My friend had one of these back in the early 80's and used it a lot. He never got the isomerizing thing working by adding the acid or whatever you were suppose to do to make crap weed better but he did work up a method of concentrating what little THC there was into a oil, turning crap weed into honey oil.
First you use 100% Ethanol (alcohol), known as anhydrous Ethanol, no water, 200 proof, this is very important, isopropyl can leave nasty contaminants behind in the end and water screws with the oil's flavor.
He had access to really cheap low grade weed, the kind you could smoke like cigarettes and barely get high but he could get pounds of it (it was the 80's) so he would run pounds of it through 2oz at a time. Make sure the pot is really dry first, again water messes with the oil's flavor when finished.
He'd start by soaking maybe the half batch he was going to do in Ethanol for a day, using a large tupperware bowl with a sealing lid. After soaking it he'd take out 2oz or so at a time (filling up the strainer about 1/2 way) from the soaking bowl and run it through the ISO2 machine for about 12 hours, this was to extract as much of the TCH as possible.
Repeating the process and adding dry into soaking bowl he could work through a couple of pounds, this would concentrate those pounds into a couple of cups of Ethanol/THC mixture. It would be a dark green color and you could smoke it (after distilling the ethanol back out) but its wasn't that great.
The next key step was he'd poor any of the Ethanol left in the soaking bowl to thin out the concentrate and would even add more straight ethanol so he could run ethanol THC mix through a granular activated carbon filter to take out the impurities. This changes the color, again this is very important, he would run it through the filter a few times till he was happy with the color; a light honey color, hence the name honey oil. This smooths out the flavor when smoked and concentrates it a bit more since your not smoking the impurities filtered out.
After filtering he'd put mix back in the ISO2 and distill the ethanol back out of the mixture in batches; he'd have to empty that little cup (recycling the ethanol for next time) and refill ethanol/thc mix at the bottom a couple of times a day, re-concentrating the oil into the bottom of the ISO2 till you just had a semi clear honey colored oil at the bottom.
With higher quality I would guess you would need less for the same amount of oil at the end and you might want to keep it in the ISO2 longer to to make sure you get as much THC as possible out of it.
Safety Warning!
The soaking bowl and when filtering are dangerous, the Ethanol is very flammable, maybe not as much as butane but in both cases you have a lot of flammable liquid open to the air where it can be ignited.
First you use 100% Ethanol (alcohol), known as anhydrous Ethanol, no water, 200 proof, this is very important, isopropyl can leave nasty contaminants behind in the end and water screws with the oil's flavor.
He had access to really cheap low grade weed, the kind you could smoke like cigarettes and barely get high but he could get pounds of it (it was the 80's) so he would run pounds of it through 2oz at a time. Make sure the pot is really dry first, again water messes with the oil's flavor when finished.
He'd start by soaking maybe the half batch he was going to do in Ethanol for a day, using a large tupperware bowl with a sealing lid. After soaking it he'd take out 2oz or so at a time (filling up the strainer about 1/2 way) from the soaking bowl and run it through the ISO2 machine for about 12 hours, this was to extract as much of the TCH as possible.
Repeating the process and adding dry into soaking bowl he could work through a couple of pounds, this would concentrate those pounds into a couple of cups of Ethanol/THC mixture. It would be a dark green color and you could smoke it (after distilling the ethanol back out) but its wasn't that great.
The next key step was he'd poor any of the Ethanol left in the soaking bowl to thin out the concentrate and would even add more straight ethanol so he could run ethanol THC mix through a granular activated carbon filter to take out the impurities. This changes the color, again this is very important, he would run it through the filter a few times till he was happy with the color; a light honey color, hence the name honey oil. This smooths out the flavor when smoked and concentrates it a bit more since your not smoking the impurities filtered out.
After filtering he'd put mix back in the ISO2 and distill the ethanol back out of the mixture in batches; he'd have to empty that little cup (recycling the ethanol for next time) and refill ethanol/thc mix at the bottom a couple of times a day, re-concentrating the oil into the bottom of the ISO2 till you just had a semi clear honey colored oil at the bottom.
With higher quality I would guess you would need less for the same amount of oil at the end and you might want to keep it in the ISO2 longer to to make sure you get as much THC as possible out of it.
Safety Warning!
The soaking bowl and when filtering are dangerous, the Ethanol is very flammable, maybe not as much as butane but in both cases you have a lot of flammable liquid open to the air where it can be ignited.
it's called a super flower tower
