Hi all, SWIM has finally gotten his hands on some Shredded MHRB yet he has no blender. What kind should he buy, he's under the impression any blender with a crush ice function would be able to handle MHRB. Anything special he should look out for when buying a strong blender? He also plans on using it to blend San Pedro at some point.

Thanks.

Any minimally decent blender should work.

Pre-break it first with your hand, peeling into thinner layers, and then cut with some scissors into smaller squares (otherwise its too hard and it might break the blender, or long fibers wrap around the blade and it doesnt work).

Do it in smaller turns, dont put too much at once

Try avoiding breathing the purple dust. Once you remove the top of the blender, already have a bag ready to put over and turn the blender around to put it inside the bag, and quickly close the bag. And/or wait a couple of minutes for a significant part of the dust to settle before trying to put it in the bag.

Good luck!

Great, glad an expensive blender won't be necessary. How much weight loss should be expected, say he has 250g of root bark, how much would that go down once it's powdered?

Why would there be weight loss? 250 should equal 250 at the end of the process, its just going from bag to blender and from blender to bag, nothing is being lost..

or maybe 249 for minimal amount lost to air when putting it in a bag and to your blender that you cant remove? but anyways nothing significant

Thought maybe there would be a fair amount of air inside the bark making up some weight, guess not. Thanks for the fast replies.

Even if there was, air is very light. Just fill up a baloon with air and you see how all that volume weights nothing, basically.

volume =/= weight.
Assuming the air's at the same pressure inside the bark as outside, 250g shredded would be the same as 250g powdered.
If you get a ball of blutak, it does not weigh more if you mould it into a hollow sphere than if you squish it into a generic blob.

Hi folks I have zero experience using a blender yet.

What seems like a good pre emptive step is using an electric yard shredder on strips of bark this gets it to under a 1/4 inch pieces that could I am thinking be first made very brittle and crisp hard by placing in a ice chest for at least overnight with dry ice.

I have tried the electric brush shredder these run a few bens there are 2 one is not viable and only accepts limbs the other accepts handfulls of bark that had been taken down to 2-4 by one inch trips with a sharp machete on a log while fresh, dried it might be brittle enough to take down by hand.

Will give some feedback on using a blender but heard a ninja from walmart about $30 that has 3 blades will work, however it will blend about 1-6 pounds and be trashed by then.

Have heard of a Cusinart being put to use.

Commercially spices corn wheat grains sugar are processed in hammer mills which are very large and cost from tens of thousands to $500K.

Tried to purchase access to time use of a mill and the owners concerns lie with damaging this very expensive machinery, contamination of feedstuffs, and the need to process several hundreds to thousands of kilos at a time.

Most these commercial hammermills run thousands of kilos an hour.

On a smaller scale I am hearing of use of a motorised stone wheel grist mill.

These are getting hard to find but 50-200 years ago many farmers had one around.

If you don't mind spending a larger amount of money and get a really good blender, get a vitamix, and you can get a dry blender cartridge for it that is great for powdering roots and other plant materials. After breaking a few cheaper blenders in my day, I figured it was worthwhile to spend a little more and get something that will actually stand up to heavy use over time.

I'd say get one with the highest wattage that you can afford.

Electric motors have a duty cycle and for a low wattage motor the on phase of the duty cycle is very short. They need to cool down every few minutes or they will burn the motor out. A higher wattage motor has a much longer on phase of the duty cycle and some good ones can be run virtually all day without overheating and burning out the motor.

Is there any reason that most people tend to dry grind their bark ? I mix it with the required volume of water and grind it wet. It seems a lot easier on the blender that way.

+1 on the vitamix! That thing will grind bricks. But very expensive.

Also freezing the bark will make it more brittle and also help lyse the cells.

i read the magic bullet works.

also i read that coffee grinders tend to work over blenders.

blendtec blender with large jug (if you can afford it!), will grind everything you like...

I have found an Osterizer that works great.It has a metal type gear that spin the blades.Had one that had plastic gears that spin the blades and it did not last long.Also I use an old quart jar that threads perfectly onto the blade attachment to my blender.That way I can shake the hell out of it while its grinding the bark without having to worry about the lid coming off.

I think you can easily destroy your product if you don't keep a close eye on temperature, I think freezing is safer.

secateurs to cut into manageable pieces and a dry spice grinder to complete the job.

get a metal gear on metal gear coffee grinder, they are not cheap but they are built to last forever.

look up the kitchenaid pro burr, yes its relatively expensive (+-$200us), but you can use it on a daily basis and as long as you get the gears aligned it will last more than 20 years.

always go for metal on metal.

Blender Love and blender Peace hippie time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0Nx52bpuV0
But that's a soft veggies demo, no hard bark or vine demo.

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This looks like a lean mean *all metal* kill machine
But serious pre-shredding necessary?
.

thats debatable but the thing has somewhere near a dozen settings on it so you could take entire logs and put it in there and it will reduce them to nothing.

i just find that the cheapo machines have no shelf life for even occasional work, and for something like this the gears can jam and the plastic can shred, its a question of material density, a piece of metal is harder than a piece of wood, but a piece of wood is harder than a piece of plastic.

stainless steel metal on metal will last decades, can be cleaned very easily and will do things you cant imagine.

it does not have to be kitchenaid there are so many good producers, many of them german or specialist italian companies, but if the mixers they make are a testament to anything you will be able to give that grinder to your children in your will if you wanted to.

pay the extra money if you can, if you do you will never have to buy another one in your life time.

I got a cheap Krups grinder, and it ground through about 250g of bark before meeting its demise. You may want to opt for one of the more expensive reliable blenders/coffee grinders mentioned rather than going through several cheap ones. Also be sure to wear a dust mask when emptying the freshly powdered bark