Hi EatWeed, I think I can help you some with making the capsules, or you can also check out weedhounds thread. I learned a lot from that one also. I'll just go through your post and give some comments on what works for me. You had high-grade mids. That's fine but the better the weed the better the capsule. I've started using fire mids because I can get a higher ratio budil that way. Right now I get about .2g per cap. or just below and from the sound of your tolerance you might want to move up your ratio. I use equal number of tsp of oil to grams of herb. So 7g of herb would get 7 tsp of oil. I'll get about 35-40 caps with this. Your mix of 1.25 tbsp of oil to 1 tsp of herb seems light.

As for grinding, personally I like to run my coffee grinder for about 2 minutes alternating between pulsing, 10 sec hold where I shake it and full start and stops, to try and chop it super fine. Then I open it and scrape the lid and the grinder(you can run it again to get the lid to fill with resin again, I usually do this about 3 or 4 times). I don't bother with a sifter. You want to keep the plant matter in it all the way into the pills. Also I would use a smaller dish than the 4" one. I use a small porcelain coffee cup, or a small ramekin, or an egg holder, depending on the amount I use.

Putting the crockpot on low should be okay. At least it is with mine. I got a $4 over thermo from walmart. Stays steady at 247 degrees, except when I remove the lid it drops to about 220. Check the temp for all 3 settings if you get a thermo. Make sure to leave it on each setting for at least an hour to get it up to temp, and start with the lowest with testing, it can take some time for the temp to drop to its steady lvl. I stir about every hour or hour and a half for about 4 or 5 times. Then I usually go to bed and let it cook over night. Not sure if this is a good idea it's just the way I do it.

Then I turn it off and take out the dish. I pour everything into a soft plastic mesh kitchen strainer I got from a dollar store into one of the 3 dishes I use. Let it stand for about 30 minutes to make sure it is drained of oil and everything has cooled down. During this time I'll fill the caps into the machine. For every gram i load 5 caps(I'm usually right with margin of error of about 5 or less).Then I use an eyedropper to put 10 drops of oil into each cap. I put all the plant matter back into the cup. Then I use small knives to pick up a small bit of herb and place it into each indivudual cap with a cap-m-quick filler. If you don't have steady hands (or patientsfor something so tedious) you can just dump the herb on the filler and scrape it into the caps with a credit card, but I feel this would lead to a lot of the oil being wasted so I don't do it. Although if you are making bulk amounts then I would do the cc method.

Then I close up the caps. Make sure to give em a good little squeeze to close them. You should feel it lock in. If you have the cap filled over the brim it will probably leak out just a tiny bit. I like my caps clean so I do my best not to spill on the outside of them when filling or to overfill them. Then I throw them in a small container and put them in a drawer in the fridge to keep the light exposure down to a minimum. I don't like them in the freezer. I personally think they go bad faster. At least they would tend to give me a headache if they were in there for too long. I try not to make more than a months worth at a time. Plus you can build up a tolerance to them if you are taking the same strain cap everyday for a few weeks.

Sorry for being so long winded and I know my way is pretty anal and most people would get fed up with it, but to all you people out there with OCD this might be the recipe for you.

Oh and I don't know how much 1.5g is in tbs units, but I would approximate a tsp to about 1 gram. I'm not positive, just a guess. I would try a tsp of oil to a tsp of ground herb.

You can find everything you need on amazon or or wholesale websites. Scale, caps, cap machine. The kitchen stuff at walmart. You have the coco oil already, but most health food stores carry it also. Just keep making small batches, and try to get precice with your recipe. Took me a half dozen tries before I felt like I knew what I was doing and I still constantly ask questions to see what input other people might have about little things I come across. Definitely get that thermometer too just to give you an idea of what temps you are running. 220 to 260 I think would be ideal. 250 is great for me.

Good luck and let us know how your future batches come out.