tube extraction vs butane soak method

I haven't done a proper tube blast since i've got my vac chamber/pump but i've done 3 runs of soaking in butane in a mason jar and im pretty sure the yields are shit?

What do you guys typically get % wise from extracting through a tube using dry material and packing tight?

3.5g gave .2g - 5.7%
8.4g gave 1.2g - 14.2%
and 13.5g (14 before i dried it some) gave 2.0g - 14.8%

Goalie. Yield is determined by starting material. What type of material did you use? With top quality indoor buds i average between 20%-23%. With top quality outdoor i usually get 15-18%. Using indoor popcorn i get 10%-15. Outdoor popcorn about 8-12%. I dont run straight trim as i cook with that.

I don't do oil but I get about 7-8 grams of oil out of every oz of bunk. I have a bro that does his into oil, bud and all and he uses the tube method.

lio lacidem said:

Goalie. Yield is determined by starting material. What type of material did you use? With top quality indoor buds i average between 20%-23%. With top quality outdoor i usually get 15-18%. Using indoor popcorn i get 10%-15. Outdoor popcorn about 8-12%. I dont run straight trim as i cook with that.

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lio lacidem: oh ok, thank you. The starting material in all 3 runs mentioned in my OP were some higher end mid-quality nugs. Not the primo dank, but pretty nice stuff still. I understand that yield is determined by starting material, but do you not think the method (soak vs blast) could also play some role in the final yield?

bird mcbride said:

I don't do oil but I get about 7-8 grams of oil out of every oz of bunk. I have a bro that does his into oil, bud and all and he uses the tube method.

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thats 25% return, thats pretty good for bunk, wonder how the oil is

If using mids then your right on track. Expect around 5-10% yield. Mcbride if your getting 25% back on bunk buds it is full of other stuff then canbabanoids. You can not get a higher yield then thc% if material. No way dies bunk have same % as top quality.

From prime bud, our record is 28.1%, average closer to 23% and worst 5.7%.

Trim can be anything, but we average about half the yield from sweet trim as prime bud.

Fadedawg said:

From prime bud, our record is 28.1%, average closer to 23% and worst 5.7%.

Trim can be anything, but we average about half the yield from sweet trim as prime bud.

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do you do the traditional butane blast through a tube or the soak method? And I can't remember from another post you made, but do you use fresh frozen material or dried out/food dehydrated material?

soak method has always seemed to yield more for me
how long is your soak??
I soak for around 1 hour an 30 minutes

goalie said:

do you do the traditional butane blast through a tube or the soak method? And I can't remember from another post you made, but do you use fresh frozen material or dried out/food dehydrated material?

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For that record, we use a Terpenator recycle system, but it is a good indicator of how much is actually available for harvest.

Our record with a tube was 23.6% as I recall, and average closer to 18/19%, because we seldom repacked and ran the material a second time.

I've run fresh frozen both in a tube and in a thermos and get better yield with a thermos, using about a two hour soak. Sometimes a thirty minute, followed by a one and a half hour soak, with the first reserved for bragging rights.

I haven't run dried in a thermos to make a comparison, so no input there, but would expect it to be slightly higher yield than single pass. Perhaps Mig Pilot can chime in on his comparisons??

Fadedawg said:

For that record, we use a Terpenator recycle system, but it is a good indicator of how much is actually available for harvest.

Our record with a tube was 23.6% as I recall, and average closer to 18/19%, because we seldom repacked and ran the material a second time.

I've run fresh frozen both in a tube and in a thermos and get better yield with a thermos, using about a two hour soak. Sometimes a thirty minute, followed by a one and a half hour soak, with the first reserved for bragging rights.

I haven't run dried in a thermos to make a comparison, so no input there, but would expect it to be slightly higher yield than single pass. Perhaps Mig Pilot can chime in on his comparisons??

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Very cool! 23.6% makes me excited to try this again, A few questions if you will be so kind:

if 23.6 is the the tube blast record, what is the record using the thermos soak? for 30 and 1.5hr?

When i tried the butane soak method, i used a mason jar - perhaps a thermos as you use is safer/better?

When you soak your material for 30 minutes, you then strain and soak in new butane for another 1.5 hours and save the first for its own run (for bragging rights) amd run them as individual batches to separate quality?

Do you put a lid on your thermos when its soaking, and do you store in the freezer when its soaking or perhaps just some ice in a bowl outside?

Is there any information about X amount of butane to use for Y amount of material for the soak method?

thank you for your knowledge and sharing it. ;D

Apples and oranges with the thermos soak, as I use it for fresh frozen and not dried material. Probably closer to 5% yield, because of the extra water weight in the starting material.

I like a stainless thermos, because it will keep the butane liquid for a couple of hours just setting it in the shade, with a towel draped over it.

I just pack the thermos three quarters full of packed material and fill it to the top with butane.

Fadedawg said:

Apples and oranges with the thermos soak, as I use it for fresh frozen and not dried material. Probably closer to 5% yield, because of the extra water weight in the starting material.

I like a stainless thermos, because it will keep the butane liquid for a couple of hours just setting it in the shade, with a towel draped over it.

I just pack the thermos three quarters full of packed material and fill it to the top with butane.

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without going into too much detail, my current situation is that i have to buy buds to make bho, it's very expensive for me. That is why i'm asking questions about yield and how to maximize it.

Overall, what will yield more providing the starting material is the same - thermos soak or tube blast?

If you do a repack and second tube run, they will ostensibly be very close in yield.

thank you

Some days are better than others.

Fadedawg said:

I've run fresh frozen both in a tube and in a thermos and get better yield with a thermos, using about a two hour soak. Sometimes a thirty minute, followed by a one and a half hour soak, with the first reserved for bragging rights.

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I'll have to try a longer soak next time I make some BHO. I kept everything including the cans of butane in the freezer and basically did it like QWISO.

I swirled it for just a minute on the clock then added some fresh butane and did the same for a wash. I never really kept track of the yields but was quite happy with the results.

Fadedawg said:

Apples and oranges with the thermos soak, as I use it for fresh frozen and not dried material. Probably closer to 5% yield, because of the extra water weight in the starting material.

I like a stainless thermos, because it will keep the butane liquid for a couple of hours just setting it in the shade, with a towel draped over it.

I just pack the thermos three quarters full of packed material and fill it to the top with butane.

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I'm curious why you wouldn't have everything kept below freezing then the butane in the thermos would have stayed liquid much longer as it's boiling point is only -0.5C.

When I did mine I used dried and cured bud but have lots of fresh frozen bud in the freezer to work with and was going to use naphtha for that but I have a bunch of cans of 9x filtered butane sitting around.

When I did my last batch I used 2 1L flat-bottom boiling balls. One outside the freezer with the filtered butane/oil mix connected to the 2nd in the bottom of the freezer by a 20' coil of 3/16" copper tubing. The butane in #1 boiled fine with no added heat and the room temp at 12C in my mudroom where the freezer is. I had a few boiling chips in there to help things along.

I could just use the captured butane right away to do more pot and got way more mileage out of a couple cans than letting it evaporate. Had half a thermos full of the recycled butane and just left it in the freezer but when I checked it a couple weeks later it was empty. Good thing I wasn't smoking when I went into the freezer for stuff when it might have been full of fumes. I have an idea to use a propane cylinder to save that butane in for later use. As long as it's kept cold it works like any other liquid but liquids like that have too high a vapour coefficient and unless under containment to build pressure will get out of almost anything.

Still looks greenish at the start. Camp stove butane back then.



Looks better now.





Rinsed the ball out with room temp ISO then evapped that off over a pot of simmering water with lots of stirring. I never decarbed it as it was meant for smoking.

OldMedUser said:

I'll have to try a longer soak next time I make some BHO. I kept everything including the cans of butane in the freezer and basically did it like QWISO.

I swirled it for just a minute on the clock then added some fresh butane and did the same for a wash. I never really kept track of the yields but was quite happy with the results.



I'm curious why you wouldn't have everything kept below freezing then the butane in the thermos would have stayed liquid much longer as it's boiling point is only -0.5C.

When I did mine I used dried and cured bud but have lots of fresh frozen bud in the freezer to work with and was going to use naphtha for that but I have a bunch of cans of 9x filtered butane sitting around.

When I did my last batch I used 2 1L flat-bottom boiling balls. One outside the freezer with the filtered butane/oil mix connected to the 2nd in the bottom of the freezer by a 20' coil of 3/16" copper tubing. The butane in #1 boiled fine with no added heat and the room temp at 12C in my mudroom where the freezer is. I had a few boiling chips in there to help things along.

I could just use the captured butane right away to do more pot and got way more mileage out of a couple cans than letting it evaporate. Had half a thermos full of the recycled butane and just left it in the freezer but when I checked it a couple weeks later it was empty. Good thing I wasn't smoking when I went into the freezer for stuff when it might have been full of fumes. I have an idea to use a propane cylinder to save that butane in for later use. As long as it's kept cold it works like any other liquid but liquids like that have too high a vapour coefficient and unless under containment to build pressure will get out of almost anything.

Still looks greenish at the start. Camp stove butane back then.

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Looks better now.

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Rinsed the ball out with room temp ISO then evapped that off over a pot of simmering water with lots of stirring. I never decarbed it as it was meant for smoking.

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Nice color and clarity!! How are the aromatics?

I looked for my notes on the thermos extraction experiments and found the pictures, but not the notes. The pictures were dated 3-9-2012, and this article 3-25-2014, so a decade plus ago and after we had developed the Terpenator and Lil Terp closed loop extractors for our own use.

As my octogenarian memory serves me, thermos extraction was one of the things that we experimented with looking for inexpensive ways that the OMMP medical marijuana patients could extract for themselves. Most of the BHO extraction at that time was still open blasting.

We didn't continue to chill the thermos because it lasted long enough in the thermos to do the job without doing so.

We left the thermos lid off, so couldn’t safely put the thermos back in the freezer, even if it was outdoors. Those experiments were done on my back patio prior to us finishing our new SPR lab aka Skunk Shack.

We didn’t try to refine the technique but continued to demonstrate it as an option in our BHO extraction classes at the time.

Fadedawg said:

Nice color and clarity!! How are the aromatics?

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Pretty damn good I thought at the time. No heat used in the extraction and just simmering water for about 20min to cook off the ISO used to rinse out the boiling ball. If I do this again I will just use some of the reclaimed butane to rinse out the ball then no heat will be needed to get rid of that.

Over the last year I've hunted down and bought the glassware I needed to be able to vacuum distill my extractions with ISO or naphtha to keep heat to a minimum. My dugout aerator pump can double as a vacuum pump and I had to buy a new one as the 2yo one was left down in the damp basement off-season and the motor seized up but should be easy to fix once I tear it down and get the motor cleaned up. Medical grade pump used in lots of hospital equipment and I'll be sure to unhook the new one and keep it upstairs once the ice is off the dugout and it's not needed for the warmer months. I damn near broke my wrist clamping the pump in my bench vise and trying to use my big 1/2" Makita drill to break the rotor loose. Mounted everything so the handle of the drill was pressed against the work bench but forgot to check it's rotation. Hit the trigger and all hell broke loose. The joint at the bottom of my thumb swelled up and was so sore for a couple months I couldn't even test fire the new 12 gauge pump and .270 deer rifle I had bought a couple weeks before.

I have to take the cylinder heads off as a unit to get at the motor. Pretty sure it's just rust jamming things up between the stator and rotor as both pistons are free moving. $400 pump so I'm not giving up without a good shot at fixing it. If I can't get it going I'll use the new one if I have to.



You guys were experimenting with that stuff a few years before I tried my butane distillation experiment. When I took my environmental chemistry courses back in the late 80s we did a lot of physics on the properties of gases and liquids and a lot of different experiments in various extraction techniques and distillations in the organic chemistry lab. I was pretty confident that my ideas about distilling off the butane for immediate re-use should work and it did work as I thought. What's a real PITA is the new law they brought in when pot got legalized about using organic solvents to make extractions. Up to 14 years in jail for doing this stuff now mostly because of idiots blowing up stuff when they do it without having a clue what they're doing. But like laws against making your own hard liquor with a still nobody's going to catch you unless you screw up and authorities get involved. I don't plan on screwing up and keep a couple fire extinguishers handy, don't smoke anything or do any drinking as I quit that almost 3 years ago. I also worked as a chemist in a hazardous waste disposal plant for a couple years where we got extensive training on handling much more dangerous stuff than this all the time.

So you're an octogenarian now are ya. Hope I make that and if I can quit the damn cigs just might. I'll be 70 this October and still getting around pretty good considering the arthritis and all the beatings my body took over the previous decades. Once I stopped drinking for a hobby got back into fishing and scored a little 12' tinny last spring to get out in the fresh air and move around more. I row it around more than using the outboard or electric trolling motor so get a nice impact free workout doing that once or twice a week and ride around on my mountain bike when weather permits. Also getting into building rods and tying flies again. Lots of new stuff to learn there too so the old head gets a bit of a workout as well.

Fadedawg said:

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Seeing as how I never figured I'd make 30 back in the day I've already got my extra 20 years+.

Since my 30s I've lived cleaner than most of my peers by not eating at fast food joints, avoiding junk food and drinks, and taking some vitamin and mineral supplements. Still drank too much and too often self medicating to deal with depression and PTSD after a near fatal hammer attack in my 20s but haven't touched booze in almost 3 years after microdosing magic mushrooms eliminated the worst of the depression and removed any desire for drink.

Still haven't quit the damn cigs tho but working on that using an e-cig to ween off the tobacco. Roll my own and have for years to help smoke less. The wife smokes too so it's got to be both of us quitting to have a chance. Just pulling that trigger to actually give the damn stuff up is our big stumbling block.

My mom at 96 still gets around without a walker but can't walk too far due to poor circulation in her legs that she can't find a doc to fix because of her age. Almost totally blind now from macular degeneration that may have been fixed in it's earliest stage if she'd tried chelation therapy as I suggested. She listened to her big brother instead when he told her the people he knew that tried it all died but they were in their 80s and had many other health problems that caused that. Always very active and slim with no heart issues but lots of aches and pains as you would expect at her age.

I wish I had her genetics but I was adopted so it's a crap shoot for me. I think I did pretty good in that department tho. Still have all my hair, no heart problems, have low blood pressure and no diabetes. Rheumatic fever at age 12 has probably lead to my joint problems but they're not horrible. Could be genetic as my birth mother had that problem too from what little I found out about her when I finally made contact with that side of my family only 9 years ago. No idea about my birth father's side as she died taking his identity to the grave and never told any of her 6 kids with another man about my existence.

I do need to get more physically active and more fruit and veg in my diet would help but that stuff is expensive up here in the north. We grow a bunch each year but doesn't last for too long. Might get a pizza once a month but everything else is home cooked.

I'm pretty sure it's all the chemicals and stuff like HFCS in processed foods that is causing most of the cancer, diabetes, obesity and other poor health issues plaguing today's western societies. Too much reliance on big pharma educated doctors handing out pills for so many things that could be corrected with proper diet and exercise isn't helping.