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Separating seeds?

BigJohnny

BigJohnny

Member
So if one had 5lbs of trim that contained probably 4lbs of seeds, how could one best separate the seeds?

Many are viable seeds and the trim is good and could be sprayed.

I was thinking of dumping the bag into a big bucket of water as I think the seeds would sink..... but then they'd also be wet and might start growing before I could plant them.
 
FishmanK

FishmanK

Member
I used to ride my stegosaurus down to the south continent to score seeded bud
once crumbled it was lifted and turned with a credit card on a slitghtly elevated surface(20 t0 35 degrees) and all the seeds rolled out and down the surface
since this was done on an LP album cover, I dont know what to suggest for sn appropriate surface in these times
 
O

Old Gold

Active member
You could always winterize to remove the insane fatty acid content, lipds, etc....you won't get rid of the pily nature of the seed oil, but could still clean it up a good bit.
I know someone who just ran a similarly seeded OG and didn't winterize, run subzero or anything, and still got pretty stable shatter. Clear, yellow, almost a hint of orange.

Maybe something that utilizes air resistance on plant matter for sifting (dropping a pretty great distance)....sometimes there's no discerning between seeds and sugary particulates in size, it seems.
 
O

Old Gold

Active member
I tried to basically do what FishmanK suggested recently and it did me absolutely no justice....then again, I am an incompetent loser. Give it a shot!
 
O

Ollie

Active member
Veteran
Some people "sift" the seeds, first over a metal mesh which lets the material being broken up, dropping both the material and seeds through.

After this, You can once again sieve with a metal mesh which dont allow the seeds through, but only the broken up plant material / powder. (its best to use dry material, as if one would drysift)
 
BigJohnny

BigJohnny

Member
Old Gold said:
You could always winterize to remove the insane fatty acid content, lipds, etc....you won't get rid of the pily nature of the seed oil, but could still clean it up a good bit.
I know someone who just ran a similarly seeded OG and didn't winterize, run subzero or anything, and still got pretty stable shatter. Clear, yellow, almost a hint of orange.

Maybe something that utilizes air resistance on plant matter for sifting (dropping a pretty great distance)....sometimes there's no discerning between seeds and sugary particulates in size, it seems.
Click to expand...

but, but, but ..... I want the seeds lol

Before I made this post I was considering making some form of air separator, I have a fan, and controller and with some cheap ductwork it could probably be done fairly easily....... I really don't need any more equipment at this point though so that's why I wanted to see what ideas others had.



Ollie said:
Some people "sift" the seeds, first over a metal mesh which lets the material being broken up, dropping both the material and seeds through.

After this, You can once again sieve with a metal mesh which dont allow the seeds through, but only the broken up plant material / powder. (its best to use dry material, as if one would drysift)
Click to expand...

What I have now looks pretty much like what he had in the video after sifting through the screen, but then he didn't show his separators or anything.

I don't know if I did bad by the seeds but I froze the bags and I think I'll just try and mash it through a sieve that should let the very fine plant dust through but not viable seeds
 
O

Ollie

Active member
Veteran
Afterwards, He will run it over one or two more mesh screens, depending on material and how much its broken down, as long as the holes are small enough to not let mature seeds through. The key is really to have it as dry "drysift material".
 
Donald Mallard

Donald Mallard

el duck
Moderator
Veteran
I always just used a newpaper or something like that , seeds roll off , herb stays on , if your careful ,, bit of shaking , moving the material around ,, you get a pretty good job done and barely any leaf etc remains ,,
 
PDX Dopesmoker

PDX Dopesmoker

Active member
Doing your sifting in a low temperature environment also helps a lot. I do mine in a freezer at about -25ºF and even dank & sticky stuff acts like its bone dry at those temps.
 
PDX Dopesmoker

PDX Dopesmoker

Active member
This is a post from a different thread Industrial Hemp in Oregon which I copied in to this thread due to it's high level of relevance

socioecologist said:
Seed separation...man, that needs a whole separate thread, been a very steep learning curve, that's for sure! I had no experience with large-scale seed sorting equipment before getting into adventure. My brother (Eric) was the brains behind that, and he pretty much MacGuyver'd it at first. We're getting more sophisticated now. The one steady refrain through it all is that seeds have to be separated from flower material one way or another; there are high yield / low damage approaches (rubbing buds in your hands to break seeds free) and average yield / high damage approaches (combines)--there are trade-offs with every decision.

He started with 30 gallon sterilite tote lids, using them like a big album cover, allowing the seeds to roll through the masticated flowers and collect on the lip below. Next he dropped the flower / seed mix in front of a box fan (it sat on a standard folding table) with 3 30 gallon sterilite containers positioned directly in front of the fan one after another (narrow edge towards fan), but below and on the ground. As he would drop the material in front of the fan, viable seeds would fall into the first bin, nonviable seed, stems, flower into the 2nd and 3rd bins. Scared me to death when I saw him do it for the first time. I would clean up the material from the first bin with a bird seed cleaner we got off Amazon for a couple hundred bucks.

We graduated to a bigger version (6' tall or so) of the design on this website:

http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedcleaner.html

Eric and Chris, employee #1, took the design and scaled it up to be about 6' tall. Works great, Eric is like a level 65 wizard using that thing on our small seed lots. He was using it last week to further clean some of our "early" series seed lots.

For test plots in the field (like our auto lines), we use standard small-batch ag seed cleaning equipment (air, vibration, 4 screens, and gravity table for post-process sorting) that can handle about 500 pounds of finished seed sorting per hour. We basically just buy a day of access to the cleaner from the ag company we lease from and can crank out a whole year's worth of work on larger field projects in a day.

The newest facility we are leasing has a much larger cleaner in it--time permitting, I'll post some pictures next week of that puppy. It would really only be useful for grain seed destined for replanting to supply food markets. Lots of respect for grain when grown in the right place, but we're not headed in that direction right now.
Click to expand...
 
zoic

zoic

Member
I would just use the spaghetti strainer. The mesh is big enough to capture the seeds and the fine grain cannabis that gets mushed through it is ready for making cannabutter.
 
~star~crash~

~star~crash~

Active member
cleaning the seeds out of 5 pounds of trim should be easy, although time consuming

just use a large platter as a tray and put in some material(couple handfuls at a time) and work it around at angles and the seeds will separate out easily enough:tiphat:
 
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