Can I turn shatter into oil?

Renfro

Well-Known Member
You may find some threads on it in the concentrates section if you do a search. That stuff from trueterpenes.com is what my buddy uses in Oklahoma to make his commercial cartridges.
 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
for a vape?
This depends on "what vape".

I will tailor my answer to technology like the CCELL cartridge from Hamilton Devices.

My advice will be useless to users of wick-and-solvent-type vapes, the preferred weapons of the folks who like laying fog. I have a coupla old wick/solution vapes, and they belong in a museum. CCELL is why.

I like to smoke distillate, a refined fraction of oleoresin Cannabis. Shatter is oleoresin Cannabis.
Distillate has the advantage of being freed of its two least-vapable components:
1) non-volatiles, and
2) waxes.
Nnvolatiles will foul the heater coil(s) and kill the cart.

(Imagine the redness of my face when I discovered, with another's guidance (and that person had less chemical training than I (oy!)), that part of the wax fraction distills. Talk about a shot to my chemomancer jimmies!)

So a dewaxed distillate (I use methanol for selective-solution dewaxing) will vape like a dream in a CCELL-type cartridge.

(Disclaimer 2: CCELL is a Hamilton Devices gig as far as I know. But I went to a local vape shop and they sold me a CCELL but it was a Chinese knockoff. Looked just like the real thing, but the thing leaked like a Beltway appointee.)

Soooooo if we are talking about THIS vape tech and not some PG/VG bronze-age trebuchet tech, I believe shatter (once decarbed; I entirely agree with that) can be made to vape well. You don't even need to dewax if you are gonna use a real CCELL as a one-time disposable.

If your decarbed shatter is too thick (and this is unlikely) you can thin it down to something that will flow over the course of 12 hours ... by admixing some monoterpenes. My choice for this is d-limonene. I bought mine from Amazon. It's cheap, clean, unlikely to be harmful by inhalation, and subtly delicious. When I had some too-thick distillate, a 1-to-5 % admixture of d-limonene fixed the problem, and to my amazement the flavor profile barely shifted.

(Mind you; I have learned how to retain most of the native terpenes when I distill. Yes; I make the distillates I smoke. This makes an oil/resin that flows just right for a genuine CCELL.)


If you're still with me, I'd decarb the shatter (110 degrees C or 230 degrees F for 10 min and Bob's yer uncle), verify that a tipped half-full vial of goo will leak in more than 1 but less than 12 hours, (my redneck viscometry at work there), NOT invoke PG or VG, and take sweet rips of pure homegrown goodness. As you might be able to discern from this rambling and diffuse diatribe, I am very much high on my own supply.)

I'm assuming this is good clean butane-blast shatter, the color of a fine aged single-malt. That should contain few enough fixed organics that they'll char the element into whimpering submission.

If you have remaining questions, let's submit them to sober[er] review mañana.

I want to gratefully acknowledge reallybigjesusfreak for raising my consciousness, pointing out to me the need for a public education campaign for these emerging, exciting new technologies. Since a friend showed me what a CCELL is and does ... it's the only way I smoke any more. I am very curious to know if (should you go for a trial) your experience compares to mine.
 
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DemonTrich

Well-Known Member
Well if you decarb it you can make it into a goo, then you have to add something to make it flow better. There are some products on the market, https://trueterpenes.com/products/diluent/viscosity-extract-liquifier/

You can also add terps if you want flavor, check that site.

True terpenes dilutent is NOT safe for use in vapes. Numerous private lab tests back this up 100%, then them changing their wording online about it.

Please refer to the hundreds of pages about it over at IC.
 
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