[Guide] The Minutiae of Marijuana: From Seed to Extract

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EliH
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[Guide] The Minutiae of Marijuana: From Seed to Extract

Sat Oct 13, 2018 1:37 am

So I've seen a couple guides regarding smoking Marijuana, but not one posted yet about the creation of Marijuana. That is the purpose of this guide.

To begin with, everything listed here is purely for educational purposes.

Marijuana. The crop that's taken the business world by storm. What really is involved in it? Why are there a trillion different ways to use it, and how do I make it myself? I hope to shed some light for those asking, and to hopefully educate those who think they know, but really don't.

This guide will have two and a half parts.
PART 1
Growing Marijuana from a seed to a plant.

First things first. You can either choose to grow Marijuana indoors or outdoors. I won't go into the outdoors grow details as it's extremely easy, and produces extremely shitty plants, unless done perfectly. Therefore, I recommend growing indoors in a controlled setting.

Items you need for indoor growth:
An area to grow.
This can be a grow tent, a custom built box, or a retro-fitted custom interior. The differences between these options are purely based off of how much $ you are willing to invest, and the amount of people you have working for you (if anyone at all). The easiest is the grow tent, moving up in difficulty of construction to the custom box, and then finally maxing out at an interior built purely for a grow-op. The common factors that need to be taken into consideration when constructing or buying these items is ventilation and electricity use. The more you grow, the more ventilation you need and the more electricity you will use.

When roleplaying one of these, the following items will vary in size and in amount.

Lighting.
Next up is lighting. This is a pretty controversial issue, as if you ask a grower in real life you'll get a different answer from every grower. Here are the three main options that I recommend.

For small grows or a low budget, use CFL's. These are basic bulbs which you can make or find fixtures for extremely easily. Two sets are needed, one set of 6500k for vegetation, and one set of 2700k for flowering. These terms will be described later.

For medium grows, go for a MH/HPS kit. These vary in size from 250 watts to 1000+ watts. Your wattage will depend on how big your grow site is. Check the wattage per square foot and compare to your grow site for correct kit size.

For large grows, or if you just want to spend a lot of money, I recommend LED Panels. These go up in price exponentially, but the output and being able to use for both vegetation and flowering makes them worth it. As usual, wattage depends on your grow site.

Ventilation.
There's been a lot of good guides written about this, and honestly in my opinion you can bullshit the details in roleplay as it gets pretty technical. If you're interested in reading up, though, go here.

Otherwise, buy some fans like this for smaller grows, or get in touch with a professional ventilation company for full-sized rooms or buildings.

Soil and extras.
Everyone has their preferences. I like Fox Farm. They have a lot of great stuff. You also need clay pellets, perlite, coco, and rockwool.

Nutrients.
Once again, everyone has their preferences. As a professional shill, I like to use Fox Farms.

Pots.
This is pretty simple, you just need any kind of container with holes at the bottom. A lot of people use 5 gallon drums, and I've heard of people using stuff like Smart Pots.

PH Testers.
Self-explanatory. Amazon it.

Seeds.
Finally, you need your seeds. You can either use regular seeds or clones. The main difference is that regular seeds will produce stronger planets, but will take longer. Clones will produce more yield, and will take shorter time.


Next up is the actual growing process.



Germination.
Germinate your seeds. You can do this by placing it in a shot glass with water, planting them in dirt, or by placing it inside a damp paper towel.

Vegetation.
Once the seed has begun to produce roots, you need to transplant it into a bigger container to allow it to grow. This is where your bigger pot with drainable holes comes in. Squish the sides of your original container so that the dirt/roots break off from the inside walls. Slowly slide the plant out.

IMPORTANT: DO NOT LET SUNLIGHT TOUCH THE ROOTS.

Quickly place it into your new pot, and water it a bit. You now need to leave it be and use a 24/0 lighting schedule. What this means is that you need 24 hours of constant lighting during vegetation. Some people also do 18/6, with 18 hours of lighting and 6 hours of darkness. Don't do more than this, though, because too much darkness means it will begin to flower.

Nutrients, pH and Watering.
Only water when thee soil is dry. If you stick around 1/3rd of a finger into the soil and it's wet, it does not need watering. Many newbies over-water, and this is a very common mistake.

Once it's dry enough that a knuckle/third of a finger comes up dry when sticking into the dirt, water until you see the bottom of the pot draining a bit. Then go back to waiting for the soil to dry.

Nutrients should be used 'sparingly'. Follow the schedule provided on your nutrient line, but start out with less than recommended and ramp up. For example, 1/4th the recommended dose, then 1/2, etc. Alternate your nutrient usage for every other watering.

pH testing is extremely important because your nutrients will only work if your plants are 'feeling right'. Test your plants three times: before nutrients, during nutrients, and then test the water drainage. There are charts you can use.

Training.
No, not weight lifting.

This is what seperates the good growers from the great. There are several techniques, but the most common is Low Stress Training. Essentially, you tie down the plant so that more of it is exposed to the light, therefore producing more yield.

Cloning.
This shit's a whole a guide in and of itself. Look here if interested. This is not a necessary step required.

Flowering.
This is where the magic happens. Switch lighting to 12/12 (12 hours on of light, 12 hours off of light). The 12 hours of no light MUST be pitch black. If not, the plant can be damaged.

There are separate flowering nutrients you can use. As with before, start small and ramp up to the recommended dosage. It will take around a week to be able to see if it's female or male. Chop the male's and trash them, or whatever. They have pollen sacs, and pollen is bad.

Harvesting and curing.
I'm lazy, so here's a guide on how to cut and how to cure.

And we're done!

Part two will come in a second post.
Last edited by EliH on Sat Oct 13, 2018 6:00 am, edited 2 times in total.
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EliH
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Joined: September 2018

Re: [Guide] The Minutiae of Marijuana: From Seed to Extract

Sat Oct 13, 2018 1:37 am

PART 2
Extracts
Now this is the real money-maker. It's also the real money-waster.

A lot of this actually used to be industry secrets if you go back a few years, as nobody really knew what was going on in Colorado. However, with the hiring of more biologists and chemists, the secrets have begun to leak.

As with everything Marijuana-related, there are five-thousand different methods to convert Marijuana flowers to THC extract.

What exactly is THC extract? As we all know, blazin' up at 4/20 makes people feel good. However, this isn't solely because smoking plant matter makes brain happy. There is a chemical within Marijuana known as THC, and that's the shit that makes you high, man.

So what's better than smoking weed?

Smoking concentrated super-weed.

That's an over-exaggeration, but if I had to compare it to alcohol, weed would be a beer while THC extract would be shot of everclear.

Regular weed, as I'm sure you all know, is smoked by lighting it on fire. Well, regular fire ain't enough for THC extract. You gotta superheat that shit. To smoke this, you need two things: a very hot flame (blowtorch), and a metal piece known as a nail. These 'nails' replace the bowl used for regular marijuana, and are superheated to around 600-900 Fahrenheit. Fuck Celsius.

These nails can also be made of several other materials, such as ceramic or quartz, and are all dependent on your preference.

There are also really nice tools you can use instead of a blowtorch called 'e-nails', which are electrically powered heating devices that you can directly attach to your nail and heat to a specific temperature. These are very useful and I recommend getting one, as you don't have to eyeball heating your nail to a hot-red with a blowtorch. Instead, you can plug your e-nail into the wall and set a specific temperature to heat to. 750 is a nice temperature for me personally.

You then 'dab' the THC extract onto the super-heated nail, and it produces vapor which you inhale. Pretty simple.

So. How do I make this shit?
This is where it gets complicated.

There are four main methods which I will talk about, ranging from low THC yield to large THC yield, also corresponding in price.

These methods are:

Rosin

QWET

BHO

and CLS.

Making THC extract is all about science, man, and as such follows some pretty basic principles.

First, let's start with Rosin.


This is the simplest, and the cheapest way of making THC extract. It's also the worst way as the yield it provides is the lowest.

To make Rosin, you need heat and pressure.

That's it.

"That's it?" you ask. Yes, that's it. Of course, depending on your budget, you have two options, but the premise is simple. By heating up marijuana buds and applying pressure, you squeeze concentrated THC out of it. Kinda like orange juice, but with heat.

The 'el-cheapo' method is to get a hairdryer, some parchment paper, and of course your Marijuana.

Put the Marijuana between the wrapping paper, and squeeze it with your hair-dryer turned on. Like this. (BTW, I totally stole these pictures from thekindland.com).

Hold for five to ten seconds, and it should look like this.

There are also custom-built heating Arbor presses you can use for big-boy Rosin runs, like these. They do the same thing, but give much higher yields.

Scrape that yellow sticky stuff together, because that's your THC extract.

Onto the big-boy methods: Solvents
This is where the industry-standards begin. If the previous method follows the principle of 'heat+pressure', these methods follow the principle of 'solvents'. What I mean by this is that all of these methods use a corrosive chemical to break the THC away from the plant, filter the plant matter out so that only the corrosive chemical mixed with the THC is left, and then seperate the THC extract from the corrosive chemical.

This requires not being brain-dead, because it is dangerous. People have died using these methods in real-life. I am also going to make these guides short, as if I applied my knowledge and personal experience regarding them, it would require several pages for every small detail.

THESE METHODS REQUIRE BULK MARIJUANA. IT IS RECOMMENDED TO USE AT LEAST ONE OUNCE. THE MORE YOU USE, THE BETTER YOUR YIELD.

The first method, and the safest, is known as QWET.


QWET stands for Quick-Wash Ethanol. As it sounds, the idea is to use ethanol as a solvent to separate the THC from the Marijuana buds.

Items You Need
Ethanol (Everclear is a good food-grade Ethanol you can use)
Mason Jars
Coffee Filters/Wire Strainer
Dried Ice
Pot

Process
First , freeze your Marijuana buds in a container in the freezer. Do the same with the Ethanol, though it's not capable of freezing. Once the temperature has stabilized for both around 0 Fahrenheit, pour the ethanol into the container with the Marijuana buds and shake gently. Place the mixture into the Dried Ice (still in the container/mason jar, dumbass).

Wait three minutes, and dump the mixture through a wire strainer/coffee filter placed above a different clean mason jar/container, like so. This is to filter out the plant matter as the ethanol has already absorbed 75-80% of the THC. You can do this one to three more times if you want to absorb 100% of the THC, also known as doing extra washes.

Once only the ethanol is left, it may be green to gold in color. If green, that only means that there is some chlorophyll left over. You can remove this coloring by placing the mixture in the sunlight for a few hours.

Next is the evaporation of the liquid. There are two methods for this.

The first method is the poor man's method, and I forget the proper terminology, but it is a double heated bath. Take two containers, one smaller than the other, and fill the bigger container with oil/water. Then place the the smaller container on top of the liquid, making sure it floats. Pour the mixture into the smaller container. Make sure that it doesn't sink and fill with water.

The purpose of this is that we are going to heat the water/oil in the bigger container, allowing the ethanol/THC mixture in the smaller container to distill and boil off. The ethanol will slowly evaporate, leaving behind the pure THC extract. It will look something like this when done.

BHO


I'll do this later.

CLS


CLS stands for closed loop system. It follows the same premise of using a solvent, but this is THE industry standard for producing large quantities of THC extract. And I mean LARGE. For a smaller run, depending on your hardware, around a quarter-pound of marijuana is required at a minimum for a single run. And as always, the more Marijuana you use in a single run, the more yield you get.

To be frank, details regarding individual setups are still industry trade-secrets. However, anyone with a degree in Chemistry will know how to do this due to it using the same ideas used in other closed-loop solvent systems found in laboratories.

Here are some pictures of setups.

I may share my experience with a closed-loop system. I'm not sure yet though. As for BHO, I'll write it up later, but it follows the same premise as QWET, except that you use butane instead of ethanol and need to use a vac machine since butane is flammable and doesn't evaporate safely.
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EliH
Posts: 3
Joined: September 2018

Re: [Guide] The Minutiae of Marijuana: From Seed to Extract

Sat Oct 13, 2018 2:37 am

Also, DO NOT USE THESE METHODS IN REAL LIFE WITHOUT RESEARCHING/KNOWING WHAT YOU ARE DOING. I have left out details required to use these methods in real life that aren't necessary or simply take too long to do in role-playing scenarios. For the extraction methods, THESE ARE DANGEROUS TO DO IN REAL LIFE.

Especially BHO.

People have died from explosions from attempting to do BHO extractions in real life when they didn't do their research. Don't be them.
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TheCed
Posts: 43
Joined: September 2018

Re: [Guide] The Minutiae of Marijuana: From Seed to Extract

Tue Oct 23, 2018 2:42 pm

Underrated guide.

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