Hash is easy to adulterate and my experiences with it have varied wildly - from effects bordering on those of LSD (kind of entering the anteroom of the psychedelic realm; not quite there but hallucinations "around the edges") to a headache and not much more.

The taste should have a "headiness", or a "vapory, oily mintiness" - hard to really describe. If you've ever made cannabutter, the smell of hash is in the same ballpark as that. Or more precisely, that's what the hash that I used to get smelled like.

We had this one little ball of it in college which was like an Everlasting Gobstobber. It was about half the size of a marble, and it lasted for months. No matter how much we smoked, it just lasted...and lasted...and lasted.

Good luck. We used to simply use a metal bowl and hold the flame over it for a long time. You might give that a shot. I've read about the knife thing for many years but I've never tried it.