Hash Overview

THE Roseman

I'm going to tell you what I know from memory, instead of copying and pasting info here. This is from a lot of research but I am a stoner and very forgetful.
Hash is what you make from 100% trichomes, also called the kief, or the what some call the crystals off of the pot. HASH is a compressed dried, hard cake or brick or clump of these trichomes. When buds start maturing, you see them, the trichomes, all over the plant, especially on the buds or female flowers and on the small leaves near the buds and flowers. Outside America, people call them resin glands.
They appear like minature crystals to the naked eye, They sort of look like salt crystals to the naked eye, but much smaller. Under a weak magnifying microscope (30X to 60 X) or a very strong magnifying glass, they look like litle minature tubes, or stalks. (again google will show you pics). My wife says they look like little clear uncircumcised penises.
They first appear clear, then they get amber and cloudy, but this can only be seen if magnified. To the naked eye, they sparkle. Under a microscope, they don't sparkle.
Expert growers determine when to harvest by observing the trichomes under a microscope.
I bet 99% of the expert growers here own a $9.95 RADIO SHACK battery lighted microscope just for the purpose of looking at the trichiomes.
These trichomes, or kief, AFTER they are gathered, (do a google on kief) are gathered many primative ways, varying from country to country. In America, we've devised a more scientific way and especially a more efficient way to gather them and make them into HASH. HASH is a compressed product or derivitive from the kief. You gather the kief, and then do the cellophane procedure of packing the kief in cellophone from a pack of cigarettes. You squeeze it tight, pack it hard by rolling it up, and wrap it in wet newspaper. Then you bake the newspaper at 175 degrees in an oven, drying it out. The moisture leaves the kief and it hardens into a cake or brick.
In some foreign countries, they beat the fresh dried stalks of plants over a very large frame stretched with a silk woven cloth. The trichomes pass thru the silk cloth and are caught on a white cottom cloth under that silk screen. In some countries they use the "hand rubbed" method of using both hands to rub the colas on the plants , in the fields, vigorously back and forth, allowing the sticky trichomes to stick to their hands. Then they squat down and rub their hands together over a spread out white cotton cloth allowing the droppings to accumlate.
Either or anyway they gather them, then they go thru the cellophane baking process, and pack or compress them into cakes or bricks.
If you use a very small micron screen, (small holes) you get just the trichomes, and you get a blonde or gold HASH. (Blonde Lebonese is the ultimate to me) If you use a large micron screen with larger holes, then micro-parts of the leaf dust also get in it and you get a dark green HASH, like Afgani Hash. In Mexico, they use window screen and get a low grade HASH that is not so good at all.

Here, in America, we use gravity. There is a DRY way and a WET or WATER or ICE WATER way to collect them. ICE WATER Extraction is best, IF you are in a hurry, in my opinion. You can make a spinner bucket to gather them. Place a small one gallon bucket in a 5 gallon bucket, with a crank handle and gears to spin the small bucket inside the big bucket. The small bucket has cut outs, or large holes, covered in silk screen, that you buy from the T Shirt silk screen painter. You put the pot in the small bucket, spin it around and gravity throws the pot against the sides and the trichomes pass thru the screen, into the larger bucket. This is a DRY method. OR you can use ice water in the buckets. FROZEN pot releases the trichomes easier, they are not as sticky. You fill the small bucket with ice water, with ice in it too, put in the pot, and stir it with your hand round and around. I have almost lost my hand doing this, it is SO VERY COLD. I've seen 50 different ways to do this, and without pics, it is hard to explain. But I think you can picture it. ITube has many videos showing this.
I also saw a DIY 5 gallon bucket that was sideways, instead of sitting up and down. The bucket was over a tray. The bucket had many 4 by 4 inch holes cut out of the sides, the holes covered with silkscreen. You put a metal wire or pole thru the middle of the bucket, like a rotiserre. You turn or spin the bucket very fast by hand with a crank or you can motorize it with a electric ice cream maker. It spins and the trichomes pass thru, into the tray.
You can also buy silk screen and beat your buds against it in a frame. It is best to freeze the pot first. Frozen trichiomes are not as sticky and are released much easier.
I have a small box, about 4 by 7 inches in size, three inches thick. In the middle is a removable shelf of silk screen tray. Costs $26 on ebey. I lay a bud on the screen, in the box, and shake it. And everyday I roll a joint and replace the bud with tomorrow's bud. (I'll get some pics here soon) AFTER about two months, I look in the bottom of my box under the screen, and find about a half a gram of kief! TA DA, then I use your cellophane method to make me some HASH. You can just add the kief to a joint, but then you miss the certain high that only HASH gives. If you just smoke the kief in a pipe, it burns too fast. So you make a dried cake of it, called HASH.
For more info, see posts AND THREADS on TRICHOMES.
In the pics you see my kief box, the second pic shows the tray open that catches the keif after it falls thru the screen. Inside the box, you see a small piece of a bud laying on the screen. The box was a DIY home made that I bought on ebey for $26.95. He says he sells a dozen a day.

THE Roseman

I added pics today of my keif box.

THE Roseman

I got a new Kief box, (google WICCA, Boxes) and it's bigger.
I froze two ounces of dried trim leaves, they all were trimmed off buds at harvest.
I raked them around in the box, on top of the screen, and I got over two spoon fulls of kief to make HASH out of.