Originally Posted by
Hackerman
If you're just looking to press the sift into a block or puck, you probably don't need any heat. If you are going to try to roll it and press it, you want about 110F to 120F.
Frenchy uses a jar filled with hot hot water right from the faucet. Should be about 110F or so. I'm a DIY kind of guy so I built a heated aluminum plate with temperature control. I use that and a standard rolling pin. This keeps me from having to run back to the faucet and re-fill the jar when the water gets cold.
I just learned that I can't post links here but if you do a Youtube search of Frenchy Canoli, he has a 2 or 3 part video on making ice water hash. I think the second video shows how he rolls it with the hot jar. I use the same technique with my dry sift.
Some dry sift just won't press like this. If it's got a lot of debris in it, it's really hard to get it to melt. If it's mostly trichs, it will get soft and pliable right away. If it has a lot of 'sandy' and 'gritty' feel, try something called 'static tech'. That's the practice of using static electricity (a CD cover) to attract the remaining debris and leave you with just trichs.
Anything below about 100 microns should press OK. Anything over 100u probably needs more cleaning.
I use an arbor press to make pucks for my rosin press. This would work great for what you want to do. The press is about $50 at Harbor Freight (are we in the US here?) and the 2 pieces of aluminum are from eBay.
The last 2 pics are the plate that I roll my hash on. Ceramic mold heaters epoxied to the bottom of the plate with a standard fan speed controller to control temperature.
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