# Capping Instructions



## powders101 (Sep 27, 2011)

By: DougoeFre5h


The thought of capping got you intrigued? Confused? Your not alone, enter Capping supplements101. This is 100% how I cap my herbs and supplements, and after years of use I can testify that although simple, it works so follow it blindly

First, it is important that we all use common sense here. We are going to skip all the mundane and nonsensical bullshit. Sound good?
Lets grab our supplies from here .

Calculator
Scale, with at least 0.1 accuracy (0.01 is preferred)
Cap-M-Quick capping machine (note capsule size, I prefer '0')
Empty gelatin capsules (compatible size with cap-m-quick, again '0' is preferable for a range of applications)
Dextrose (filler). It is the best filler bar none, plus its cheap as dirt.
Supplement powder

Testing your caps
This only needs to be done once. It is crucial however to do your own testing to ensure that YOUR caps come out nice a pretty.
Weigh 50 empty gelatin capsules on your scale.
Separate those capsules, and place the long end of each capsule in the holes of the cap-m-quick. Set aside the short cap end of each capsule.
Check to be sure that all 50 holes are occupied.
Begin to pour small amounts of pure dextrose over the empty caps. It will fill them as you move the dextrose around with a credit card or similar tool. If you cannot visualize this process please purchase the cap-m-quick before telling me you "don't understand."
Fill the capsules, and tamp them down a bit by either repeatedly hitting the cap-m-quick on the table surface or by using a tamping tool, pencil eraser etc. Basically, you want slightly packed caps, don't go crazy. Just a nice fill.
Place the cap-m-quick in the lowered position so you can place each one of the 50 capsule tops on, thus "capping" the powder inside the capsule.
Weigh the 50 full caps.
Subtract the weight of the empty caps from the weight of the full caps.
As a reference, I get a weight of 21.5 grams. WRITE THAT NUMBER DOWN.
Divide that number by 50, you now know how much dextrose 1 average capsule can hold. (Why did we cap 50? To minimize error and familiarize you with capping.) WRITE THAT NUMBER DOWN AS WELL! You will be referencing these numbers every capping session from now on.
(As a reference, I use 430mg as a benchmark for how much dextrose I personally fill a size '0' capsule with.


Mathematics and Powders
I highly recommended you do batches of 50 caps. That means mix only enough supplement and dextrose for 50 caps at a time. Doing more at once just begs for human ERROR!
Decide on a cap dose. Lets say you want 50mg caps of supplement.
50 caps x 50mg = 2500mg total supplement
Weigh out 2.5 grams of supplement powder
Take your reference weight of pure dextrose (21.5g) and subtract the weight of total supplement (2.5g). The result is the weight of dextrose to be used as a filler. Here, 21.5 - 2.5 = 19g dextrose
Weigh out 19 grams of pure dextrose
Combine in a sandwich size ziplock baggie and be sure you seal it WITH air inside, like a big bubble.
Shake like a madman.
You now have 21.5 grams (in this case) of evenly distributed supplement and filler, ready to be capped up. When split evenly into 50 parts, each part will contain [2.5g/50]=50mg. Everything checks, onto the capping.

Capping, the final frontier
Separate 50 empty capsules, placing the long end of each capsule in the holes of the cap-m-quick. Set aside the short cap end of each capsule.
Check to be sure that all 50 holes are occupied.
Pour the mixed baggie of supplement and filler onto the cap-m-quick surface. Smooth the powder over the surface filling each hole. Some supplements make the dextrose fluffy and volumous. In this case, a pressing motion is used with the scraping tool (credit card or similar item).
Tamp the Cap-M-Quick against the table surface of with a tamping tool of choice. The main objective is getting ALL the powder into ALL the caps EVENLY as possible. Its a art form, and should be regarded as such. Its up to you to do produce quality caps.
Place the cap-m-quick in the lowered position so you can place each one of the 50 capsule tops on, thus "capping" the powder inside the capsule.
DONE
Get your items need to cap your own supplements here

One item of notice, you may have extra powder as waste product that fell between the cracks of the cap-m-quick. I always just weigh out a few extra milligrams of supplement to account for this small error. If done correctly, you will only need to adjust the total supplement weight by a 50 or so milligrams (0.05g) and you can now see why we prefer a 0.01 accuracy scale.


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