Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower's Bible

rubbing.
    Once collected on hands, resin must not be allowed to collect other debris or foliage. Any foreign matter that sticks to resin-laden hands should be able to be brushed off easily.
    Gather resin by rubbing individual flowering branches firmly between hands. Slowly move hands up from the bud, continually rubbing back and forth. Rub palms and fingers in between resin-covered flower clusters so they come in contact with as much resin as possible. Each branch should be rubbed 20-30 seconds or more. After rubbing a few branches, you settle into the intoxicating, hypnotic rhythm. Aromatic fragrances are released as you rub the buds.
    The resin sticks to hands slowly at first, but once they are covered with a light sheen of resin, the accumulation process speeds. Brush off any foliage or debris from hands as soon as it sticks so the resin remains reasonably pure.
    To remove the resin from hands, rub your palms together so resin clusters together into sticky little balls. At first the resin will ball up relatively quickly. Lump the balls together to form a single piece. Use this piece to rub on resin that is still on your hand to help remove it. If hands are moist or sweaty, soak up moisture with a paper towel before removing hash.
    Once collected, knead it in your hand until it reaches your desired consistency. Hand rubbed hash is best enjoyed within a few weeks of collection. Collecting hand rubbed resin is time consuming. An average collector can rub all day and collect a mere five to ten grams!
Sieves
    The first time I saw sieved cannabis resin was in 1983 at the Cannabis Castle in Holland. Neville, owner of the Seed Bank, had a large silkscreen stretched across a frame that was set on top of a large desk with a glass top. We would toss a handful or two of buds on the screen and bounce them around a few seconds. After two or three rounds of tossing and bouncing, a thin sheen of resin could be found on the top of the glass below the silkscreen. I had never smoked anything so potent in my life!
    Resin heads are different sizes. With the help of sieves, you can use the differences in resin head sizes to separate them from other plant matter. Typically, a minimum of two sieves are used to make hash. The first one filters out the large plant matter and larger debris, letting the resin glands and small debris pass through to the second sieve. The first sieve should have 135-150-micron pores. The second sieve allows small resin glands to pass, while it holds back large, mature resin glands. The pores on the second sieve should be from 50-60 microns. You can find silkscreens at your local hobby and art supply store. Printing supply stores also sell framed screens.
    To sieve, plants should be as dry as possible and cold (about 41 °F [5°C]) so resin glands break off easily. Be careful not to force the plant material through the sieve. Forcing will break more resin glands and smear their contents on the sieve and other plant material. The contents of these ruptured glands cannot be recovered.
    Normally, the largest mature resin glands fall first. They are followed by less mature glands and debris including pistillate hairs and plant debris. If you abuse sieving and force too much through the sieve, the hash will be green and of low quality. At best, sieving removes only half of the THC-rich resin in cannabis.
    Atmospheric relative humidity can slow the sieving process to a halt because it causes the pores of the sieve to clog. High humidity also remoistens dry plants, thus making it more difficult for resin to fall free.
     
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    Resin glands come in three basic sizes:
    60-70 microns includes Moroccan cannabis and some other sativas.
    80-110 microns is the most common size range for many quality cannabis strains
    135-150 micron sieves are necessary to capture the mature resin glands of many well-grown, very resinous strains.
    Remember, there are several sizes of resin glands. Use the appropriate screen size to collect the most resin powder for the strains you are processing.
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    A micron is one millionth of a meter (1/1,000,000 m) or one-thousandth of a millimeter (1/1000 mm). This length is also referred to as a micrometer, and the symbol used to denote a micron is “?”.

    Make sure the micron size is labeled on sieves. Color coding helps, but there is nothing as good as the micron size of the screen.
    Once prepared, break up buds and foliage over a sieve, and tap the sieve lightly to jostle resin heads