Now you've got ME all excited like it was my first time too, lol. Be patient....give it PLENTY of time to really get good....about 2 hours it pretty well set and gets better from there.

The melted bottoms sounds like heat...we made the same mistake the first tiime we made capsules too and ended up melting the capsules all in the machine so we had to toss to the whole thing and buy a new one.

Yes it DOES take a while to cool....in fact too long which is why I started speeding the process up with the ice water.

I know from watching Mr Hound that he doesn't put any in the smaller capsules....just in the one side. He also LOVES his tamper thingie so I'll ask him about it when I can grab him. I don't have the slightest bit of patience in the world to sit there and fill all those little holes up.....I'd go crazy. i'm pretty sure he does wipe the pills off with a paper towel after he pops them out of the machine.

Update us with a "pill report" when you can.

Ps...I don't think freezing would hurt things....they put leaves etc in ice water to make some kinds of hash don't they?