Donpaul.p's Latest 400 Watt HPS Grow

James, I know what you mean, living up here "is" the wilderness. Last year I had to shoot a charging moose cow not 20 yds from my cabin. It's you and the wilderness up here, and all I have is a Stag Arms 1/7 twist Ar-15, 44 magnum, and a SW MP9. It works. Can't forget Dharmadog, she loves chasing moose!!!
 
Those girls are looking mighty pretty there Don ... +reps man, you've earned them ... as far as not showing sex, it makes sense based on what you and I have talked about and what I've watched you talk about with a few others... if they show on 24/0 at about 2 weeks, and it's because of the amount of light recieved (current hypothesis), then at 12/12, it'd be around 4 weeks or so... with better root development, since as we know, the roots grow during darkness :)

Sorry, internet dropped right after my pic upload as I was typing this, ugh
 
looking great don.p =D wish i could rent the place next door to you and say help yourself to all the space :rofl:

will try to upload some pics myself a little later. its hardly worth it at the moment. got 3 il diavolo about to flower and 5 sweet tooth at the begining of veg.

im suppose to be doing an outdoor grow of superskunk for a journal, but the british weather has taken a huge dump..i think summer is officially over =(

so instead ill be doing all 10 of them indoors in my lounge in 40litre plaster mixing buckets on lazy susans.

so far i have 30 x 23w 6500k's to play with, but intend to probably double that. lol then i have to buy a ton of 2700k bulbs now the sky has gone grey =/

critical sensi start is a nice plant. one of my compadre's just grew a batch and was happily pulling 8 ounces per DWC on just a fe weeks veg. be mindful however that they seem to hermie at the drop of a hat. was very embarrasing trying to sell something called sensi thats full of seeds :rofl:

anyways, morning waffle over, off to play x-com and save the worlld from aliens =)
 
hey don
just thought i would drop a quick one.
do you like the idea of lazy susans?
i noticed the other day that lidl is selling some cheap and your bound to have one of those stores somewhere nearby =)

these ones are a bit smaller than a dinnerplate, made from the steel wire like the stainless steel drainer and cutlery draws and has about 5 wheels of the kind normally found on a computer chair...may make moving and watering plants so much easier.

:green_heart::tokin:
 
thanks GiGa, yep got one of them stores near me so ill go and check them out, would make life easier,

@JTG, was you talking about the increasing the size of the autos, well if you are then so far what i have found is that autos do really crappy under 24-0 and 20-4, i grew many under them schedules and yield around an 8th to 1/4oz max per auto and i grew several strains, but then i tried an auto under 12-12 and got just over 2oz and it was same strain as i had grown several times under 24-0, i was always told more light means more growth and bigger plants, but im finding this not to be true with autos, again im growing several autos ive grown before and their now under 12-12, their not showing sex their over 1ft tall, when i grew this same strain under 24-0 and 20-4 it showed sex at week 2, flowered at week 3 and never made it more than 1ft in height,
so now i got them under 12-12 again and its been over 2 weeks and still now signs of showing sex, well over 1ft high all ready, so my theory is like runewulfsaid, we spoke before about the theory that maybe autos flower due to amount of light in hours in total,

for example,
lets say an auto needs 240 hours of light to reach harvest,
under 24-0 this would take 10 days,
under 12-12 it would be double this,
and thats exactly what im finding with these autos, under 12-12 they take longer to show sex, flower and 4 weeks longer to reach harvest but when the yield goes up from 1/4oz to over 2oz then i think its more than worth the weight, so ill see how these do under 12-12 again but their bigger all ready then the plants was when they was harvested under 24-0 and 20-4

thanks for the comments everyone,
just uploading some pics,
 
ok, heres the pics and what i did,
1, i got one of them big brita filter jugs and removed the top part and filter which left me with a big ass jug.
2, i filled the jug nearly to the top with water then placed it in the fridge on coldest setting,
3, i filled several ice bags with water and put in freezer,
4, i then got 1 big jar of trim to run a quick test on hash making this then went in the freezer.
5, i then got myself a hand whisk which is like 2 whisks and a handle to turn by hand, so instead of just holding one whisk this spins round when you turn the handle, didnt want to risk using electric one in case it mashed the plant matter up to much, so i used this hand whisk type blender thing,
6, i got 2 x 2ltr pop bottles to pour the mixture into after blending,

several hours later this is what i did,
1, i removed water jug from the fridge.
2, i then used 1 bag of ice cubes and placed them in the water in the jug and put back in the fridge
3, i took the trim out of freeze and pulled it out the jar and put it on plastic so i could cut up any big sticks.
4, with the trim all cut of i then pulled the jug out the fridge and started stiring the trim into the jug of icy water.
5, once all trim was in (just 1 big jelly bean jar full, the £20 size jars about 1ft high and as round as a can of pop) i then slowly started whisking and slowly got a bit faster and faster.
6, once the ice had melted i gave it good going over with the whisk to make sure i removed any trichs from the leaves and stems.
7, i added the next bag of ice cubes and carried on whisking,
8, when i thought it was all whisked up and trichs removed i then used a strainer to pull out the floating green matter i then put all the green matter onto the plastic after squeezing all the water out.
9, instead of throwing the trim away i decided to rinse it a second time and glad i did, but this time i used cold water out the fridge and split the trim up into 2 piles, i then placed each pile into a small glass sugar type jar, i filled with water and put the lid on,
10, i then gave all the jars a good shaking and was amazed at how much more trichs i could see coming off, i then emptied the jars into the strainer and let it drain into the big jug, i then dipped the strainer below the water level but not enough to let the trim come out the strainer, i kept lifting it up and down and this worked water through the trim in the strainer, once i was sure it was well rinsed i removed the strainer and through the trim out,.

so now im left with a big brita filter jug full of murky brown looking liquid and i could all ready see stuff settling on the bottom and floating around, so i placed the whole jar in the fridge and left for 2 hours.

when i took it out of the fridge i could clearly see it had pretty much all settled to the bottom as it was covered with a nice layer of trichs, so i used a small cup and started to take water out of the jug, when i got down to about half way i realised i had no way of removing the trichs from the bottom of the jug,

so after some thinking i thought ill stir it all up again and then pour in through a funnel into some 2ltr pop bottles, so i stirred up and poured it into some pop bottles, then rinsed the jug and funnel to make sure i collected every last trich i could,

so now im left with 2 x 2ltr pop bottles filled with like a brown liquid,
i then put these pop bottles in the fridge and left over night with the fridge on its colded setting, when i woke up and opened the fridge i took out a yoghurt and it was frozen solid, luckily the bottles where in the door so was not high up in the fridge and was not frozen,
so after throwing the yog in the bin i carefully pulled out the bottle and placed them in the sink, now because i moved them i stirred up the trichs slightly in the bottom so the bottom 2 inches was a bit cloudy, so i got sharp knife and poke a hole in each bottle above the level where the trich rich mixture was,
so i poked a hole and undid the lid and this then slowly let the water out the bottle but left the trichs in the bottom, i let it pour into a coffee filter to catch anything that did escape.

so once i was down to the last 2 inches of liquid below the hole i cut i cut the bottle so i was left with the bottom of the bottle,

i placed these in the fridge again to totally settle so i could then filter off the rest of the water leaving me with a wet trich mixture in the bottom, i was not impressed with the coffee filter method and wont be using that in future as its to slow and the trichs that come out of the bottle when i drained it was stuck to the filter and after drying it was impossible to get it out the filter, so i wont be using filters but the method i used did not need filters,

i carefully took them out the fridge and used a syringe to suck out the water from the trichs,

now these pics below are what i was left with, this was from just 1 jar of trim, it took a while and i would not like to do all my trim in one go as it would just take way to long so ill do a jar every few days,
now the pics below show the hash from the one bottle that is now drying, i got all the water out and let it dry in the bottom of the pop bottle, once it was dry enough i scooped it out and placed it on plastic and its now going to dry for a few days, the other pic gives you some idea of what i did to get the hash, i left it in the bottom of the bottle so you could see what it looks like and how i went about getting this hash,

not to sure how much i got but im pretty impressed considering its from just 1 jars worth of trim, but i guess its because i dont keep any trim with no visible trichs.

this first pic is all the trich from the bottle with less trich in it, as you can see its slightly wet still so will be dried for a few days then pressed into a block, i wont use any until ive done this with all the trim so i can see how much i get and find out if its worth doing or not,
i did find i had a small amount of green mater in the hash but maybe this is because the trim was crispy dry, i did not whisk it to much as the bits never got to small like they would if you used a blender, but it has a very nice blondey colour to it,

PICT3158.JPG

below is the other 2tr pop bottle, this is how it looked after i cut the top of the bottle off, i did not want to risk pouring it into anything else as the trichs would just stick to the inside of the pop bottle so i cut most of the bottle off, i found by doing this it left nice little cups for the trichs to settle into, then once dry i just used a tea spoon and scooped them out with ease,
so these pics are of what is left in the 2nd 2ltr pop bottle,
PICT3159.JPG

PICT3160.JPG

PICT3161.JPG

PICT3163.JPG


what i did for the very last part is after i cut the top of the bottle off this stirred up the trichs in the water so i then put it back in teh fridge and placed a screwdriver under the one side so when the trichs settled they all went into the one corner of the bottle, so it filled 2 of the cups or legs of the bottle with the 1st mixture and this last one will fill 3 by the looks of it, so this last bottle of trichs is still in the fridge and ill let it settle and remove the water and let it dry.

enjoy
 
maybe use baking trays as an evaporation pit and a credit card to scrape and move it. the large surface area will increase the evaporation rate at room temp =)

sand sticks to glass real bad and you can lose quite a bit if you move it from container to container. if its bone dry, something like a clean pepper pot (the small white plastic ones with a bunch of holes on top) might be just the treat.
 
thanks GiGa, i sure could do with a few tweaks to get it to dry quicker, if i could pour the liquid onto something and let it evap then i could get it done a bit quicker, i would of used an electric hand blender but i think it would blend the trim up to small and this would then turn the trichs into a green colour,

for some reason it stills smells like buds at the minute but then the whole mixture stunk the place out, i only did one jar but it stunk the place out,

my 1st idea was to just leave it in the big jug and keep removing water until i was left with the trichs in the bottom, but it was a big jug, might of actually been a better idea but i was trying to find a way of getting all the trichs into one pile during the settling and drying process, that way im not scraping it into a pile and risk losing any, if i could find something that allowed me to fill it up and all the trichs settled into one mass at the bottom then i would be able to just take it out in one go,

but id need something big enough to pour the trich mixture into so it lets the trichs settle at the bottom in one pile then id need a way of removing the water, thats why i went with the plastic pop bottles as i could poke a hole above the trich level and let the water leak out and leave me with the very last inch or 2 of trich liquid,

their must be an easier way without using bubble bags, i was goign to try the dry method but i seen the risk of lots of plant matter getting through the screen, so this water method sounded ok, took a bit longer than i thought but i think i collected a lot of trichs considering i did not use al of trim,

its just the settling and drying part that could do with tweaking, if i could find something that i could pour the liquid into and it formed one mass of trich at the bottom then that would be a bit easier

but once the one bottle had nearly dried i used a hair dryer at some distance from it to remove a lot of the moisture, then once it was dry all i had to do was gently start to scoop it out and it came out in one mass, then anything that was left in the bottom of the bottle just fell out when i scraped it with the spoon, so their was nothing left in the bottom of the bottle after it was dryed and all hash removed,

so this method works, id give the bubble bag method a go at some point, but what i did found made a huge difference was the 2nd process stage, when i used the whisk in the big jug and then strained out the plant matter, i then put it into smaller jars and filled 3/4 with water, then i stood their shaking the jars for about 10 min then when i looked i could see a lot more trichs in the smaller jar, so ill do this again when i do the rest as it did increase the amount of of trichs i collected, but so far it looks ok and is drying ok, so cant wait to test it
 
you remember the old fashioned twin tubs? i bought one recently, but a modern one, designed for mobile living. cost £60 odd.

i think if you had chilled water, lots of ice, frozen chopped trim (damp trim put through a blender so it should come out like chopped parsley) a plasters mixing bucket from wickes (about a fiver) and a typical kitchen strainer.

you could throw all the ingredients into the twwin tub and set it to agitate for half hour, then you could simply drain the water out of the drain pipe through the strainer and into the plasterers bucket and leave to settle over night.

anything caught in the strainer returns to the twin tub with the rest of the plant matter and has another go (or several, depending on how many plaster buckets you can fit.

next day just use a jug to bail out most of the water out of all the tubs and consolidate into 1 tub and let settle again.

now all you need to do is to find a nice piece of mesh with holes no bigger than 150 micron (or just the smaller the better.)
filter it one more time to remove the bigger debris.

cheese cloths might be a good idea to pile it up and squeeze out the water as much as possible and dont worry about how much sticks to the cloths, just dry them out and put them away clean and air tight and use the same cloths next time. the cloths can only hold so much before saturation.

as to final drying, you can get real small kiddies paddle pools for dirt cheap, stick a flat ideally plastic board in there, pour your soupy mixture on the board and any moisture left enough to cause a trickle will flow into the pool and evaporate. as long as you keep your tools clean and away from dust and contaminants, and sand build up can just be harvested over time as it builds =)
 
interesting idea, them twin tubs would be a great idea for lots of trim, im not sure id want to cut the trim to small as the smaller it is the less likely it seems to float, or maybe i let mine go crispy dry, jon on here after harvest just leaves his trim for 24 hours to wilt then freezes it until he got enough to use for hash,

so maybe letting it go crispy dry causes smaller bits of trim to sink, all the big pieces floated with no problems, but not much but a small amount did sink, i managed to use a hyperdermic needled to remove the bigger pieces that sank to the bottom so their is not much green matter in it, but if the trim was not crispy dry then i dont think it would of broke up like it did, or maybe if i soaked the trim first in cold water then maybe the smaller bits would not brake off

i got lots of trim left so might try soaking it in cold water for say 30min first to put some moisture back in it, at the minute the trim is that dry i can crumble it to dust in my hand, i got a big jar full in the freeze for my next go round so migh try and let that soak before i whisk it up again, their was a journal on here where someone used a hand blender and the mixture turned green and never settled, it ended up getting binned as even after days of standing the mixure remained green, so their is some cut of point that you cant go past with the trim, this is why i never used an electric hand blender like the kind you use for making soup or baby food, so i chose this old hand operated whisk i had, seemed to work ok and then shaking the trim in small jars after removed every last bit of trich as water was clear the 3rd time round.

if i could get one of them twin tubs then i might save lots of trim over many growers and do a huge batch of this, that would work well with a twin tub, i did try the coffee filters with a small amount of liquid and i still got the dried coffee filters, i can clearly see the trichs on the coffee filter but their all stuck to the paper and wont come off, if i try scraping i end up with the paper as well, so i never used coffee filters for the rest, i bought coffee filters just for hash making but im glad i never ran it all through as it looks like you would lose a lot due to it getting stuck,

i think the best option would be some kind of drying method similar to what i did but possibly using something bigger like a try that would be easy to scrape off.

my main issue was the coffee filters, it filtered it well as i collected the filtered water in a pop bottle that i had the funnel sitting in and all that was in the bottle was a light brown water, no trichs or nothing settling in the bottom so the coffee filter did catch everything, but its as of the trichs dried and stuck to the coffee filter, i guess if i ran it all through then i could of removed some from the filter but how much would i of lost due to it sticking,

so the best method i think of getting 100% trichs during the drying process is to let it all settle and either pour it onto something to let the water evap, if their was something like a try that had raised edges that all sloped to a round dent in the middle, then as it dried you could keep rinising water over the tray to keep washing the trichs into the center and that way they would all be in one mass instead of trying to scrape them up.

it would be possible to scrape them up if it was a dry hash method but this method leaves it pretty moist and would be a pain to scrape up unless totally dry, so i think finding a method that allows you to collect all the trichs in one pile would save time scraping and would limit any losses,

i wonder if its possible to use something like a metal tray and dent it in the middle and try and have the 4 sides sloping to the middle,

im just trying to think of a way of doing it that means you dont need to scrape it up, if it can be worked into one pile then it would save time but finding something suitable is going to be the challege,

thinking about it im pretty sure ive seen small top loading washing machines that you can have on a counter top, cant wash much in them but would be perfect for hash making, them top loading machines have big agitater in the middle so it would actually work well for hash making using ice and water.

theirs got to be a way of collecting the trichs without them sticking to the coffee filter, maybe i got the wrong type but i could only find the paper type and not sure if their are any other types, but something shaped like a coffee filter but much bigger would be a good idea for pouring the trich rich solution into once the clear water was syphoned off,

the pop bottle method works and when im down to the last bit of water i used hair dryer from a distance then i left it to dry over night, all i had to do then was gently scoop the edge of the hash up and it popped out of the bottle end in the shape of the bottle, it left very little actually on the bottle after i scooped it out, the first bottle i did only had a small amount of hash but the bottle i have yet to do has 2 or 3 times that amount so ive been working it so all the hash falls into one side of the bottle making collection easier

but their must be an easier way to collect the trichs at the end, if not i might give the dry hash method a try,

some shiny flat plastic might work but it would need to be totally flat so you could scrape the trichs into a pile
 
yes the top loader and the twin tub im talking about are one and the same thing i think. yes its very small, it weighs about 20k and you can curl it with 1 arm (dont ask, lol).

trichs stick. it sucks, but its just the hazard of the product.

what you need is a great big hydroponic drip tray, thats big enough to hold lots of water and if at a slight angle will settle all the trichs at the 'deep end' hopefully.
oh and an ice scraper for gathering it up.


ok on the wet or dry trim issue.
if your making a solvent based hash then you want to dry your trim as much as possible and crumble it to a powder. we do this because there is as much or more THC inside the green matter as on the surface.

if your making ice hash, then you want as little of the green material as possible to pass through your screens as your only interested in the surface trichs.

trim that has never lost its moisture has the strongest cell structure and resists the agitation better, so from that point of view you just want to snip the leaf off the plant, freeze the trichs and then break them off with agitation. however, those critters can be stubborn so it pays to chop up your trim, it needs to be big enough so that it wont pass through your screen, but chopped up finely enough to maximise the surface area exposed to agitation.

the most important factor is the temprature.
the trichs need to freeze, ice is the magic, you try to only add just enough water to allow your mix to agitate (twin tub will not like to turn a tub full of ice cubes alone).

this looks promising, not sure if its too small. you would definatly have a lot less product, but it would be of the highest purity
The Mesh Company (Warrington) Ltd #400 & #500 Super Fine E-Cig Wicking Mesh - 25 Micron & Atomizer Wire
 
I have thought about making hash but it seems so complicated and time consuming. And reading you directions even though they may seem simple to you, me who has never done it... it sounds complicated.

I think I need more visual examples... are there any youtube examples that you like? I will probably need to find a video example and try it from there.

Thanks for taking the time to explain your method.
 
@GiGa, thanks mate, a big drip tray would do the job nicely, i could even let it settle at the one end then sort of wash it down with the water thats in the bottom of the tray, that would help it evap a bit quicker as well,

all my trim is now in the freezer so when i get chance ill go for the next run, that other bottle bottom is now dry and all water removed so i got 4 bigish pieces of blonde coloured hash, ill let it dry for 4 or 5 days then press it into a block.

i should end up with a pretty decent amount once ive gone through all the trim, next time ill freeze the trim using the method jon suggested which is pretty much the same as what GiGa said apart from jon lets it wilt for 24 hours before freezing, ill ask him what benefit this has, my problem was i kept throwing all my trim into boxes and just left it in storagel, then it ended up cripsy dry but i let it stand in the ice water for a good few minutes so it was moist before i used the hand whisk,

@scarfinger, mate it couldnt be any easier than this, its basically a gravity method,
the idea is that the plant matter floats and the trichs sink, let it settle then all the trichs are at the bottom and the green matter can be pulled out using a strainer or sive or spoon with holes in, then its just a case of removing the water and letting the trichs dry,

my method was a bit long winded as i poured the trich water into bottles to let it settle, i could of just left it in the jug and scraped it out the bottom of the jug, or left it in the jug and removed most the water then use the method GiGa suggested by using a big tray and pour the trichome rich water into a tray and have it sloping so the trichs sink into one side of the tray, then you can syphon off the water with a small beaker or soak the water up with news paper or kitchen roll.

in theory all you would really need to do to make this very basic is to get a big jug filled with water and place it in a freezer if you have one big enough or use fridge on coldest setting, then make a load of ice to keep the water cold while mixing the trim up,

then all you need to do is put all the trim into the jug, add ice then stir away, then making sure you give it a good stir this will then seperate the trichs from the trim and it will all sink to the bottom, remove the trim and reprocess if you want then just place jug back in the fridge for a couple of hours while the trichomes sink to the bottom, once they sink use a beaker to slowly remove the water from the jug, then when you are down to the last few inches of water you could either soak the water up using paper towel and leave the trichs to dry in the bottom of the jug then scrape out when dry, or pour the mixture into a tray and let it settle at one end

its not a difficult process but it is time consuming,

its pretty much the same as the bubble bag method, but with the bubble bags you collect up to 5 different grades of hash depending on the size of the holes in each bag, the gravity method i used just collects 1 type of hash so you dont end up with 5 grades of hash starting with amazing and then getting lower in quality,

the method i use is good enough for me, ill try the bubble bag method at some point but this was the cheapest option and i didnt need to go out and buy anything, i did i bought coffee filters but found them useless,

Good weed back at you Dharma
 
its all good my friend, it was just starting to get a bit hectic so i thought id send people the link to the main bit of info instead of hearing it from anywhere else, it just saves us problems with admin, 420 staff do an amazing job to keep this site ticking over, its why this site has got the best members and best plants, all the other sites to is bitch and argue with each other,

here its all good and its down to the amazing 420 staff and the extremely hot 420 girls that this site as as good and argument free as it is, so the very least we can do is stick to the sites do's and donts and everything will be good, the last thing i want is to see many members who i now call friends leave the site, the staff keep us happy and safe and provide us with the best sponsors so in return we can follow their rules and make this site what it is,
 

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