curious because I have been looking at those vacuum funnel kits on Amazon and seem pretty sweet for the price

GBAUTO said:

diggs, sounds like you need to invest in a Buchner funnel and vacuum pump.
I use a 90mm Buchner with a similar process that fadedawg describes.

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Ok thanks, i will look into this for sure.

Ive been using a distiller to reclaim and cook off the solvents, that part is relatively quick, its the straining , the constant fkn straining lol....it drives me crazy and ive only been doing 1/2 to 1lb batches....ideally id like to run 2-3lbs+ each time without having to take 85 hours of straining lol


I appreciate all the knowledge ya`ll are dropping.

What about a pair of vice trips with 2 4" x 4" steel plates welded to the teeth

Sorry vice grips

Could even drill holes in the plates for the liquid to flow through

I hate straining as well
I am going to get my buddy to make one of these tools

Perhaps try to reduce or concentrate material. We used to run large batches but due to the time and cost ect we changed up to mechanical separation and concentration first, and then proceeding with washing the concentrated material.

Ice water and bubble bags ended up being our goto, but tried dry ice too and found we got much more fine particulate that clogged filters and contaminated end product. Instead of needing gallons of solvent and multiple filtration stations etc, after an initial concentrating of bulk product, we pretty much ended up only needing to have to make one much smaller run.

I liked washing with Butane because it seemed pretty foolproof and always produced a clean product, but ISO can be very good imo. It was more of an acquired skill for me but got better with time and didn't require winterizing and was cheaper. Anymore I'm either-or when it comes to the 2. Iso is what they use in hospitals ect, but they use butane to grill our food at restaurants or use it to hand broil a "flan" dish, so imo as long as you're buying "medical" or "food grade" solvents you'll be fine.

A water aspirator is probably the easiest and cheapest way to create a negative pressure.

3min 19sec..

You don't filter it when you pour it through the bud, you filter the alcohol AFTER it drips out of the bud, which btw takes a few hours. I actually don't even filter it then, because no debris ever comes out, but if it does then that's the time to filter.

You also do it frozen, or else you'll get crappy green oil. Stuff the bud in the column, not dried, just regular moisture so it's packable without breaking up, and freeze the column, like overnight. Then you just take it out of the freezer long enough to pour frozen alcohol through it then put it back in the freezer to drip out. It's just the final dripping that you leave it sit for a few hours to completely drip out. There's no winterization involved, because the wax never gets dissolved in the first place. It's just like rosin but less crude, because rosin squishes everything out that's meltable, including wax.

A final tip is to use a column with a large enough bottom hole that the alcohol will come right out without piling up in there. If it piles up it will make an inferior product. That's why you don't put a filter in there either, that will definitely make it pile up. I just use a plastic pop bottle with the bottom cut off. The drip hole is the bottle cap with about an 1/8th inch hole drilled in it, not a little pin hole like a coffee thing. I've also done it without the cap at all and it worked fine.

I use my French press coffee filter (aero press).It is way faster than waiting for gravity to push it through the filter.