Happy Birthday @Rhino_buddy
Good luck on getting any younger. 
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If you’ve got extra and would like to help a cancer patient they’d be very grateful !
Just a thought if not that’s fine .
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I bought it at my potshop 17.00 that’s good your looking out for your friend:-) 
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I thought maybe you’d cooked up a batch there store charges 25 a gram and poor quality to boot.
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I plan on doing some with this years outdoor. Going to use Not Just Another Tincture Thread I will let you know when I have some. Peace 
@ShiskaberrySavior going to use ReikoX method
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Okay it’s been bugging me a while: the debate about lemon and baking soda for bud washing.
There are multiple schools of though i’m read:
- mix lemon and soda together for washing.
- lemon and soda are separate buckets
The first option is what I keep seeing everywhere and has been used as an organic fruit/veg wash for so very long there’s gotta be a reason.
The second option is based on the logic that if you mix them together you end up with a salt solution as you are essentially mixing: acid+base+water. By dipping your flower in the first solution and then into the second solution you will have the reaction occur on the bud-sites resulting in bubbles forming which help clean them.
My Father was a chemist which is why i’m so attracted to hydroponics so I did some chemical formula math and found out some really cool info:
NaHCO3 (Baking soda) + C6H8O7 (Lemon Juice/Citric Acid) = FeCl3 [ Iron(III) Chloride ]
Now that we know what is produced by mixing them together we can look up *what is FeCI3 used for?" and this was the kicker that makes me go: ALWAYS MIX FOR WASHING:
Flocculation, in the field of chemistry, is a process by which colloidal particles come out of suspension to sediment under the form of floc or flake, either spontaneously or due to the addition of a clarifying agent.
If you’ve ever taken care of a pool in the summer and you get a bloom resulting in murky water you’d add a clarifying agent and then 1 day later all the fine particles in the water becomes sludge on the bottom of the pool which can be easily removed.
For wine/beer making, we let this sediment settle and then remove the good stuff from the top of the carboy/bucket leaving the sediment out of the final product. At the end we may add a clarifier for brewing which then makes your liquid crystal clear.
So when we submerge our flower into this solution and agitate them, any fine particles (dust, mold, powdery mildew, etc) essentially coagulate into larger particles that end up suspended in the solution and NOT on/in your flower!!! 
The double bucket wash with just water afterwards aids in both removing any remaining FeCl3 solution on your flower and additionally removing any of the congealed crap that didn’t stay in the FeCl3 bucket.
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Hey Pigeonman, there’s a bit of alchemy going on with the displayed formulas. The iron and the chlorine within the ferric chloride must come from somewhere. Sodium bicarbonate and citric acid cannot produce FeCl3 alone. Also, I’d suggest ferric chloride should only be utilized if you have a good handle on utilizing such a chemical. While it may be utilized for waste water treatment, it is also used for metal etching of copper. It has industrial use. Not really something suggested for possible consumption. For flocculation, the brewing industry may be able to provide safer alternatives where remaining flocculent doesn’t need to be removed in processing. Irish moss for instance. Simply citric acid in one bucket, then the bicarbonate in another, and a third clean rinse results in neutralization and would probably be generally safe even if there happens to be any remaining acid or base (using food grade chemicals).
Otherwise, I’ve done the citric acid and backing soda wash before on plants that had undergone some mite damage. It does a good job cleaning away the gunk. I did notice that the way the matter dried and cured differed. Perhaps drying faster. I don’t really have a way to quantify the differences noticed. The result was usable, just different between unwashed and washed.
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Thanks @Northern_Loki !
My post wasn’t intended as an end all but a look into what’s happening with the reactions and appreciate the added input into the discussion!
I would personally NEVER use industrial FeCl3 but my assumptions from the formula’s result was an approximation for what’s going on when we mix them and then submerge nasty buds and why all that shit stays in the bucket and not the flowers
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Yes, just wanted point out that the FeCl3 seems out of place and don’t want anyone getting the idea it could be utilized for washing plant material.
The balanced reaction between the citric acid and the sodium bicarbonate should probably look something like:
Could you check that with your calculator?
The CO2 generation (on right hand side) probably leads to a ‘scrubbing’ action and also may act as a flocculate.
The citric acid ion can react with iron producing iron citrate … if there is iron somewhere and the citrate ions have more affinity for the metal than the sodium ion (sodium citrate). It can also react with other miscellaneous and unknown things that it may come into contact with. Though the concentrations are low and it is a relatively weak acid, still probably wise to use food grade plastic containers. FWIW.
What you should see as the result of combining the two is Na ions + citrate ions + co2 + water. The ions (out of solution) combine to produce sodium citrate (Na3C6H5O7).
I took a quick look into sodium citrate, it has a variety of uses. A couple include an emulsifier and as a blood anti-coagulant. The emulsifier is interesting as it allow oils to mix with water by bridging the polar and non-polar ends of oil and water into something called micelles. Think soap. Which can be similar to flocculation in that it allows water to wash away the micelles. Which may explain why I’ve seen, anecdotally, different drying and curing effect as some oils or waxes on the plant matter may be removed in the process.
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ALL OF THIS @Northern_Loki !
Here’s a link for what I used the other day when I couldn’t sleep and looked all this up:
I’m out and aboot and the interface isn’t pleasant on my phone so I’m passing you the tool 
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booo.
Ahh, I see. This is a equation balancing calculator. We need to guestimate the output before hand. This is what pops up as the default (FeCl3):
Here’s a second attempt, rearranging the input with what we surmise is the output. C₆H₈O₇ + NaHCO₃ = Na + C6H5O7 + CO2 + H2O. It balances as such:
I think the FeCl3 showing up was just a remnant of the default form field. 
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now a couple of bong rips and im transported back in time to HIGH school chemistry 
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To boil it down for dummies such as myself, separate buckets for citric acid and sodium bicarbonate or these mixed together in an actual wash? 
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Tombstone
Open Range
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What pigeonman, I believe, is suggesting: bucket with citric acid dissolved in water, bucket with the baking soda dissolved in water, and a final clean water rinse bucket. A dunk into each.
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That’s what we do here
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That’s one way and why I looked up so much about what I do which is mix 1 cup of Lemon juice with 1 cup of baking soda together in 5 gallons of water and this is bucket #2 of my 4 bucket wash. Bucket 1 = 1 gallon 3% H202 + 3 gallons water ; Bucket 2 = lemon/baking soda/water mix; Bucket 3 & 4 = just water.
When the buds go into the lemon there is a reaction and the smutch level floating depends on how bad the pm was or how dirty the buds were from nearby construction(s).
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What’s everybody watching or reading?
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Started The Watcher last night. Pretty good so far.
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