i definitely will once things are setup, even if its just the alcohol recovery.
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With one of these systems, can you make juice that is as clean as Everclear?
@Mr.Sparkle, did you check out the video I posted on Feb 11? This woman is using CO2 and Everclear to separate the thc from the plant. She chills the Everclear with the dry ice before she starts. She explains that the solvent will work as long as it doesnāt freeze and that washing the weed in the Everclear below freezing will prevent water solubles from having any influence in your final product.
She is using fresh plants in the video. It looks like she throws everything but the sticks into the subzero brew. You can hear the buds crack as she uses 2 wood spoons to break them up. She says she has been told by the person that showed her this trick that it works well with cured weed too but, āThere is such a demand for this medicine that I donāt have the time to wait for it to dryā.
It takes only hours to do the job, and you need to stop before the dry ice is gone to avoid the water solubles being a problem.
After watching that video, I bought a still from eBay. I found one warehoused in the U.S. for $138.00 (ābuy it nowā price) including shipping. It is supposed to be here Thursday. I got 1.75 liters of Everclear as well. And, I am saving the bottom 65% of my last two harvest plants, should be about 2 ozs (I am leaving it on the plant until then). When the still gets here, Iām going to give it a shot.
Just food for thoughtā¦
@ReikoX, I visited that site. Iām making a shopping list. Thanks again bro. Oh yeah, once again I mixed up your and @Roux. I tagged him instead of you in my apology. (Man, I really need that āgun to its own headā emoji). I fixed it, but now I am doubly sorry. Should be more even, because when YOU told me the vice was his, I didnāt even notice. I thought yuou were referencing one of you links. I gotta start getting more sleep, since I am unlikely to smoke less any time soon. 
@99PerCent, I bought this set of wax carvers from Amazon.com for around $8.25 and free shipping. You might find something useful in the set. This is the name to search on:
SE DD312 12-Piece Stainless Steel Wax Carvers Set
Here are some photos. There is a bit of everything among the 24 ends.
Tools I got, experience takes a little longer. 
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No havenāt taken a look at that video yet, but I already use a quick wash cold alcohol method āqwetā. Itās not as cold as using dry ice, but you can get pretty good extract.
@99PerCent well everclear is just alcohol, but my still for alcohol can produce 95.6% all day so long as I have wash to run and am running a taller packed column, but Iām looking at a small glass setup to run under vacuum for distillate
https://420evaluationsonline.com/health-and-news/thc-distillate-everything-you-need-to-know
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I am a big fan of making kief using dry ice and the water solubles thing makes sense, so I will be giving it a try. Iāve thought about using alcohol to get hash oil for some time, but was nervous, no scared, of doing it. Playing with alcohol and heat seemed to me to not be worth the risk. I saw a different video on YouTube where a guy was using the alcohol and heat method. He was using a hot plate with a builtin magnetic stirrer and a still. I put them on my shopping list. After seeing the woman using dry ice and alcohol and a still, I decided not to wait any longer and found a good deal on ebay for one. I also picked up Everclear on my weekly shopping trip.
Since I have 0 (zero) experience at this, Iāll be looking up posts for help. Iāll be sure to look for yours.
Salutations brother.
Did you see this on Amazon?
Search on SnobClamp 2" x 3" rosin plate set for DeWalt Clamp
They donāt come with the clamp, but they have pics of it assembled onto one:
I saw how to make one on YouTube and some enterprising individual has realized there are many people that are either too lazy or not capable of making one for themselves.
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Once the rod warmed back up to room temps, I got most of the goo still stuck to the tool. Took a while to get the first bit on there, but worked good once I did. Thereās a lot of work in collecting that stuffā¦
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Iāve seen a couple of those kits on the net. Nice find. 
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For particularly sticky stuff, I use an ice pack under the parchment to collect. Be careful it may shatter everywhere when cold like that though.
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Unless it is patented, it is an open field. Good for that guy.
99%
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@ReikoX, Iāll try that on my next run. Iām going to heat my steel plates with a torch, I think they may heat faster than soaking in the oven. If heating with a torch is fairly fast and easy, this time, Iāll heat them between each squish. Iām going to run 7 grams (weigh it dry, then re-hydrate it for the run) today. (If this works, Iāll probably go through a lot of MAP gas by the time I have Rosin plates.) I will try both your suggestions and @99PerCentās suggestions as well.
Iām excited about getting dab this time, after all my past failures!! 
Between you and @Roux, I realize Iāve been using materials that are too dry. Iām going to do a bubblebag extraction and see how that presses. Dry ice extraction comes out very dry. I am also going to take a small amount of the kief I have, and see if I can hydrate enough for pressing.
@99PerCent, Iāll pick a small end tool to work with today to make removing it from the tool easier. There are some nice flat tools in the wax carving set that much easier to remove dab from than the ball end rod I used.
You 3 folks have brought me into the 21st century and I am eternally grateful. 
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@ReikoX, I did find a guy on eBay that goes by the handle ātheworkingboyā. He is in the US and makes custom Rosin plates (just the plates) for $100 out of your choice of stainless and alum. He says he ships in just a few days. Give him the ram size and the dimensions you want your plates and you get a pair to fit your own press. Heāll also drill/ream heater holes to your specs as well. All the Chinese plates come with a 2" bore for the ram and long screws so it can be mounted on a smaller ram. You know you are gonna need to constantly adjust those screws.
I will get a set from him in a few weeks. 
I completely agree. I just donāt understand why there arenāt more American made products like these. This set and the plates I mentioned in my reply to ReikoX above are the only American made products Iāve found. Practically every other product was Chinese. With legalization moving forward in so many states, There is a big niche market here that someone with a mill in his garage or access to one, could make a pretty good living with. Iām pretty sure that is what ātheworkingboyā is doing. A person could get a Bridgeport for a couple thousand $ and another thousand for tools and have themselves a nice little income. Low cash outlay, good ROI. Where is the American entrepreneurial spirit? A chance to put money into their own hands instead of always giving it away. Iām a bit disappointed. 
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I finished my long term project/experiment today. My ejuice made like a tincture was done. The waste solids, under the microscope, were mostly thc free. Iād swag that 5% of the starting thc was still in there. My 90/10 pg/vg solution was now much thicker than it started. It vapes very nice. Tastes a little stronger than my previous attempts and has a stronger buzz to it. 
Thatās the good news.
The bad news is, I was bringing it to the basement to hang out at OG and stir it. The bottom of the 50ml beaker I had it in was hot, from putting it in the microwave for 10 seconds, to get the best blend I could. I bumped the inner surface of my pinky against the hot bottom and dropped the beaker spreading 3 of the 3.5ml on to the floor. 
I did make some more dab last night. I ran up and down the stair basement to kitchen moe than a dozen times last night to heat the plates I used for pressing. I heated them on the stove for about 5 minutes at high. I let them get over 250Ā° and did any last minute prepping for the pressing while the plates cooled to under 200Ā°F.
I re-ran the original 3.5 grams of weed 3 more times and got almost as much as the first 3 presses. Optimum temp seems to be 180Ā°F. I only got 1 press from each heating, the blocks were usually only 120Ā° by the time I was ready for the next pressing.
I tried hydrating some kief. I need to contain it better. I used a teabag (YouTube suggestion) to hold it in. The kief squished the bag. I got some resins and the kief was now more solid so it was easier to work with, but it was gooey as hell. Hydrating it works, but I wonder it that isnāt also allowing other substances to be extracted as well because my liquid gold looks more like black gold.
My still arrived today. Now I just need to pickup some dry ice and I am ready to try the dry ice and alcohol extraction I linked to in my Feb 12 posting. I should know how well it worked by the weekend.
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Thatās not a bad deal, youāll probably need another $100 For the PID controllers and cartridge heaters and will have a pretty constant heat. My plates are 3.5 x 3.5 aluminum. I got it local for $15. Drilled the heater cores, tapped the themocouples and top plate. My top plate is held on by a 1/8" stainless plate with a piece of pipe welded to it. A buddy made it for me in about 30 minutes. I tapped three holes in that to connect to my press shaft. Like a Christmas tree holder. Thatās screwed onto the top plate. The bottom plate just floats around on the arbor plate.
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I saw the mounting plate on your top plate. I was wondering how you held it on the ram. I have enough aluminum and tools in my possession to make the plates, but I want stainless steel. Aluminum can be a very dirty material, plus, is so soft that it can wear (in this case, in the form of pits that could prevent the plates from closing all the way). Thisād probably take longer than my lifetime, but I canāt help thinking like a machinist/mechanical engineer (all good machinists think like mech engineers). I spent more than 40 years machining.
I also have enough SS to make some as well, but is it 316 SS and requires more tool power than I have to do it at home. 316 is a very tough stainless steel and requires strong work holding and motors to drive the tools. As such, I think $100 is a bargain.
I tried your method of having an ice pack under the parchment. It works very well. But it warms up almost instantly after coming into contact with room temps. I have a lot of trouble getting after getting the bits on the tool to stick to a larger mount. The larger amount sticks to the tool and wonāt come off. I feel like an uncoordinated child trying to use a 2nd tool to get it from the 1st. It just keeps moving back and forth form tool to tool. If I use my fingers, it sticks to them (I probably got enough stuck to my finger last night to get high on twice. I used a piece pf parchment and them it is stuck to the parchment again. 
Do you or @99PerCent or @Roux or @Jellypowered have any tricks you use for this? I am making a rod out of Ice. Iām sure that will do it, but I donāt want water contamination. I have about 9 more parchments to clean off. This stuff is a LOT of work.
Also, how do you guys contain the material to press it. It squishes out into the resins. Not all of them, but enough that I just make a ball of resin/source material and stick it is my pipe. Itās probably why I slept like I was dead last night. 
The worst was when I did kief. I hydrated a gram of kief and pressed it using an empty nylon teabag. The holes in it allowed the kief to pass right through. I ended up with a crispy little wafer in the teabag and lots of it spread outside the teabag. Very messy.
Meanwhile, I received my still yesterday. I have it making some distilled water to check if it works before filling it with an alcohol/thc solution.
Gotta go pick up dog poop while it is still frozen and the sky isnāt snowing.
Have a great day.
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Yea, I know the constancy of the rosin your talking about, it just doesnāt want to pick up, and the tool smears it.
If I canāt get it off by cooling it down in the fridge/freezerā¦I simply wait a day or 2 and let it dry on the parchment furtherā¦once it ādriesā I can remove it with the tool like any other rosin.
Its not fancy or high tech, but it works
Also I leave built up rosin on the tool and wrap it in parchment when done. Next time I use it, I donāt worry about the little bits because only so much will stay in the tool. (Maybe a rainy day dab lol)
As far as keeping rosin in press ā¦you need to use less material or more parchment. I also make a pouch by folding the square in half the the sides so itās only open on one sideā¦however with my vise press, it is vertical and gravity will keep it from coming out like a volcano.
For storage of rosin, they make containers specificity for that outta polyure-somethingā¦I just use parchment and a small jar.
Iām still learning myselfā¦curious to see how other do it.
Gook luck
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Thats the secret it will, eventually, harden up.
I usually keep it in a folded between parchment and put it in a mylar bag in the refrigerator.
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Silicone.
Skipidy doo da.
99
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Damn auto correct 
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@Roux, @ReikoX, and @99PerCent.
Thanks for weighing in guys. I put all my parchments in the frig before I went to bed and Iām using an ice pack. Also, I discovered I can just wipe the tool on the inside of a silcone container (I bought some 6-8 months ago), it comes off the tool pretty good. Or maybe Iām just more coordinated today. 
This small spatula tool. It is about 1/8" wide and it scrapes the cold stuff off really nicely. Then I wipe the top and bottom sides in the container. It only took last night and a couple of hours today to finally get it. Anything still stuck will sit in the parchment for a day or 2 and try it again.
I really expected it to be easier than this. 
Probably my worst problem is impatience. 
Sounds like a solid plan! Itās always nice to have a surprise later. Iām pretty sure I still have a couple of stash containers around somewhere that I expect to find someday.
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