Quit Tobacco, Or just Enjoy THC anywhere: The Kowalski Method

[IAmKowalski]

Ok, I've been distracted away from the boards by life for a while (which is generally a good thing), but wanted to drop in and share a bit of what I've put together from some tinkering lately which I think might be of interest to fellow fans of Can.Sativa here:

The Kowalski Method:

If you read through the archives, you'll find all sorts of information on making Honey Oil, extracting the THC goodness from plant matter and winding up with a sticky goo that resembles hardened tree sap.

Interesting stuff because it has very little odor - basically smoking honey oil is like using a vaporizer - you aren't burning any suspicious smelling plant matter. But you have to get a bit creative to actually smoke the stuff because it becomes liquid and runny when heated, so you might use hot knives, or spread the stuff on a rolling paper, etc. etc.

But we've got a better way to use the stuff:

First, you'll want to get a bag of rolling tobacco - like one of the $1.00 .75oz bags of bugler. And an ounce of herb, of course.

If you are a non tobacco smoker, or if you want to quit smoking cigarettes with the help of nicotine-free THC fortified cigarettes, start with step 1. If you're already a smoker and don't want to quit, go ahead to step 2.

Step 1: Get Rid Of The Nicotine:

Dump the tobacco into a jar, fill the jar with water, stir, let sit for 24 hours.

The water should have turned into a disgusting dark tobacco-tea by the next day. Be careful when draining off the water - this stuff is poisonous, no joke.

You could do a second soaking with fresh water for a second day, but most of the nicotine is now gone.

Spread the tobacco out on newsprint and place someplace to dry....

Step 2: Get The THC:

Search through the forum and you'll find several discussions on how to extract THC with acetone. I won't re-create the guides here, just add a few modifications:

My suggestions:

Use mason-jars and copper tubing to make a small low temperature still. Acetone boils at a very low temperature so a water-bath will do the trick: use an electric stove (NO FLAMES PLEASE) and set the jar containing the solvent into a pot with a few inches of water in it. Slowly bring the heat up until the acetone begins to boil. The tubing coming off of the mason-jar's lid should be long enough to allow the acetone to re-condense into a liquid - ice around the tube can be used with a shorter length.

With your still, you don't need to put solvent fumes into the air - you can boil off the solvent leaving the honey oil behind in the jar without wasting acetone or blowing up your house.

Run it through a few cycles, putting the solvent back into the container with the herb and leaving the THC extracted from the first cycle behind in the mason jar. Strain the solvent off and return it to the collecting jar leaving the herb behind. Heat it back up and we return the solvent to the herb, etc. etc.

Repeat the process until you've extracted all there is to get. Test a bit of the solvent and see how much residue it leaves when evaporated.... remember, it's coming out of a still completely clean before dissolving more goodness from the herb.... when a sample is relatively clean after it's had a chance to dissolve more cannabinoids then we know that the herb has been wrung dry.

Step 3:

When you've run through a few cycles, it's time to fortify the tobacco:

It goes without saying that the tobacco should be dry before we reach this step.... anyway.

Now we can return the solvent to the collecting jar - you probably want to swirl it around the sides because there is likely to be hardened THC residue on the side of the glass that we don't want to go to waste, make sure everything gets mixed back in.... kinda like trying to get that last bit of sugar in the bottom of your coffee to give up on being solid.

Slowly bring the solvent back up to a slow boil, stopping this time when we have around a cup to a cup and a half of liquid left.

Now the fun part: Place your Tobacco into a small mixing bowl and pour in the acetone/THC mixture. Mix well.

To dry your tobacco, set the mixing bowl in a warm place until most of the solvent is gone, then to get rid of the last of the acetone and make something that's actually safe to smoke, spread the fortified tobacco onto a cookie tin and place it in the oven at around 200 degrees for about 5 minutes.

What you now have is about .75 oz of bugler rolling tobacco which you can enjoy anywhere which just happens to have nearly all of the THC that the original OZ of herb had.

-------------------


NOW! Let's say you're a tobacco smoker who wants to quit. Herb is the perfect cure for nicotine withdraw. I quit once by locking myself into my house with a vaporizer, and oz of weed, and a pile of movies. When the craving for a cigarette would get bad, I'd just fire up the vaporizer and take a couple hits. Of course I was a dumb-ass and wound up starting again about a month later, but that's another story.

The problem is that we don't always have the option of locking ourselves away for 7 days..... But being able to starve yourself of nicotine and enjoy a good smoke at the same time.... Now there's something.

In fact, by removing Nicotine from the tobacco, we have a non-addictive version that is far safer than it was in its original form.... which means we have the option of being non-smokers (aka non nicotine addicts) while still getting to enjoy our preferred smoke (although with rather the wrong flavor) any place and any time that tobacco smokers are allowed to enjoy theirs.

Oh, one last tip - use the still to its best advantage by using 3 jars: One contains the ground up herb that we want to soak in the solvent, one is a clean jar that becomes the collecting jar. The third only gets used the first time: since their MIGHT be impurities in the hardware store acetone that we don't want to smoke, start by running the acetone through the still from an extra mason jar and letting it run into the container with the dry herb. Once you have enough to work with, put this jar away and use the clean jar as your collecting jar. This way we know that the only chemicals present in the solvent are those which boil off at a low temperature.... heavier contaminants are left in the extra jar and never touch the herb to begin with.


Anyway... that should be enough to work with - if I ever have the time, I might put together a decent guide on this, but in the mean time anyone who's not TOO high should get the idea

Have Fun, and be safe.

IAmKowalski Reviewed by IAmKowalski on 03-17-2009. Quit Tobacco, Or just Enjoy THC anywhere: The Kowalski Method Ok, I've been distracted away from the boards by life for a while (which is generally a good thing), but wanted to drop in and share a bit of what I've put together from some tinkering lately which I think might be of interest to fellow fans of Can.Sativa here: The Kowalski Method: If you read through the archives, you'll find all sorts of information on making Honey Oil, extracting the THC goodness from plant matter and winding up with a sticky goo that resembles hardened tree sap. Rating: 5

[homestar]

brilliant, thanks man!

[cman20118ut]

so does this smell just like a normal cigarette or is it just a little different?....i'd like to try this someday just for a stealth smoke b/c water cure just smells too different...but if it smells semi close i'd like to try it...i dont smoke cigs anymore but i can roll a semi close looking cigarette so i think i could pull it off in public

[IAmKowalski]

so does this smell just like a normal cigarette or is it just a little different?....i'd like to try this someday just for a stealth smoke b/c water cure just smells too different...but if it smells semi close i'd like to try it...i dont smoke cigs anymore but i can roll a semi close looking cigarette so i think i could pull it off in public

No strange smell, tastes very off - but not like weed in either taste or smell. BTW: Screw the overnight soak, just boil the tobacco several times in water. When the resulting tea is clear then you know you have removed all of the nicotine. Dry, Fortify with THC, Enjoy.

Note: I've yet to do this with good bud - only with harvest scrap which produced a DARK extract with a lot of chlorophyll in it... Using good herb should give you a nice light honey oil and less nastyfication of the tobacco's flavor.

Enjoy