ReikoX's Workshop

[ReikoX]

The bubbleman pen chronicles, volume III.
So I decided to try this second tank again. I’m starting to think the problem is with the tank. This time I decided I did not want to decarb first because I lost too many terpenes. It is quite effective, but the taste leaves something to be desired. So, I pressed out about a gram of Juanita la Lagrimosa rosin. Next I put about 1/2 gram in my glass syringe and began slowly adding it to the pen. I used my e-nail to melt it into the pen and got it full. I decided I would try and be “smart” and get the bubbles out using a heat gun. It worked great, honestly, it was about smooth as glass and I thought, just a little bit longer. Then all of a sudden, the tank pops and takes off like a bottle rocket. I have no idea where the rosin went, I cleaned a small amount up. Note to self, heat gun is too hot. So I used the other 1/2 gram and got it in there. This time I just left it. I’m trying to get this tank primed without blowing it up for a third time. After an entire day and several battery recharges, I am finally starting to get a hit out of it. To be continued…

Volume IV:
Over at PsychedelicSam’s Another Tincure Thread, Try it You’ll Like It, we were discussing terpenes and the True Terpenes company came up. I was impressed with their extraction techniques. They use organic sources with vacuum distillation to extract non-cannabis derived terpenes. They offer them as individual terpenes and strain blends. I did a bit of digging and found their VISCOSITY product. It is a flavorless, odorless terpene mixture for liquify extracts. At $20 (+$15 shipping) for 2ml, I decided it would also be worth a shot. I may order a few more of their individual terpenes for tincture recipes.

I decided to check out blue river for US sales and noticed they are now selling through the W9 Tech (the makers of the pen) website. So another $89.99 later I got me 0.25ml of Cheese Quake terpenes! think I just bought the last one because it says out of stock on the website now.

[ReikoX]

I was watering today and noticed a different looking leaf, another seed popped. That makes five, or 10% as advertised.

Here is the Crystal Candy that I have been spraying with CS daily for two and a half weeks. She/he is not happy. I can’t tell if she/he is turning into a full blown male yet. She/he is about 4 1/2 weeks old, so definitely stunted.

The rest of the girls. They are about two and a half weeks from seed. They seem a tad over fertilized to me. Next time they will get water only. If the Crystal Candy doesnt reverse I will use some more of that Lowryder pollen i have in the freezer.

Bubbleman Pen Chronicles volume V

The other night I got very frustrated trying to get this other tank to work. I would hit it and hit it and all I would get was lightheaded from sucking in so much. I finally decided it must be defective, so I called fresh headies to see if they would replace it. After explaining what was going on, they told me I would have to call W9 Tech since I’m in the US. W9 Tech was closed, so I had to wait until yesterday.

Yesterday morning I call them and again explain what is going on with the tank. They tell me I need to email support with a copy of my invoice and a description of the problem. So I send them an email and they replied a few hours later with instructions on how to prime the wick. I performed the steps several times and had no luck. So I reply again saying I had no luck.

While waiting for a reply, I decided to clean the tank again. This time I noticed some debris so I cleaned it until the alcohol remained clear. I also scraped the four holes where the pumice wick was with a needle. I filled the tank with PG and let it soak for 30-40 minutes.

While I was waiting I got a reply that they were sending me a new tank. I repeated the priming steps and this time it worked! It really worked well. So my wick is now primed. My True Terpenes shipped and so did my Blue River terpenes. I need to get pressing more rosin. I decided to try some sasquash bags (35 micron). I lost too much using the coffee filters. I could make bubble hash first, but that really lowers yields IME.

[ReikoX]

There is number six

Here is a shot of the whole bed. Number 1 is damping off I think. I helped it with the shell and it has stalled since then. You can see the six spots I have cut out the clover. I have a few fungus gnats that came along with my new soil mix (no surprise really) I will keep monitoring right now, I’m only catching one or two a day on the yellow trap. No more thrips in my grow room though, thank The Maker!

I got some testers of Afropips Durban Poison Reproduction from ICMag. I fell in love with the mother of these seeds a while back. When I had heard they were looking for testers for some F2s, I jumped all over that. I have been waiting on these to get to me for a while. Hope for some purple rosin next year!

With the issue I had with my Bubbleman pen’s tank due to, ultimately, dirty rosin. I decided I absolutely needed some filtration. I ordered some 2.25"x4" Sasquash bags . I’m hoping they aren’t too big as I actually have a 2.5x2.5" press. I was watching rosin videos pressing flower with bags. Then I stumbled on a video about folding paper for “directional flow”. Ultimately I went with the methods used by Elysian Research. I had everything they were using. Not much changed with the way I cut the filters and wrap them, I got that part right. The only difference really was wrapping the puck in oil slick paper like a gift but leaving the last side open (watch the videos on YouTube if you really want to know the details). Another difference is I used 2x the amount of bud as I normally would (4 grams) based off the comment that they use 2 grams per square inch. By my calculations, that’s 4.5 grams for my 1.5"x1.5" pre-press. Here is my first attempt. I think it could be a little lighter but was only pressed at 90°C, next time I will try 85°C . Other than that it’s a nice pull and snap texture, and yield was around 20%. Previous attempts with the filter were as low as 5-8%. Collection was a breeze with the directional flow, that’s the huge difference.

[ReikoX]

Well, it’s getting about time to pull down the mainlined Jilly Bean girls. The mainlining technique worked ok, but really isn’t suitable to vertical growing. They are at nine weeks, and probably a bit early, but I like to take at nine weeks the first time I grow a cultivar. The trichomes are mostly cloudy with a few clear on both plants, and both plants are frosty as fuck. I’m fairly certain that Jilly Bean 2 is going to be the keeper, she has the scent of tangerines. The structure is fairly uniform with Jilly Bean 4 being a bit more stout. Yield should be similar on both plants. The real winner will be seen once I press some rosin and smoke it

Jilly Bean 2

Jilly Bean 4

[Growinnblowin]

drop the bubble pen get a megatoke xl

[ReikoX]

@Growinnblowin

drop the bubble pen get a megatoke xl

Never heard of that one. If I went back to anything it would be my Hercules oil cartridge. That being said, I have more thoughts so here we have:

Bubbleman Pen Chronicles Volume VI

My Blue River terpenes arrived. So I got a gram of Zak Haze rosin and put it in a small glass container. I added five drops of the Cheese Quake terpenes and started to stir it with a clean dab tool. Once it was liquid, I put it in the syringe. Now here is where I messed up, I put it in the tank that I thought I fixed. I was wrong, the tank did the same exact thing. Suck and suck and no hit, so I put the rest in the good tank. The good tank hits like a freight train and tastes great. If both tanks worked like this I would have been very happy.

I should have enough terpenes to do one more gram. I am waiting for my Jilly Bean to dry so I can press some. Jilly Bean rosin with Cheese Quake terps would be a weed nerdgasm. I’m hoping that the availability of terps goes up once the summer crops get harvested

[Growinnblowin]

https://megatoke.com/wp-content/cache/all//index.html

[ReikoX]

Thats a pretty big price tag there, $300 for the pen, battery, and bubbler. I could buy three Bubbleman pens for that Maybe when I win that lottery I don’t play. I couldn’t put the terpene “sauce” in it either. When used as intended, the pen kicks ass!

Do you own one? Do you use it for oils? How much will it hold? What do you like about it? Anything you don’t like? How does it compare to a nail? How is the taste?

[Growinnblowin]

im getting one my next pull as my me purchase an i cant lie its gonna feel good been pretty broke this last year getting all my shit together i have hit a megatoke just not the xl it holds quite a bit from what i seen taste good an the hit is outta here def the best pen ive tried

[Growinnblowin]

an it comes with a herb an oil tank an mostly i like how it hits like a cannon im sick an tired of the dinky hits other pens seem to give you ive givin myself a headache trying to get a good hit from some pens

[ReikoX]

The Bubbleman pen Chronicles, Volume VII:

Finally got my True Terpenes VISCOSITY. They came with nice packaging and few stickers, though shipping took quite a while. So the first thing I did was put about 0.8 grams of Juanita la Lagrimosa rosin in a container. This stuff is very sappy at room temperature, so I figured it would work well in the pen. That and it tastes like flowers and honey.

Next I got the out the included dropper and added four drops to the 0.8 grams of rosin. The terpenes are colorless and odorless for sure. I didn’t put a drop on my tongue to taste it, maybe next time.

This mixture was stirred well for about 10 minutes until it stayed in a liquid form. I let it set for a few minutes and stirred it well again.

Then I loaded this up into the syringe I got with my Blue River terpenes. I’m proud of myself for how cleanly I got the “sauce” to get in the syringe.

Finally I filled up my new tank with the “sauce”. This was allowed to settle overnight. To be honest, I was nervous this morning when I went to take a hit that this new tank wouldn’t work. First hit, nothing… Crap! Second hit, wow that’s not bad… Third hit, hack cough… Too much! The color and smell did not change, but I think I can detect at slight bitter aftertaste similar to hops. It’s better than the plastic taste of PG/PEG though. I’ll be toking on this for the next couple of days to see what I think of the product, but I can say that it is as advertised so far.

[ReikoX]

Enough about the pen, let’s look at some plants!

These are the Zak Haze clones that I put in here on Saturday. They seem to be pretty happy, they are in my amended recycled organic living soil. I’m kind of regretting giving a bag of it to my brother. I’m still trying to work out how my perpetual is going to run. My original plan was for a nine week veg period. I’m pretty sure after nine weeks of veg, there will be no room for stretching. So, think what I can do is keep them in the cup for the first three weeks, as planned, but put the cup in here.

These Bubba Kush S1s are really starting to piss me off. I have no idea what’s going on with these. Even the clover seems a little stressed out. I’m thinking it may be cal/mag deficiency now. I have been giving them RO water the last few waterings, so I gave them a bit of ferments (15 ml/gal of fish/gro). I will spray them this evening with some CalPhos to see if that helps. I will flower these out, just so I don’t have empty space in my flower cab, but the mother has been culled. I’m sick of babying this cultivar.

After three or four weeks (I lost count) of spraying this Crystal Candy girl every day, I think I am finally starting to see some changes. You can start to see some clusters forming on the top bud, so I stopped spraying. I have been calling here Bruce. I also decided to spray one of the La Divas since I have four of them.

The rest of the autos are already starting to flower. I need to check the pH next time I feed, they look like they are getting either overwatered or the pH is out of whack. I have to remember that this is a sort of manual hydro type method so my pH is way more important with these small containers. Otherwise things are progressing nicely. The Lowryder, the only regular seed, is female. I’m debating hitting her up with the Lowryder (male) pollen I have in the freezer.

[Kalgrae]

You’ve got quite the operation going on there. Those MD cups look like they are responding to your care. Crystal Candy looks cool with the huge fans so close to the cola. Cheers!

[ReikoX]

Yesterday I was looking through my grow logs looking for a good picture of my veg area. I was zooming in and I noticed what I now know is thrip damage. So I started going back looking at pictures of my plants for thrip damage. I’m not saying I got them from the Skywalker OG cuts, but I couldn’t see thrip damage before and did after. I found evidence of damage on my last CBD run in the main cab, my last auto run in the workbench, and the last Jilly Bean run. No wonder yields have been suffering. Thrips will never be an issue again, I know what the symptoms look like, and I know what kills them.

Last time I was looking at the autos in the PC, I was thinking that the pH was off. I decided to test the pH after I mixed up the nutrients. My pH pen read 7.0 which didn’t seem right to me. I lowered the pH to 6.1 and it took way more pH down that normal. Something isn’t right. So I take out my spare pen and it reads 5.1. Holy crap guess it’s not working right. I again adjusted the pH to 6.1 and then calibrated both to read 6.1. I decided to be on the safe side and used my pH drops just to check and it was back up to around 7. So this time I just adjusted it as close to 6 as I could with the drops. Now, thinking back on it, there are a few clues that the pH pen was out of calibration. First one was that I mixed up the Lucas formula and remembered it needed a tad pH up. But when mixing it for the party cup hempys, I was using pH down. Another clue was when I had that high PPM runoff from the Bubba Kush S1, the pH was 7.0. I thought it was odd to be so neutral with such a high pH. So I gave them proper pH water and a foliar of CalPhos, let’s see how they respond.

I was spraying the plants with CS and decided I would check my PPM on the solution. Hmmm 40 PPM starting with 20 PPM RO water. I’m going to get some distilled and try to run it until I get 50 PPM. I still can’t tell if it is working on that Crystal Candy, but I think she’s going to produce pollen sacks any day now. I have a La Diva I just started spraying, so I’ll mix up a batch at 50 PPM and follow the directions correctly (not supposed to use RO water I guess).

I was going to try and trim my Jilly Bean plants that I cut down Saturday, but they were still a little too wet. They have been hanging for five days, and usually it only takes around 3 to dry here. It has been raining for the last three days so that’s slowing things a bit. I decided to take the bottom popcorn buds off and press them. I got about 15% return which is pretty good considering how wet they were. The rosin is pretty tasty. It’s a mix of both plants, so it’s a nice orange and tangerine mix, with a hint of green. I have debated just turning the whole thing into rosin. I would have to trim anything. Maybe I’ll just trim the main bud on each stem and rosin the rest.

[ReikoX]

Well I trimmed up the two Jilly Bean plants. Probably a half ounce each. Not too bad considering they had thrips the whole time. The left plant, #4, had denser buds and more sugar leaf. It also had a more mellow orange smell. The right plant, #2, had more airy bud with less sugar leaf. The right plant also has the sweeter smell more like candied manderine oranges. They will go in a paper bag for a day or two before going in jars and burping. I’ll probably combine the trim and do one big squish.

This is the Jilly Bean #2 clone that had the “fascination”. It came out pretty dense.

This is the Jilly Bean #4 clone, not as dense as #2, but still might out yield the mainlined plant.

Here they are trimmed up ready to dry. The clones may outweigh the seed plants.

The party cup girls are coming down. The pictures speak for themself.

[lotus710]

i missed a bunch but shits lookin tasty dude! idk how you do the ph manegmentXD

[oranje]

@ReikoX

This is the Jilly Bean #2 clone that had the “fascination”. It came out pretty dense.

What what what! That thing is bonkers! The award for the strangest looking bud I’ve ever seen goes to you, sir. I am astonished.

[ReikoX]

I normally don’t bother with pH. But with the hydro I was, err… I thought I was. Normally I let the microbes take care of it.

[lotus710]

Yeah dude i used the go box once and that was too much measuring for me😂

[ReikoX]

Speaking of measuring, I figured out what the deal with the Bubba Kush might have been. I think she is a calcium whore. I sprayed them with some CalPhos and they instantly greened up! It got me thinking, I have recycled this medium several times without adding any calcium other than the original limestone.

So I amended a cubic foot of my soil with:
1/2 cup each neem seed meal, shrimp meal, kelp meal, and malted barley. And 1 cup each of glacial rock dust, basalt dust, oyster shell flour, gypsu, and bio char.

The Zak Haze clones I put in the same mix are thriving on RO water.