Part 2: The Big Squish
... after a couple crazy busy days of non-stop work, I finally got some time to myself, so lets do this.
I have a big bag of killer Train Wreck my licensed grower buddy has so graciously provided for pressing. thanks G! looks like there will be some wicked TW rosin to go around real soon...
so a 10g load of bud went into the handy little FV pre-press mold. a little bit of elbow grease later (in a small arbor press), I've got me a nice looking puck. I broke up the large buds to remove steam, and roughly chopped up the buds into smaller pieces. I really dig this mold, the press-through design makes it so easy to use, and the magnets hold the tray real tight while moving it around. you can't see it but I've cut 2 rectangular pieces of small parchment paper to line the top and bottom of the tray so the puck won't stick for easy removal after the puck is formed.
as per my discussions with Mr.FV at his shop, bud needs to be soft and sticky-icky to get high yields. so I made sure this batch of TW is fresh and not too dry. i think 60% humidity was mentioned, but that's getting a little bit too scientific for me... just sticky-icky will do here.
i placed the puck (in FV 95 micron rosin bag) in the middle of the parchment paper, so its easy to get center position once the folded parchment is placed between the plates.
... after the parchment and puck is in center position on the plate, down does the ram and the big squish is underway. temp set to 200F, pre-heated for full 20min with the plates CLOSED (thanks for the tip Mr.FV!), so when I tested with a kitchen thermometer the surface temperature was around 195F... perfect!
... another great tip from Mr.FV: build up the pressure slowly, 1T at a time, every 10 seconds.
following the formula and about 50 seconds in, rosin is really flowing (at this point, pressure is to around 5T):
.... another 30 seconds and a few hard pumps later, and pressure to 8T, this is whats happening:
So the squish was finished in around 1:45 sec, when no more bubbles were observed. pressure was upped very close to 10T toward the end.
result:
notice sides of the bags held with no issues, very minimal blowout. on the open end of the bag there's some chip squirt, but no big deal... there seems a lot less rosin lost/trapped in the bag's corners/sides than some stitched bags I've seen before.
and finally after collection, 1.95g of the finest TW rosin, terpy as hell!
So... final calculations: 19.5% yield from the first 10g Train Wreck press using Flashvape Rosin-tech 3x5 plates, on Motomaster 10T shop press.
Cost: Flashvape 3x5 Plates/Controller $450 CAD
Motomaster 10T Shop Press $290 CAD
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Total: $740 CAD
Optional gear: Pre-press mold: $100 CAD
having been around the block several times with 420 gear purchases, this sure is very reasonable for the overall build quality I got.
... we have a winner here!