This is a great thread. And not just because it's stickied.

Last night I sifted some kief for the first time. I've smoked it before, but I'd never bothered to try to sift it myself. The sifter I made is ghetto as hell, but it worked like a charm:

[attachment=o103570]
clickit

What I did:
  • Used some thumbtacks to attach a sheet of 180 micron aquarium filter bag material to a small wooden picture frame.
  • Froze about a half ounce of stems and shake and about 5 grams of ground bud. Like, I put it in the freezer for a couple hours. Supposedly that helps the triches and oil from other parts crystallize or something. Read that in a couple of places.
  • Gently sifted all of the frozen junk (small handfulls at a time) over a ceramic plate and collected it in a pile with a business card.
I didn't press the kief. I just smoked it. Good Lord. I totally concur with the 6-to-1 potency guesstimate above. And indeed, the ground bud that I sifted is still very smokeable.

As for people who say, "I'd just smoke the buds," well, that's cool and all. But the advantage of kief (or kief pressed into hash) is of course that you can combust faaaaaar less material and get faaaaaar more baked. Which a lot of us recreational users find to be an advantage. :-)