Before and after Washing Closeup Pictures - Damage to Trichomes
I'm just getting back into growing after 20+ years and ran across this thread. Washing the buds seemed very sensible and the methods reminded me of the "Fruit Fresh" prep we did to the lettuce for salads at a pizza shop I worked at in the '70's.
Like many others, I wondered;
How much damage will washing do to my precious trichomes?"
I decided to document it by doing a before and after bud wash photo session. I clipped a bud at 7.5 weeks in 12/12. (Plant is Rocklock in soil, grown under 48x3W Mars Hydro lights.) I have a Cole and Porter dissecting microscope, and I made a lens adapter out of some hardwood for an old Olympus 4MP camera so I can take clear pictures of cannabis buds.
I clipped the most mature looking bud on the end of a minor, low stem and took the "before washing" pictures. I found various landmarks on the bud and focused on one specific calyx.
(As an aside, it's pretty difficult to pick the proper sequence of similar pictures using the 420 gallery interface, so I hope I get this right.)
Here's what the bud looks like before washing. This is the eye's view through the microscope.
When I zoom in the camera lens, I can see lots of nice trichomes. There's a couple of fibers to give me a reference.
The microscope can also zoom in, but depth of field gets shallow.
My Simplified Bud Washing Procedure; I kept it pretty simple and washed it like I might do some lettuce I'm preparing to eat. I ran the bud under a strong stream of tepid water from the faucet for a full 10 second count. It was difficult for me to hold this nice looking bud under such strong running water for the full count but I wanted to see the results of a "worst case, aggressive" cleansing. Then I did the wrist flick to shake all the water off the drowned bud. I was not gentle at all with the poor bud and expected to have washed away lots of THC.
Here's the after photos. I noticed the black fiber had shifted, but not the white one.
Bud washing does not remove foreign fibers. It was easy to find exact the same trichomes around the same calyx.
Ok. I'm now looking for the expected damage...
That's strange. All that time spent in rushing, warm water and everything is completely intact. I really expected to see lots of damage to trichomes. All the bud did was plump up a bit.
Maybe this part of the bud was somehow shielded in the water stream. I took a close look at the tip, right where the force of water was the greatest.
Based on these results, I can comfortably say;
Trichomes are pretty robust when the plant is harvested and easily survive an aggressive washing in water.
I know I'll be washing all of my harvested buds with no worries about loss of potency.
I love your drawing!!!!!!!!! It is perfectly understandable also. 
Thanks for the laugh, and really better than I would do. Have a great day. Dan
again for the share!
