Stainless steel extraction tubes - THE TRUE NUMBERS

[HighLowGrow]

A few years ago I got into open blasting bho and started out with a couple of glass tubes. Pack your material in there, put on the screen, and slip the hose clamp on. And of course one of the tubes butane hole wasn't made right so I always had to mess with that. So eventually I wanted to go a bit bigger and better.

I looked and looked and looked at the stainless steel extraction tubes. They have all different diameter tubes. Lengths can be from 4" to a few feet.

I wanted something average so I went with the 18" x 2" outside diameter tube. It's advertised to hold 90-120 grams. I have never weighed the product going in the tube cause I didn't really care. Here it is.






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[CatHedral]

A few years ago I got into open blasting bho and started out with a couple of glass tubes. Pack your material in there, put on the screen, and slip the hose clamp on. And of course one of the tubes butane hole wasn't made right so I always had to mess with that. So eventually I wanted to go a bit bigger and better.

I looked and looked and looked at the stainless steel extraction tubes. They have all different diameter tubes. Lengths can be from 4" to a few feet.

I wanted something average so I went with the 18" x 2" outside diameter tube. It's advertised to hold 90-120 grams. I have never weighed the product going in the tube cause I didn't really care. Here it is.

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if you are in northern cal check out triangle supply in san jose. They have stuff like that for cheap. You can get the caps gaskets all of it. Triangle is like a high tech junkyard. I loaded up on 25cent carbide drill bits.

 

[HighLowGrow]

So a few months ago I bought this simple setup. Ablaze. It works really well.




So now I wanted a smaller tube for sample runs and bought this. Same tube as above but the length on this is 8".



Today I decided to weigh some material and pack it for a blast tomorrow.






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[HighLowGrow]

So I broke up a jar of bud and started packing the tube. About half way through I grabbed a broom, turned it around. and tapped the material down with medium pressure and finished packing. When I was done, I dumped the material into a paper bag and weighed it.



This jar of bud is right at an ounce and fits into the 8" tube. Nothing more will fit.



That means that this 18" tube will hold roughly 2 ounces + a bit more.

 

[HighLowGrow]

So this (8 incher) is packed (with 1 oz) and is now in the freezer with a can of butane.

I wanted this simple info when I was searching, but found numbers all over the place and couldn't find hard numbers.

There are some real numbers for you. It's my donation to the blasting community. If it helps just one poor soul, my job is done here..........Off to the dab.

If anybody gives a rip, I'm blasting this tomorrow and will post pics and weight.

Later gators

 

[HighLowGrow]

I

if you are in northern cal check out triangle supply in san jose. They have stuff like that for cheap. You can get the caps gaskets all of it. Triangle is like a high tech junkyard. I loaded up on 25cent carbide drill bits.

I'll check it out. Thanks.

 

[Fadedawg]

Depending on whether we ground to 10 mesh or broke it into 1/2" bits, we averaged from 3.8 to 4.1 grams per cubic inch volume.

 

[HighLowGrow]

Depending on whether we ground to 10 mesh or broke it into 1/2" bits, we averaged from 3.8 to 4.1 grams per cubic inch volume.

So my small 8 inch tube:

8 inches long
.75 radius
28.35 grams of product

= 14.173 cubic inches

.50 gram per cubic inch?

 

[OldMedUser]

So my small 8 inch tube:

8 inches long
.75 radius
28.35 grams of product

= 14.173 cubic inches

.50 gram per cubic inch?

I have something off. By your calc, you would fit 2 ozs in my 8 inch tube.

Something is wrong somewhere.

Regardless of the difference what you can physically fit in your tube is what you have to work with so do your calculations from that.

Rather than pack the tube then dump it to weigh what fits I'd start with a known wt. of pot, pack the tube, weigh what's left and then you know how much is in the tube.

I used to blast but hating wasting all that refined butane so distilled the butane after soaking the pot in it and filtering. Then I could reuse the butane and process a lot more pot from it. I used two 1L flat-bottomed boiling balls with a coil of copper tubing. The ball with the filtered oil/butane outside the deep freeze with the tubing feeding to the 2nd ball at the bottom of the freezer. Basically doing a QWISO type extraction only substituting very cold butane for the ISO. Works just the same. No heat was needed to distill it either. Room temp was 12C and that was plenty. A few boiling chips in the ball made for an even boil.




At the end of that run I had about half a SS thermos left of butane so screwed the cap on tight and left it in the freezer. A couple months later was going to do some more but the thermos was empty. Guess I need a small pressure vessel to save that stuff in between runs.

 

[Dougnsalem]

So my small 8 inch tube:

8 inches long
.75 radius
28.35 grams of product

= 14.173 cubic inches

.50 gram per cubic inch?

If I'm not mistaken, you've got it backwards. There's ~2 grams per cubic inch.... I've never done this stuff, but it's interesting to read. Thanks!

 

[HighLowGrow]

If I'm not mistaken, you've got it backwards. There's ~2 grams per cubic inch.... I've never done this stuff, but it's interesting to read. Thanks!

Yep. You are right. Sometimes when you overmath/overthink things 2+2 does not equal 4.

@Fadedawg - so if you were averaging 4 grams a cubic inch, you were cramming that material.

I just can’t see putting 2 ozs in my 8” tube.

 

[Dougnsalem]

@Fadedawg - so if you were averaging 4 grams a cubic inch, you were cramming that material.

I just can’t see putting 2 ozs in my 8” tube.

Wow! That reminds me of this chick I met the other night.... Uhh. Oh, wait. Nevermind.....


Lol

 

[HighLowGrow]

@OldMedUser - I don’t normally weigh anything. In fact, in the last 10 years of growing, I may have weighed something 2-3 times.

I just did this thread to show what roughly will fit in these tubes.

And I kinda want to know what type of return i have been getting. Then I can pretty much toss the scale.

It’s out in the chamber now.

 

[Fadedawg]

So my small 8 inch tube:

8 inches long
.75 radius
28.35 grams of product

= 14.173 cubic inches

.50 gram per cubic inch?

Take out the wall thickness.

.75"-.065"=0.685" radius.

I typically use 0.7854D2 , so D=1.5-(.065X2)=1.5" -.130"=1.37"

1.37" X 1.37" X .7854= 1.474 square inches

1.474 sq/in X 8" = 11.79 cubic inch

28.3 grams/11.79 cubic inches=2.4 grams/cubic inch

At a minimum, we would pack 44.8 grams into that space at 3.8 grams per cubic inch.

 

[Fadedawg]

Clearly we are using different packing rates, but the important thing is to pack evenly so that the solvent doesn't just find an easy way through.

We also used a wad of coffee filter immediately in front of the injection port, so as to diffuse the stream from the nozzle over the top of the column, versus through the center.

You can tell if you are missing anything, by examining the spent material afterwards for intact trichome heads using a loupe or microscope.

 

[OldMedUser]

Clearly we are using different packing rates, but the important thing is to pack evenly so that the solvent doesn't just find an easy way through.

That's another thing I don't like a bout blasting thru tubes. So much can be missed.

When I use the ice cold butane it gets shot into the pot then swirled around like using ISO so nothing gets missed then it can just be filtered and allowed to evaporate in a pie plate or silicon pad if distilling isn't for whoever doing it.

 

[HighLowGrow]

Clearly we are using different packing rates, but the important thing is to pack evenly so that the solvent doesn't just find an easy way through.

We also used a wad of coffee filter immediately in front of the injection port, so as to diffuse the stream from the nozzle over the top of the column, versus through the center.

You can tell if you are missing anything, by examining the spent material afterwards for intact trichome heads using a loupe or microscope.

Well hell. Over the years I’ve always heard not to pack it too tight. Well guess what this guy is going to do next run? Pack it too tight. I’ll post back on here when I do. ~3 weeks.

I like the wad idea for sure.

 

[HighLowGrow]

Well that's a shit return. In the buds defense, I was making a round of fem seeds and this is from the leftover bud pcs. So I touched a majority of it finding seeds.

28.3 grams start
2.9 grams return

 

[ChiefRunningPhist]

I do the soak method as well, but like @OldMedUser I don't like the cost per run when not reclaiming it. I've been looking at a cheap way of distillation but not trying to blow up my house lol though I may look into your technique. Seems to work alright? Are you measuring pressures? That's the big thing I was leery of. Haven't built any vacuum chambers really (mason jar with vac sealer is all I've used), so not sure what materials could handle what pressures and what temps and volumes equated to what pressures ect.. I like the room temp distillation, makes sense and seems much safer..

 

[ChiefRunningPhist]

Well that's a shit return. In the buds defense, I was making a round of fem seeds and this is from the leftover bud pcs. So I touched a majority of it finding seeds.

28.3 grams start
2.9 grams return

View attachment 4387100
View attachment 4387098

I've been curious about this as well. If butane really does strip all the cannibinoids, then one should be able to approximate their potency. IE 1oz goes in, 3g's comes out, that's 10.5% (3/28.5). All runs would have to be totaled, but I rarely get much of anything past (1) 20min soak at <0°F.