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Wood moisture meter


BushDoctoR

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Hey all,

 

I'm a sucker for gadgets and unnecessarily overcomplicating things, and seeing as theyre fairly cheap nowdays I have been pondering buying a wood moisture meter for a little while now.

 

Done a bit of reading on it around the interwebz but also noticed there appears to be no threads here on the subject so thought it was a good reason to start one.

 

Would be interested in hearing people's experiences (if any)

 

Like most, my usual method is to crack stems and then paper bag with a humidial, which has worked great for me for many years but I feel there is still an amount of guess work involved. I find different strains or different diets can result in stems that react differently in different stages of drying and that rh% is very much dependent on temperature and cheap humidials can be pretty inaccurate and inconsistent. Not to mention that relative humidity in a closed container isnt a direct indicator of moisture content (ime). Of course you can then fine tune by then opening a bag or cracking a lid for x-amount of time and using experience but I'm wondering if a meter could take some of that guess work out from the get go?

 

Similarly I guess it could also give you readings that throw you right off if they aren't accurate

 

I'll be nabbing one none the less anyway. If anyone has anything to share please go ahead, if not I'll report my findings and let you know if I've wasted my money lol

 

BDr

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Wood moisture meters are set up to measure moisture in woody material.to get a proper reading you insert the probes so that they bridge the vascular bundles and measure the current between the probes. Cannabis wouldn't get big enough to allow for that. Also they have preset parameters for tree species and I dont reckon cannabis is on there lol even if you could bridge the vascular bundles, there is no preset.

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Weighing a bud. 

 

You can get an pretty objective answer to the water content and if you measure a bud, calculate the water % and remeasure as it dries, you'll know when you're about to hit what is properly dry. 

 

If you weight a little bud and a big bud, you can get a good understanding; you can know not just when the stem that's sticking out is dry, but when the entire bud has lost moisture. It's really easy to do with a set of digs scales.

 

If you like gadgets and faffing around, get a set of digi scales at 0.005g or something and start a new chart! That could get pretty technical and if you actually weight several buds across your harvest it could get really involved and might scratch that itch!

 

 

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4 hours ago, Cambium said:

Wood moisture meters are set up to measure moisture in woody material.to get a proper reading you insert the probes so that they bridge the vascular bundles and measure the current between the probes. Cannabis wouldn't get big enough to allow for that. Also they have preset parameters for tree species and I dont reckon cannabis is on there lol even if you could bridge the vascular bundles, there is no preset.

 

Okay yeah that makes sense. From what a remember from the various bits of scattered information I found in different places I believe someone had mentioned using a softwood setting I believe I read somewhere else about probing the stem but most simply talk about probing the bud

 

I did find a meter that can be used for hops and hemp but was aimed at the industrial market and was a price-on-request thing so can only imagine how expensive that would be

 

Will do some more digging before I write I write it off completely. There does seem to be quite a lot of people using these meters across the pond but then they are the kings of bro-science lol

 

 

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2 hours ago, Keye said:

Weighing a bud. 

 

You can get an pretty objective answer to the water content and if you measure a bud, calculate the water % and remeasure as it dries, you'll know when you're about to hit what is properly dry. 

 

If you weight a little bud and a big bud, you can get a good understanding; you can know not just when the stem that's sticking out is dry, but when the entire bud has lost moisture. It's really easy to do with a set of digs scales.

 

If you like gadgets and faffing around, get a set of digi scales at 0.005g or something and start a new chart! That could get pretty technical and if you actually weight several buds across your harvest it could get really involved and might scratch that itch!

 

 

 

Cheers man, funnily enough its something I've been meaning to do for ages but never get round to. I'll get round to it soon... maybe lol

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Been doing a bit of searching and there is (what's supposed to be) a cannabis specific moisture meter by Triminator which is an American company who sell various bits related to harvesting and curing. The website doesn't give too much away but after a bit of googling it seems people are reporting they are having similar results with cheap generic moisture meters so I'm thinking that it's nothing more than a rebranded meter

 

Think I'm just gonna give it a go and find out. At worst it'll be useless and I'll be £20 out of pocket, could come in handy if I have a damp problem though lol

 

 

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