Hey what size should my trim be when blasting with butane? Should I be grinding it fine or leaving it in bigger pieces? Pics would be helpful.
Thanks in advance
How big is it now? machine trim?
Yes machine trim. My friend told me to put in blender but I feel like that’s too small
If you have to grind it you can use something like this on a large drill motor.https://www.amazon.com/Jiffy-Mixer-Paint-Gallon-ES/dp/B00ILYJ9CW
make sure to do it in a stainless steel pot, 5 gal buckets will shed plastic debris if you spun that badboy in there. Its 304 stainless too!
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@Soxhlet Would grinding it in the kitchen grinder make the material too small?
No, but it might make a very dirty blender. I reccomend you clean the entire thing well, you don’t want any contaminates from the blender.
Carefull with solvents too, they may damage seals/degrease the insides of the bearings.
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@Soxhlet are you talking about solvents getting into the blender???
yes, more specifically into the drive bearing.
If you decided to wash it out with say acetone, it could toast the seals. what quantity did you need to grind?
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@Soxhlet 5lb I use a grinder dedicated just for the trim
Does that actually work well? Have you found that it’s cutting it or just mulching it?
It grinds it up pretty well, especally it you let it “walk” around the walls of the ss pot. I used to do this when I ran trim.
why? do you have data showing it helps?
there is nothing inside those cells that you want, breaking them open just makes for more mess. machine trim should already be an appropriate size.
Edit: stuffing more biomass in the tube, using grinding, and brute force will increase yields. I believe both extraction efficiency, and product quality suffer. I don’t have hard data.
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It lets you pack more in the coumn, I was not concerned with “quality” when I was making crude. Although when running bud I grind it, I use a “bud buster” to process it. All my yeild data says that grinding improves yeild with buds.
shoutout to graywolf for this nugget!
design can be found in the ancient ruins of the skunkpharm
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I like those SS paint stirrers too. 
never used them to grind dry biomass.
Edit: note that my original post was incorrect. those won’t fit through a 4’ hole.
try it!
yep. frozen at -80C then run through a screen like that is my preferred grind for hydrocarbon extraction. fresh or cured.
I will, even though it means going out and buying my own at this point
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But how do you grind 30 lbs a day, I use to rock a screen like that when I didn’t have to run so much but recently we haven’t even been grinding. Any ideas on how to grind up that much material?
Have you considered reducing material to rough bubble hash before blasting? I have a lot of trim to run and am personally going to give this a try as soon as the 20gal machine arrives this week. It would be really nice to cut way down on solvent and hopefully time.
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I remember reading about that thing
The water may wash away terpenes though, wouldn’t it? They are a soluble of sorts. So, in theory you would be washing away some of the terps, but also blasting less plant matter. In turn, might equal itself out…? Maybe…?
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