I have a precise scale thats accurate in the 1-2mg range. I am wondering how you guys handle your powders without wasting too much of it when weighing it and seperating it for doses. I am dosing things in the 10-20mg range. I heard that cutting a straw on an angle works good as a scoop and will be tryign that today. Any other tips for handling would be great!
Some powder might stick to the straw or whatever you use to scoop/pour. I just pour from baggy to scale with the aid of some damn sharp tweezers. If you don't wanna waste any material lick the scooping device :tongue:.
I just accept that a few mgs will always be lost in the process of handling. Unfortunately powders tend to stick to anything you use. Small knives are excellent for this.
... a folded up train ticket, half a gel cap, straw like you said. I find a folded train ticket works perfectly as a table on a scale
Make a liquid solution. Mix 1gm of substance with 50ml of 151 proof (or better) vodka. This is a solvent that will dissolve many substances miscible in water or alcohol. You now have a mixture that is approximately 20mg/ml. If you are fluent with liquid measurements you can use this instead of weight measurement. I understand it can be tricky handling several mg of powder, some find it simpler to administer from fluid in a sealed bottle in a graduated and metered fashion as calculated by the formula of solution concentration you are creating. Elementary my dear Watson! :2thumbsup: I have 'home-fashioned' graduated eyedroppers. Measure a tsp or smaller amount of fluid of known ml or other measure, draw all this 'metered' fluid into the dropper, and etch or draw lines as necessary to mark your needed level of graduation.
Wise words from rcable. I use needle nose tweezers and grab tiny amounts out at a time or scoop it onto the tray that came with the scale. That leaves two places that the powder touched, excluding the baggie it came in. My solution is to lick the tweezers and tray clean and then there is absolutely zero wasted powder. If needed, I'll take a little extra dose to get where I want, just based on where I think I'm going to be at...
yes i agree with these comments. i have the gempro-250 and everytime i try to weigh small amounts, some of it gets stuck to the scales tray. The liquid measurement is good advice but i have some things that would not last very long that way so at this time its not an option. Thanks for the advice guys.
Without prying, I have never handled a substance that was any more or less susceptible to degradation in an alcohol solution than being left in dry storage. Would someone please inform me of some things I should not make liquid and why? Save me the hard knocks of reinventing the wheel and all. My limited biochemistry lernin' suggests organics (and synthetics) might well be left preserved in a ethanol bath. But I guess gasoline in a styrofoam cup isn't up to lab standard. And maybe a learned electrical engineer could speak of ionizing particulates. Is it just too sci-fi to imagine a way to charge a metal tray or dish to repel all loose particles 'attaching' to it, or reversely make a 'dust magnet' that would pick it up to be dropped more precisely into a storage container? Someone here must have some lab experiences to share...
i put a small piece of paper on my scale and zero it then just put whatever is being measured from the bag to the paper
I just buy mine from vendors that sell them to me with the caps and weights all figure out and I'm good to go. I just can't tell you the vendor that does the work for you. I'm sure the vendor would love the biz though.
Even if this wasn't such a terrible idea for the obvious legal reasons.. Your vendor faces the same problems the rest of us do when scaling. He scales out 15mg doses, 3mg get lost on the way to the capsule. Do you really think he's going to spend his precious substance making sure you get the desired amount in the capsule? Hell no, he scaled out 15mg, that's all his job is. :devil:
