Okay, it's time for a new
Skin Salve Update!
What's skin salve used for? It's excellent for insect bites, hives, itching, burns, and abrasions. I don't use it on open wounds because it's not sterile.
Who discovered that it could be helpful? @SweetSue found
information in Roger Pertwee’s Handbook of Cannabis that quoted historical documents where the hemp plant in oil is recommended for burns. The information dates back to the 1600s, so we're standing on the shoulders of many many generations of growers.
How does it differ from pain oil? Pain oil is made from the flowers and the goal is to make it high in THC (or CBD). Skin salve is made from the
rest of the plant (fans, branches, and roots) and the THC content is irrelevant. As I trim and harvest I save and completely dry the remnants so as not to add water to the mix.
For those of you who haven't see my original salve post, it's
here, but that one was made with coconut oil and uses bees wax as a hardener. Using coconut oil as a carrier creates issues in warmer weather (it melts), and adding enough wax to maintain its solidity makes the salve less effective through dilution.
For this round I decided to use sweet almond oil.
@Amy Gardner often
touted the benefits of almond oil for the skin, and it seemed that going with a liquid in a roller-ball container would be an improvement over the coconut/wax combo in a twist-or-push-up tube. I realize that this is no longer a "salve" but I'm sticking with my original terminology!
NB: all cooking is done with the lid on. It's off only for stirring and posing for pictures.
And there will be a lot of pictures here because I really wanted to lay out every step, so let's begin with the basics. I used three 16 ounce bottles of Now brand sweet almond oil (from Amazon) and a small crock pot that I try to keep around 180ºF throughout the whole process:
And here is the first box of dried plant bits I pulled out of the garage:
This has a combination of leaves and branches, and I grab some roots later.
I poured the 3 bottles into the pot and began adding the plant matter:
I pushed all the under the oil with a slotted spoon, which left me room to start cutting up dried branches and adding them to the mix:
After mashing that all down, I put the lid on and set the crock pot on Low:
While that was heating up I went back and cut some more branches:
Added that to the stew:
And pushed it all under the oil:
My crock pot needs a bit of attention since its settings are "Keep warm," "Low," and "High." Warm was about 150º and Low was over 200º, so I would switch between them when I was home and leave it on Warm overnight or when no one was going to be home to alternate.
After cooking overnight it looked like this:
which left me room for more, so I went and grabbed some roots from the 5 Killer Cookies:
I pushed that all under and let it cook down for a while:
And then I went back and got some thicker roots from some unknown past plant, cutting up the thickest bits:
Mashing that down as well:
That was as much as I felt I could squeeze in there and still leave a bit of room to mix it around.
I like to leave it cooking for four days, so since I was done adding material, that was day 1. During the cooking process I would stir it as best as I could, which usually meant just lifting the lower layer and moving it to the top. I also used the leading edge of the spoon to slice down and break up the leaves and roots as they cooked.
This is about what it looked like at the end of the cooking period:
So it was time to get the colander and a pot to do the first straining:
I dumped out the crock pot:
And lifted out the colander:
There's some plant matter in there along with some perlite that was stuck to the roots, so it got strained again through a mesh strainer:
I also used a ladle to try and push as much oil out of the remaining material as I could:
And what I ended up with was this:
Exactly 32oz of oil, or 2 of my original 3 bottles. The rest is contained in the plant matter, but even with clamps and wood I couldn't get squeeze out to make it worthwhile. That third bottle of oil is just the cost of doing business!
I poured the oil back into the original bottles:
And grabbed a roller ball bottle (this 10ml version is available on Amazon in 10-packs and up):
Filled it up:
Capped and labeled:
And labeled the remaining oil to be stored long term in the fridge:
I have so many different bottles of oil in the fridge that it's really important I know what's what.
And that's my new version of the skin salve! It works really well and the relief lasts a long time (around 12 hours, which is much longer than Benadryl spray or cortisone cream), though it does take a few minutes to start working.
Feel free to ask any questions and let me know if I need to clarify anything.
for stopping by!
Additional notes:
1. Don't bother doing another filtering beyond the mesh strainer. I ran mine through a 25 micron bubble hash bag and it definitely wasn't worth the time or effort, not to mention it's a royal pain to clean afterwards.
2. If you have a good electric grinder (I used a small Ninja), you can take the leftover plant material and grind it as fine as you can to make an excellent exfoliant out of it. It leaves your skin nice and smooth.
3. If you're wondering about the 180ºF temp, it's to make the oil really hot but keep the plant matter from burning where it's pressed against the sides and bottom of the pot. It's jam-packed in there.
4. It doesn't take long for the fan leaves to dry out, and the fine roots dry out pretty quickly too, but the branches and stems and thick top roots can take months, so start saving now!
5. If you have questions about making and/or using topical pain oil, feel free to ask those as well.
Now it's much easier to keep in the cabinet or on my desk at work.
)
