NFT and Bubba Kush, rocks, cats, dogs and stuff

paper thorn · Oct 12, 2017

I was going to start this thread a day or two ago, but could not think of a good thread title.
Still can't.

OK

My last thread, was needing therapy even more than me after the stroke. Not eliciting sympathy, most of you guys know already because I already ran a sympathy thread about it, but I mention it because it rules my life. I have to deliberately place each footstep and my head's forever fucked up.

But hey, when i got out of the hospital I had to use a walker with someone holding a gate belt wrapped around my chest.

i could barely swallow mushy food.

But hey, now i can walk. Sometimes a bit wobbly and i take a cane if my wife takes me somewhere lol. i can't drive and my car's been sold off.

My kid redesigned my grow so i could get around in it, and it's changed a lot more over the last several months

So I started running the top buckets from my old Hydrofarm full of clay balls, bur without the lower buckets. i just sat them on a sloped tray, with a drip ring on top running 24/7 through the balls back into the res. I'll put a few pics of the last run like that, 4 Bubba Kush plants under 2 600 watt lights.

i didn't make a pound, so was a bit dissapointed, but i got over 12 oz. so it was ok. I have another one going, but there are two plants in each bucket, some Bubba, some Cheese.

They look great and i'll get to some pics of those soon too.

I popped of bunch of Tahoe/WRBB (white russian blueberry) and blueberry/wrbb
culled all the males. one of each looks good, the others are lagging behind.

and i have made my first pipe from stone, i'll show you more pics of that than you really want to see.
and of course a pic or three of my beloved dogs and cats.

so here's a few pics to start. These are the last bubbsa, of which only an oz or so is left. :biggrin:

BombBudPuffa · Oct 12, 2017

Looks awesome!

paper thorn · Oct 13, 2017

Thank you BombBudPuffa

That grow was my last nft run, doing the same thing again but a bit different. i'll show them soon, as i make my way through the pics i went through.

The ones from the last post were being chopped in these pics
i went through and pretty well defanned them before i chopped them.

last one

paper thorn · Oct 13, 2017

went right for the next post

went right for the next post

i couldn't resist

root pics from the sides of the buckets where i lift that black plastic and then the root mats from under the buckets.

paper thorn · Oct 17, 2017

That's my dog Martha. Bruno, the big Great Dane died last Dec. he was 12 and now my girl is getting up there too. she's 15, i guess pushing 16 now.
She's hanging in there, a bit skinny. Before i got sick and was in the hospital for 3 weeks, she looked pretty good, when i came home she was so skinny, and has never really recovered.

This is the left side of the buckets where the tubes from the pump were. You can see bad salt build up on the drip rings.

i cured that problem. more on that later

This is my hobby, which is about to turn into a very small business.
You can see my little red stone pipe and a few of the next ones I'll be making soon. Lapidary equipment is spendy and I'll be showing you guys what i'm up to as this thread moves slowly along.

I'm proud to say that I've got the real deal GG4, but out of three cuts, two have mushed out. Made me weep. Well, it made me cuss. One is looking OK after 3 days in the rooter.
Firestorm is also now in the stable. Well, as soon as 4 cuts that i have root. i had one mush out.
I dropped the tempp 2 degrees in the room, though my cuts have been blasting out roots lately, so i don't really get it.

Also got 3 more cuts a couple days ago.
Blue Steel
Phoenix Lights
Dr Who

First day was iffy, but they all look good now.

I'll also be showing some pics from inside a major cultivation center for a dispensary here in az.

soon.

Went over by Saguaro Lake to the Salt River and did some rockhounding. Saw a bunch of buzzards.

paper thorn · Oct 23, 2017

saw these guys circling my grow room, i knew the last GG4 cut was dead.

Yep, Original Glue came and went, and i never even got to run it.

I'm going to get rid of my Diesel cross. Now that i have some new strains, I can get rid of it. It's not up to par and takes too long. It filled a need, but no more.

I wish i had kept a different one. I had one that was lemony and the perfect high for me, but I didn't like the way the buds looked, till after they were cured, and they actually looked pretty good. Mistakes get made fairly regularly around here.

the pics below are a few weeks back.

Of all the Tahoes and Blueberries I am running, only one Tahoe and one Blue Berry are looking decent, all the others look like they're 3 weeks in, but tomorrow is 7 weeks. I'm about to toss the lot of them.

the tahoes and blueberries are on the right

This is my res, a tad small, it's using 2 gallons a day.
no airstones, just the waterfall.

paper thorn · Oct 25, 2017

These are some wild horses over by Saguaro Lake east of Phoenix.

These rocks are destined to become pipes.
just need to get some longer diamond drill bits and more shaping and profiling bits, wheels and burrs

they're all nice but i kind of like the white onyx. i have a pretty big chunk of it, so i'll make a dozen white ones before i'm through.

These guys were up by the lake too.

paper thorn · Oct 25, 2017

That's my Girl Cat. I told her when she lays like that, she looks like a little otter and that I was going to put her pic on the internet and tease her. she lays like that anyway.
She's a sweetheart. except when the new big hairy dog comes near, she hops on my chair and smacks the crap out of him.

Did a major defanning of the bubbas and cheeses in the NFT.

I also had to pull one of the buckets off the table, because it had some root rot.

There are a few things i need to do to refine my method, but i really like the NFT. I think the holes in the bottom of the bucket got jammed with roots and it held water. :laughing:

I got some recent pics, but they're still on my cam and i have a few others still in the album for this thread anyway, so i'll post up a few pics as i inch towards how things are going to be as I settle on a growing method that suits my needs and demands and is something I can handle and stay on top of.

I'll be getting a few more new strains soon, and I still have 4 new strains rooting in the cloners.

Did I say that my GG4 cuts all died? what a dick. how could i let that happen. Cloning has been going really well for me for a while now.

Firestorm will make it though. I put a Blue Steel clone in coco. 10 days roots. bam into the cup.

This is my pipe before I drilled out the bowl.

this is a sintered diamond 3/16" hole saw attached to a water swivel so water pumps down the center of the bit right to the end where the work's going on. This one is too short to help me much, but I'm going to get a few of these 1.2, 5/8, etc for drilling out bowls.
edit:
actually, it's just in the chuck, but now it's in the water swivel,

paper thorn · Oct 25, 2017

These are the empty seed packs that I've gotten over the years from seedbay. Haven't had new store bought seeds in a few years now.
I'm still trying to go through the thousands of seeds I've got.

These are the crosses I've made and that I've been working through.
Mainly a few hundred with pretty good potential.

paper thorn · Oct 30, 2017

That's by the Salt River just under Saguaro Lake. Tons of rocks right there and I spent hours searching for good ones. could have spent a week.

This is a dust storm. We get them every year. in fact this was the only good one this year. sometimes they roll over whole mountains and the mountains just disappear. Not good to drive in.

I already posted this pic, but i'm posting it again bigger because I have a pic from a few days ago to show the crazy stretch. Plus i defoliated them at 21 days so they look skinny now too.
this is from right after i flipped them 5 weeks ago.

You can see the sick Cheese plant at the bottom with leaves messed up from damage caused by them $#@^&*% Root Aphids.

I'm in the process of becoming an IPM expert. I just wrote a paper on a good IPM strategy for any grow to stay bug free, but these Root Aphids are making me wonder if it's possible to defeat them.

Hit the veg with some Bifen. that'll help for now.

There's a pic of this pipe above, but i like this one, same one above that's not drilled out. Only with the bowl drilled and loaded with some Bubba.

starke · Oct 30, 2017

I really like your setup. No fancy BS - just results. Your pipes are art. I'd be interested in obtaining a couple for the misses and I if you do that. Drop me a pm if you're interested.

Peace,
starke

paper thorn · Oct 31, 2017

That's my water swivel and a 3/16" sintered diamond bit

Sintered is when the diamonds are embedded in the metal, so as the bit wears, new diamonds are exposed.

Most of the bits i use at least for stem holes are electroplated, so it's just a coating on the end of the little hole saws.

here's a pic of the next rock blanks that I'm in the process of making into pipes. several of them already have the stems drilled, at least to the depth of my longest bits. lol

long bits are kinda spendy, but the short ones are super cheap and drill great.

paper thorn · Oct 31, 2017

This is my salt lamp, that i got for Christmas.
and a few specimens of rocks i've picked up

this is a 1/4" bit and a rigged up clamp. it turned out 1/4" is way too big. 3/16" or 5 mm seems good. I just drill in a container of water to keep it lubed and cool and i have to pull the rock out every 1/16 to 1/8" of drilling to break out the core and dump it out and fill the stem with more water. or the core will cause too much friction deep in the hole and jam up, get hot, fuck up, core gets stuck in the bit and if i can't get it out, the bit is done.

Oh, did I say how much I LOVE my Wen 10" drill press. I went to harbor freight, grabbed the spindle and it had huge play in it. just shook around, i said hell no, spend a few more bucks and get this Wen. Worth every penny. it was about 125. from hd.

This rock is bad ass. limestone and serpentine, pressed by tremendous pressure into...practically mylonite.

paper thorn · Oct 31, 2017

nice pipe

nice pipe

That's my cat's paw, and the last pipe i made. It was the shortest blank i had cut, and i didn't have the longer bits yet.
so it's little, the bowl is a tad shallow, but the person i gifted it to got a nice little Bubba Kush budlet to fit in it nicely to break it in.

before polishing

This is the round diamond burr i used to smooth out the bowl. i don't yet have the right size bits for the bowls, so i have to hack them out with smaller bits. lots of work, believe me.

This is my flat lap. it's just a diamond lap disc on my grinder. i use the grinding wheel for my master lap. just bolt it on the side. it spins way too fast, but it works.
i have a 150, 400 and 1200 right now, soon to get more.a 600, 3000 and ?

That's the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket for my splash shield. i need to drill a hole in the bottom and run a tube from it to the lawn, a few feet.

i polished my first pipe, the red one in the other posts, by hand with waterproof sandpaper. lots of work. this flat lap is so cool. eventually, i'll have an assortment of shapers, like the ones granite countertop installers use to bullnose the counter edge. those are like 300 bucks though for crying out loud.

paper thorn · Oct 31, 2017

This is a super cool rock - black glass with some red etc.

This is going to be my most ambitious piece. wish me luck.
It's going to be a Hopewell Platform Pipe inspired piece.
I'm thinking bear, but my sketch looks more like a fox.

the Hopewell pipes are 700 - 2000 years old, the critter sitting on a curved platform almost always faces the smoker.
The supreme patience and will it would take to drill the stem and bowl out with little chert chisels, insane. i doubt mine will be as good as theirs were.
that's why i call it 'inspired' not a 'replica'

Firestorm clones

Firestorm in back, two of those are rooted and in coco. those are Original Glue in front, but they all mushed out on me. poor me.

paper thorn · Nov 1, 2017

Cleaned clay balls a few days ago. this little collapsible vege crates great for it. I let the balls dry, dump them in, pick out the big roots and stir them around to powder/pulverize the rest of the roots.

then rinse and done

I think the roots and ballsplug the holes. net pots might be better, or at least to raise the buckets off the bottom so the water drains better

woolybear · Nov 1, 2017

Enjoying the rocks and buds! Best of luck in your recovery!

paper thorn · Nov 3, 2017

Thank you woolybear, it's going OK. Knowing that you're never going to be quite right again, sucks, but i'm doing so much better.

Funny, most of the time I look in my album, find a pic, then figure out what to say. :biggrin:

3/16" or 5mm diamond hole saws. 60mm long. i can drill a stem 2" deep, so i have order some longer ones. bits longer than these get expensive.

Mikell · Nov 3, 2017

Nice cat sploot.

Loving the pipes. I use to work with stone, it is an interesting medium. Nothing artsy, just countertops and the like. Very much enjoyed taking a piece of creamy buttery marble from slab to countertop.

I prefered the Chinese diamond bits/blades/pads. Sometimes the quality was mediocre but at a fraction of the price it more than made up for it, and the pads did a better job in corners than the stiff American ones.

Chinese CNC bits for an edging machine was another matter. Almost broke the drive shaft of a Thibaut with one of their worbly bits.

Your recovery seems to be coming along very well. Poor old man of mine came out worse for wear, knocked in the head and body. But your mind looks sharp and the body can be retrained.

Grizz · Nov 5, 2017

I never new you did the pipes, so cool, hows those cuts doing ?

NFT and Bubba Kush, rocks, cats, dogs and stuff

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