Tips for butane extraction
I have heard of numerous SFE accidents caused with butane. All of them happened the same way. Most SFE butane extraction accidents occur when the pipe is full of bud and butane is dripping down into the cup below. Any flame, spark or ignition will cause that butane to become unstable. Almost all of the accidents I have heard about occurred because a flame or spark ignited the butane. In most cases it was a smoker who caused this. Do not smoke when you are performing SFE with butane, period. If you can do that then butane extraction is actually one of safest methods of hash oil extraction available to the home grower.

During the SFE process the butane must be left alone to drain down into the plastic cup along with the raw hash oils that it collects on the way down. Vapor and fumes will come out through the top of the cap and the cup.

After about fifteen minutes, most of the butane will have passed through. There may be some remaining butane/oil extract near the filter and end cap but forcing this through (by blowing, tapping or pushing) into the tube may add unwanted matter to your extract. A brief shake is all that is needed to help the remainder into the cup. Use the wooden stick to wipe away any oil/butane mixture from the base of the filter. This butane/oil extract in the pipe and cup is still part of the SFE process and the butane will continue to evaporate.

Butane has a low boiling point (even evaporates at room temperature) and if you need to boil off any excess butane in the cup simply place the cup into a bowl of hot water (not boiling!) and watch the butane evaporate. This is why butane extraction is best done outdoors. Butane will eventually evaporate into the atmosphere instead of into your home where it can become a fire hazard. You should eventually be left with an amber-colored substance in the cup. This is your high-grade hash oil!

The butane should be completely evaporated by heating the cup of raw hash oil/butane in hot water. Your high-grade hash oil is sticky to touch and best smoked in small quantities because of its quality. Oil is best enjoyed by placing a small glob of oil on some foil and heating the foil lightly from beneath, causing the oil to boil and vaporize. This vapor should be then consumed using a Pyrex straw (plastic straws burn and inhaling burning plastic is not good). As a note: herb oil is an excellent format for medicinal use because it is very pure. By vaporizing herb oil, the user can enjoy a pure form of herb without carbon monoxide.

Here are some other tips for butane extraction:
• After you remove the hash oil from the cup you can use some isopropyl (90 percent minimum content) to collect any residual oil that may by still in the cup. Add a small amount of isopropyl to your cup and swirl it around. Heat the cup at a very low heat (less than 200 degrees to avoid THC evaporation) to evaporate the isopropyl, leaving the remaining hash oil collected from the rim of the cup.
• You can perform a second extraction using the same procedure with the used bud to remove any excess oil that is still left in the bud. The bud should be mostly devoid of any cannabinoid compounds and should be disposed of.
• A slow release of butane into the pipe allows sufficient time for the SFE to take place, improving the quality of the process and the final amount. Try not to force all your butane in too quickly.
• The butane you use must be as pure as possible. Bottled butane is usually mixed with chemicals so that when it leaks you smell it. These chemicals can interfere with the butane/herb SFE process.
• Use a bud grinder to make sure that your bud is powered down as much as possible. The finer the mix the better the extraction results.
• You should be able to get between 5 and 10 grams of hash oil for every 1 oz of good quality resinous bud that you use.
• You can also process leaf or trim using butane SFE. You can expect about 0.5 to 2 grams of hash oil for every 1 oz of trim used. This depends on the quality of the trim.

PRESSING RESIN INTO HASH
Again, the quality of the resin glands will determine the quality of hash that you will smoke. In the first chapter we talked about Zero. Recall that hashish can be graded, based on quality, from high (00) to low (3). This is calculated based on a simple ratio of cannabinoids to vegetable material. Good quality hashish has a high ratio of cannabinoids to vegetable material. In Morocco, 00 is used to describe hash that has the highest level of cannabinoids to vegetable material achieved by the extraction process. You can well imagine that this is the finest resin available compressed into hashish. You may be pleased to know that compressing hashish is simple.

Take your extracted resin glands and put it into a cellophane bag. Fold it into a flat block shape and tape the ends of the cellophane to create the package. Try to create the best flat block you can by pressing it with your hands to make it more even. Using a pin, make a few holes on both sides of the bag. One hole per square inch is a good measurement to go by.

Get two or three newspaper pages and dampen them down with a clean cloth that has just been rinsed. Don't saturate or break the paper, just dampen it. Set an iron to low heat and place the newspaper over the cellophane bag. Hold the iron over the paper and press it down with medium pressure for about fifteen seconds. Turn the bag over and place the newspaper on top again. Dampen the paper again, as needed. Repeal the pressure for the same amount of lime. You should only have to do this once or twice per side.
Let the bag cool for five minutes and remove the cellophane. You should have a nice block of hash. In addition, your hash will be of a much better quality than the street hash you find on the market. Street hash tends to be made from the less fine skuff material in order to make more blocks of hash. If you smoke homemade hash then you'll probably understand why 90 percent of street hash is sold at rip-off prices. Those big ounce chunks probably only contain 10 percent of the good stuff, if any at all!

This technique of screening and pressing is used to make hash in many countries. As you can imagine, in order to produce bulk amounts you would need to use a lot of skuff in conjunction with numerous drum machines working around the clock. If you harvest more than ten plants then it is worth using one of two to make a nice chunk of hash or some oil for yourself. Since good homemade hash is devoid of marijuana leaf matter and other foreign elements it is a very pure smoke which guarantees a hit every time. herb connoisseurs regard homemade hash as one of the best ways of getting the 'best' from the plant. Treat yourself to a little homemade hash at harvest time if you can. It is well worth the experience and who knows, you may just decide to produce a load of homemade hash instead of bud! Give it a whirl — you should be pleased with the results.


hope this helps.

kp