By ChiefSmokingbud http://www.icmag.com
Looked at several companies including pollinator, tumblers were a bit pricey. I finally decided to buy one from OKIEF.COM which was right within my $200 budget which was $150 before shipping.
This tumbler has paid for itself 20x over if not more. However if you are handy with tools and have the time by all means build your own. The purpose of this thread is to give people a basic knowledge of dry sieving and answer some common questions.
How much will i yield? Using trim expect up to 5% return, using buds 10-15% return. I have achieved 15% once with ultimate moonshine from JLP.
The number one misconception I’ve seen is throwing any leaf off the plant into a tumbler will get you something.........by far not the case. The kief that we seek ,which when pressed is hash is from the capitate stalked trichomes on the outside of the leaf surface. These trichomes (triches from here on out) are what give the buds the chrystally appearance. Let me repeat, the only thing that will be removed from the plant are the VISIBLE trichomes on the leaf surface. With that said lets get started.
Your trim to be tumbled needs to be very dry, almost crispy. I dry a minimum of 2 weeks but prefer 3-4 in the open air. If i use my bud dryer (in gallery) i can cut that time in half. Trim to be tumbled does not have to be cured.......does not have to be cured....does not have to be cured. Got it, good.
To make the heads of the triches more easily removed, we need to freeze it. A minimum of 2 hours but the longer the better. I prefer big glass pickle jars which are air tight and easy to clean. The very best freezer i have found is a deep freeze or the smaller 3 foot high freezers where the actual racks are coils. When i remove the jars from this smaller freezer, i have to wear gloves........and deffinantly don't stick my tongue on the jar LOL.
The smaller jars are great and can just be opened and poured directly into the drum.
In these pics you will see some popcorn buds....these need to be broken up as much as possible. Any trichomes within the bud will not be removed. We want the most leaf surface area as possible for the best result. To avoid knocking too many trichomes off before tumbling , i partially break the buds up, tumble and really break them up good for a second run, resulting in a lower grade.
We also want to add rubber balls to agitate the material and help press the leaves against the screen.
If you are using a drum with poly screen, all sharp objects such as stems need to be removed to prevent damage to the screen I recently got the 110lpi stainless mesh drum from okief which is ALMOST indestructible, and i can also tumble stems in it. Why would i tumble stems?
Some strains produce trichomes on the stems of the plant. The particular strain i am using is Astroboy which has ALOT of triches on the stems.
Now lets get started.
I only fill the drum half full to allow more tumbling action. Tumble for 15 min, stop let everything settle for 5 min, collect, tumble again for 45 min. easy enough?
Also an eye loupe is an important, necessary, and cheap piece of equipment.
Eyeballing a leaf after tumbling will still look like it has trichomes. If you look under a loupe you will see over 95% of that is simply headless stalks......this is good
OK here's the good part:
Used 2.5 oz of trim and popcorn buds from 3 plants.
70g trim turned into 2g of 15 min run primo kief = less than 5%.Which was expected.
I do love the removable collection plate in this tumbler. I think it's vinyl but not sure. The rotating of the drum creates a static charge on the plate and the kief stays put. I can tip the plate vertical without it falling off.
We’re not done yet. I’ll do a second run and really break up the popcorn buds. I place them in a small food processor to break them up but donot make it a popder
This will be refrozen and run again.
Now while the second lower grade is tumbling i decided to clean out all my storage jars. We all know what those look like.....kief in the bottom. Actually alot of that is stalks. I managed to clean out the jars into a stainless bowl.
Now i have a set of screens that i use to refine the kief. Since stalks (we don't want) are smaller than the heads (which we do want) sometimes they get mixed together. When i refine kief like this is use 2 screens: 110lpi and 200lpi. Place the 110 on top of the 200 and card back and forth. This removes leaf remnants etc. Then the stalks and heads fall on to the 200.
OK here's what we did:
We took the 110 screen and put it on top of the 200. Placed the jar kief on the 110. Then carded the jar kief. We were left with this:
Then take a normal shop vac and start vacuuming from the bottom of the 200 using a circular motion
The stalks will be sucked through the screen since they are smaller and you will see the pile start to disappear
When we get to a small amount we spread the kief out and do it again
Finally we are left with this
I'm conviced now after doing this several times that possibly i will try a 300lpi screen just to try to catch the smaller immature heads..but it's a crap shoot. I also highly suggest using a loupe to check your progress.
I tumbled the 1oz of really broken up popcorn buds for 45 min
Now this is a great comparison: 1st run left 2nd run right
See the color difference?
Now go ahead and press it!
