Enlighten me. How to make large quantity dabs

I have recently been introduced to dabs and really like the stuff.

Can anyone tell me a way or direct me to a source on how to make large quantities of this stuff?
I'm talking lbs of raw product into dab a single process. Is this possible?
I've seen where you can do it with an Oz or two, but I'm curious if you can do it on a larger scale and how.

No hair straighteners


Any info/comments appreciated.

Well depends on what you mean. Dab is a blanket statement do you mean bho? Pho? Full melt bubble? Rosin? Co2 oil? Live resin? Lol there's a lot that people consider dabs as they all melt on a nail

I'm not familiar with the terminology but I've only heard it called dabs or shatter or shatter glass.

Well they are all dab just different solvents
Shatter,bho,crumble,wax - Butane
Full melt - water and ice
Live resin- butane but use fresh frozen trim and low temps for purging
Co2 oil - well I think you get that one
Rosin - press and heating plates like a hair straightener but on larger scale.

shatter/BHO/Crumble
Can you make this on a large scale with large amounts of raw material?
If so , how?
whats the most effective methods?

Closed loop bho extraction

A "dab" is an extract, whether BHO, QWISO or rosin. Basically, the more material you want to extract, the more solvent you need. It's up to you how large you choose to make the batches. I wouldn't recommend butane for large amounts, due to price and special handling requirements. A liquid solvent like heptane would probably work well and doesn't have the drawback of the closely related solvent hexane, producing a neurotoxic metabolite. You can buy it as Primus PowerFuel or Bestine rubber cement thinner, unless one or both changed ingredients. You can buy it as heptane on Amazon anyway. The n-heptane is the kind normally used for extractions. Might be hard to get rid of the residual solvent though. Apparently you can taste and smell hexane residue in extracts, so I'm sure heptane would be similar. Maybe not such a good suggestion after all.

sub closed loop

also large batch CO2 to simple carbon filtration using a solvent or winterizing

or large batch CO2 to rosin

you can take dry ice and your buds ground up (to extent is arguable for quality control) and conver a 5 gallon pail with a bubble bag screen and you sorta salt shaker the frozen THC out of the pail onto a glass surface

Bout a #

not me^

I found that MEK is only partially miscible with water. I hadn't read about that before so I've been using acetone until now, which is 100% water miscible so can't be separated easily. Amyl alcohol is also even less miscible but not as common to find in a store and slower to evaporate.

So the trick that this MEK miscibility opens the possibility of is getting rid of most of the MEK and thereby concentrating the extract into a smaller volume of solvent to be evaporated while at the same time washing out water solubles. Water can dissolve almost 30% of an equal volume of MEK, and the MEK only dissolves about 12% of the water. So if you add twice the volume of water you would reduce the volume of MEK by almost two thirds. You can add as much water as needed to get the MEK volume down as far as you want as long as it still is thin enough to be able to conveniently separate it from the water layer.

So once you separate the layers the MEK with the extract it will have about 12% water in it which needs to be removed. To do that, I intend to use magnesium sulfate, epsom salt. Maybe silica gel or calcium chloride, though the latter is supposedly dangerous to the lungs if dust is inhaled so I'll try others first. Then with the water removed it's a simple evaporation with purge. MEK is not very dangerous to health anyway. It's naturally present in many plant materials, like coffee beans. Any residue would likely be harmless though you would want to get it to as low a level as possible to avoid tasting or smelling it. Actually I could just not bother removing the water and just let it evaporate too, or pour it off if it's that much.

The main point of the MEK is to be able to simply wash out most of the solvent with water and also most of the water solubles. You could wash the solubles out of any alkane like hexane, but you couldn't wash out most of the hexane itself and thereby concentrate it. You'd still have to evaporate a large volume.

I haven't actually done any of the above yet. Just bought a can of MEK for my next extraction when the time comes. It should work though. Couldn't be worse than the acetone extract, which admittedly is pretty harsh. I'm hoping the water washing helps with that some.

A lot of great info. I will research and get back to you all!
Thanks!!!

The quality of your extract depends on quality of solvent an how well you can refine..using poisoned solvents is a bad idea

why would you want to extract more wax?
you smoke candles?
try going for the oils. loose the butane

Look into ionic liquids for extraction. Probably similar conditions to the ones in this pdf would work.

What you do is you get one of those car smasher things that scrapyards use to compact a car into little cubes....

...Next, you add some induction heating elements like foundries use to bring it quickly up to temp...


You back up the Terex Titan dump truck full of freshly-harvested bud..


Position a vat beneath the rig

Collect swimming pool amounts of rosin

why would you want to extract more wax?
you smoke candles?
try going for the oils. loose the butane

Click to expand...

gwpharms, I think it depends on a specific situation. In my case, there would be nothing better than the best dab torch something like Blazer GT8000. It does everything I need - and it's pretty reliable stuff, I know it for sure, cause my brother-in-law uses it for years, almost the same model.

If you are just getting started making concentrates for dabbing, may I suggest that you consider starting with a batch of hot press Rosin? It has the least hazards and requires a minimal amount of specialized equipment.

Next I would suggest next using QWET. Easy to do a safe extraction with minimal equipment. A nice concentrate, though low on terpene retention. Residual solvent is not toxic if inadequately purged.


To get high terpenes dabs will require using a low boiling point solvent like Propane or Butane, which can be done with minimal equipment, but not as safely and best done after investing in a closed loop system. It also requires doing it outside in a well ventilated area or in a properly exhausted C1C1 extraction booth.


You can use higher boiling point alkanes like Pentane, Hexane, or Heptane, but their subsequent purging will also remove most of the terpenes.

Vacuum purges to remove residual solvents are typically done with both alcohols and the alkanes, requiring a vacuum chamber of oven.