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Humidity

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Bex

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Being a newb, I have not as yet acquired the 'gestaldt' to be able to fly by the seat of my pants with the flue curing process. So, instead, I am relying on 'instruments' - particularly a hygrometer - to direct me through some of this process. I am dealing with relative humidity - the wet bulb stuff involves too many calculation, etc. In any event, I am in the process of yellowing my second trial run - my temp is 94F, my humidity is 95-98% and all is well. But I will soon be ready to go to the wilting stage and beyond, and would like some direction from the old masters as to how to do this.
While I understand that the process instructs that you gradually go from the 94F to 120F, which is easily doable - it also instructs that humidity is gradually reduced from 95% to 50-55%. And therein lies my question - how is this achieved? I understand that the leaf will be giving off less moisture, so that humidity 'should' drop; and also that venting will assist in this drop in humidity as well. But I would like some further detail as to the ins and outs of this - those of you who have done this a number of times, are there any 'tricks' or advice you can provide as to how you actually control this drop in humidity?? Thanks!
 

deluxestogie

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Within the temp range that we are discussing, raising the temp by 20ºF will--all on its own--reduce the relative humidity by about half. RH is a temperature dependent attribute of air.

What that means is: just raise the temp.

Bob
 

DGBAMA

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At the end of yellowing, I allow rh to fall to 90 by venting, for wilting I raise temp in 5 deg increments then wait for rh to fall by 10% before raising again.
 

Bex

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Thanks, guys. I kind of noticed this on my own, although I wasn't sure of what was happening - my chamber fluctuates in temp - most probably due to my horrible - and temporary - thermostat. When the temps were up at 94F, the humidity would be about 98%. The temp would occasionally rise to 98-99F, and the humidity would be 92%. It did this consistently. In any event, I'm having a bit of trouble, as my run is using immature leaves (I wanted to practice before really doing this 'seriously' with mature leaf - which I don't have yet, anyway). I'm 65 hours into the yellowing phase, and my leaf looks like this:
smallIMG_20140914_132504_852.jpg

The photo really doesn't do it justice - in the camera the green hue on the leaves (that look pretty good here) is much more pronounced. Sadly.
 

deluxestogie

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The yellowing of the leaves that appear to be illuminated in the photo seems to be adequate for going on to wilting. Practicing with immature leaf may not be the best way to learn.

Bob
 

Bex

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Sadly I am learning the hard way that it is far easier to do this on mature leaf, as well as leaf that is all around the same stage of 'ripeness'. The leaf in the chamber is just a hodgepodge of lower leaves on various plants - and they are yellowing at different rates. I moved to wilting in my first run, with a green tinge on the back of the leaves - this never left, and with the exception of one leaf (which I now hang my goal on) the rest was pretty unsmokable. Although this may be wrong, in my mind I would rather be 'too yellow' than 'too green'. I am going to try to hold off on wilting/bumping up the temp, until tomorrow morning (at which time they will have been in there 96 hours), and keep my fingers crossed.
I don't have any mature leaf at the moment. They were planted out on August 4, and none of them show the slightest inclination of budding. But I thought that at least I could practice now, rather than doing this on the good leaf, with absolutely no 'experience' whatsoever.
 
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