TEK - Pill packing of them not-so-tastey ethno's + measuring and labeling

[Richi]

Some things in life are delicious. Among them, chocolate, strawberries, and anything deep fried, or best of all, deep fried chocolate strawberries.

Some things are not delicious, such as dream herb, which is why This Crazy Pot Head decided to do a tek on how to encapsulate such herbs and ethnobotanicals in capsules to make them easier to consume.

(The herb below is oregano.)

Packing

Here's what you need. From left to right, a blender, capping machine (tray, tamper), herb of some sort, and gelatin capsules.



First you need to pull apart the capsules and fill the tray.



Next you're going to blend up the herb. The second image shows a simple technique which can be used to help blend the herb even more, by tilting the blender.




Now pour your blended material out into the capping machine.



Spread it out evenly with a card of sorts. Health card works perfectly, and the irony is fun.



Make sure you use a tamper to push down the material. This will increase the amount you can pack in by about 0.2 to 0.3 g, depending on blend.



Now top them up, and spread out the rest.



Drop the top tray by turning the supports 90 degrees to expose the capsules.



Replace the capsule ends, they will hold together on their own.



And you're done packing! 50 gelatin capsules, filled with whatever your heart desires.



Now on to...

Measuring

You could weigh one capsule on a 0.1 scale but that would be a poor estimate.



If you take a simple random sample and weigh 10 a few times, you can get a more accurate approximation as to the contents of each individual one. Don't ask me the confidence interval and standard deviation because even though I'm taking stats, I hate it and am not doing well at all. I'm sure it's calculable though.



Now you can take 4.3g divide by 10 caps and get 0.43g each, or 430mg. Doing this a second time with another set of 10 caps yields a result of 420mg.

Average them out, to 425mg each.

On a side note, 00 capsules weigh about 0.1g each, so this may be factored into the total mass of an individual capsule.

On another side note, you should check your scale periodically, to make sure it is accurate. This one's been spot on for 5 years now...





Label, and presto, you're good to go.

(This label is hypothetical.)

Reputation Comments on this post:

	An excellent, well thought out TEK that despite covering a simple topic could come in very useful.
	Great post, and wittily written :)
	Great photos
	clever, highly informative, and fun - top stuff
	excellent demo, inspired me to get those supplies.
	A great TEK with lots of details for the newbie ethnobotanicalist
	A great tek with suitable photos accompanying it.

[honourableone]

This is excellent, and I really like the effort you've put into the pictures. I also think you have a very nice blender .

Wouldn't the weight of the capsules themselves cause a significant change in weight of the final product?

[Richi]

Originally Posted by honourableone

This is excellent, and I really like the effort you've put into the pictures. I also think you have a very nice blender .

Wouldn't the weight of the capsules themselves cause a significant change in weight of the final product?

Great point! The 00 capsules weigh about 0.1 grams each I believe. I'll add this to my post above.

Significant? Meh, maybe, maybe not though. If he's measuring dream herb, or the like, then probably not. If he's measuring cocaine, then more definitely, but in which case he should have a 0.01 scale anyway...

[Potter]

If you happen to find your self making many different herbal caps like this, you could consider getting some glitter or colored sugar to add into the mixes for easy ID. It will only take a light sprinkle to make sure you can get a glimpse of it and will hardly effect weight. If you're getting fancy, you could always go for food grade silver or gold for that classy touch. Drop a piece of it in the cap before filling to make sure it's visible.

A food grade paint gun could be used to paint the inside of gelcaps too, might be able to do some neat tricks with that.

I know it's feasible to put holograms on gelatin, but i can imagine it would be cost prohibitive. On the other hand talk about a copyrighted pill...

I can't help but feel the drugs forums stickers some how conveys that the site has it's own line of products. While it makes me bellyfeel wonderful it probably would be best not to have that sort of image out there. Just a thought. On the other hand if we made it standard rule that all paraphernalia in a photo shoot has the DF logo on it...

[Richi]

Originally Posted by Potter

I can't help but feel the drugs forums stickers some how conveys that the site has it's own line of products. While it makes me bellyfeel wonderful it probably would be best not to have that sort of image out there. Just a thought. On the other hand if we made it standard rule that all paraphernalia in a photo shoot has the DF logo on it...

Lol. I had no idea they looked like stickers. I just wanted to edit out the actual contents of the package, and their source.

I can change those images easily. What do the moderators think?

[Benga]

nice but no, as far as i'm concerned.
having D.F. watermark on the pictures is fine, but these really do look like stickers-and the last we want is even the faintest suspicion that the forum might have its own line of products or endorces one.
great post otherwise



b

[Richi]

The files have been changed.

[nEone]

One note - a lot of people report reduced efficacity of capped powders. The main reason for this is over-packing.

It's very easy to pack in so much powder that the material gets compressed into a hard pellet that doesn't easily digest/dissolve and the capsules pass mostly unprocessed through the system

Reputation Comments on this post:

very interesting point, thanks for the input

[Richi]

I would have never thought of that as a possibility. Doesn't the capsule dissolve regardless of the contents?

I would think that the contents would then fall apart in the stomach's acidic contents no matter how tightly they are packed.

I think a test is in order. He will try to pack less material into the capsules and judge efficiency, but this is hard to do due to the nature of dream herb itself. What would be another herb one could test?

[nEone]

The post above is in reference to experience reports with capped Kratom. Kratom is usually powdered VERY finely and can be packed down tightly with little effort when using the tamper accessory.

Not to go into unsavory detail, but SWIM has seen evidence of undissolved pellets that passed through his system.

It's possible that commercially powdered herbs are a finer grind and thus more prone to compacting that herbs that have been ground up in a spice-mill at home.

[Richi]

Interesting... This crazy pot head has no played with Kratom, although he will soon.

With such dream herbs, it would be difficult to tell whether they are more effective less packed. Who knows.

Just another pic, with some ideas! Kava kava finally has a use, since he does not like its taste, although about 40 capsules are necessary. But whatever, 4 kilo's of it lasts a long time anyway.

Mdma works too, but smaller ones would be nice. No need for 900mg of that in one.

Finally, he will blender some san pedro some time soon and fill those as well! No more bitter disgustingness to wayne him off the trippy shit.





Capsules are the way of the future. At IKEA, we do it all...

[Potter]

Ever make brownies, you know how even after stirring for a few minutes there's those few clumps of mix still floating around? The gel may dissolve, but the herb it self may not break up. Or like robo gel caps, they may clump together (though this has little to do with over packing)

[Richi]

Originally Posted by Potter

Ever make brownies, you know how even after stirring for a few minutes there's those few clumps of mix still floating around? The gel may dissolve, but the herb it self may not break up. Or like robo gel caps, they may clump together (though this has little to do with over packing)

This would have to do with how finely is was ground. Surely if it spent a few minutes in a good blender and was powdered, it will break up.