How to make a balance scale at home

You’ve gotten to harvest your first (or latest!) batch of cannabis, and you’re excited for the next step. Maybe that’s sharing it with friends and family. Maybe that’s experimenting with cooking, beverages or other avenues. And maybe you just want to see how your latest growth has changed from your earlier efforts.

Hopefully you have a jeweler’s scale on hand for however you want to portion things. But if yours is missing, broken or just wasn’t there in the first place, don’t fret! You can still get your product portioned out with things you likely have lying around the house.

It’s time for a little DIY!

To make a DIY measuring scale, you’ll need a few common household items

It shouldn’t be too hard to track down the materials – you likely have most of them somewhere in your home, and the rest shouldn’t require more than a trip to your local Target, a grocery store or even a convenience store. Anecdotally, it took us about 15 minutes to track down everything we needed – including some on-the-fly adjustments.

You’ll need:

• Two disposable containers of the same material, like cups or bowls. Cups are easiest and paper’s best, but the other options work if you’re careful.

• A hole punch or other means for poking a hole. We ended up using a corkscrew.

• Some yarn or string (but not thread).

• A paint stirrer, yardstick or similar type of long piece of wood or metal.

  • The longer it is, the more sensitive it’ll be.

  • We’ll be calling it a paint stirrer as we explain further, but just know this means whatever balance you chose.

• A pencil, pen or something along those lines. We ended up with the paintbrush.

• A binder clip. The only thing that matters is that the metal press points are big enough to fit your pencil or whatever.

• Something big and heavy, like a textbook or dense board game.

• Some tape, though that’s optional.

• A counterweight that equals your target weight.

Time to assemble the scale

First, cut two equal lengths of string – the length will depend on how wide your container’s opening is. Next, poke a hole near the top of one container, then poke a second hole directly across from the first. From the outside of the container, insert the string into one hole and run it across the inside. Pull the length through so it’s roughly equal on each side, and then tie a small knot at the top of the string. Repeat with the other container, using the second piece of string you cut earlier.

Take the binder clip and secure it halfway down the length of the paint stirrer, then insert the pencil through both loops. Place the pencil on the edge of a table or counter so that the stirrer hangs over some distance from the table’s edge, and secure the other side of the pencil with your heavy object. Next, tare the balance by adjusting the position of your binder clip as needed to reach a level point.

Once level, hang a container from each side of the stick. You can tape the top of the string if you’re worried the cup’s going to fall off for some reason – because you’re using some heavier materials or you’re worried folks might bump into it.

If it’s set up correctly, your balance scale should be equal. It’s time to measure your sample!

Some weight equivalents to make finding a counterweight easy

A DIY scale’s a fun, simple exercise, but if you don’t have an appropriate counterweight, it’s pretty hard to know how much product you’ve weighed out. Here’s a quick weight list of common items:

• 1g: A $1 bill

• 2.5g: One penny

• 5g: One nickel, a teaspoon of sugar, or two pennies

• 2 oz: An average metal teaspoon

Add your counterweight to one side, then add your product until the scale balances.

We scrounged up a paint stirrer with measurements on it, somehow hitting both our recommendations above. We had a bunch of leftover paper bowls from a recent gathering, which worked pretty well for the example – though what we were trying to weigh did end up sliding around a bit more than we would’ve liked due to the wide bowl bottom. This wasn’t a big enough problem to make us give up, but we did have to be a little more careful in how we added and removed weight.

It’s worth noting that a longer stick is going to yield more precise results because the scale’s adjustment will be more pronounced. We like the flexibility of this approach – a yardstick especially makes it much easier to notice the weight changes in small amounts.

No yardstick? No problem; give a hangar a try.

If you don’t have a paint stirrer or yardstick available, you can still make a scale at home. You’ll still need the cups and string as described above, but from there you’ll just need a hangar with notches and a place to hang it from, like a shower rod or a longer door handle. Just hook the hangar over the bar, then hang your cups from the notch on each side.

Other weighing solutions you might already have

Making a scale at home isn’t difficult, but some folks might find it tedious to track down all the materials. While you can always buy something like a jeweler’s scale or a pocket gram scale, you might have a suitable alternative around your home and you didn’t even realize it:

• If you have a home cook or baker in your life (or you are one yourself), there’s a good chance they have a kitchen scale. But be careful! These can sometimes have difficulty accurately detecting weight for low-level amounts. Our digital scale maxes out at 13 lbs., but it had no problem detecting the correct weight of a nickel.

• If you send a lot of mail, you might already have a postage scale on hand, or maybe you know someone who does. Just make sure it’s accurate for small weights – try weighing a nickel or some other light material and see what registers.

• A balancing scale is a common type of Montessori toy for young children. If you have young kids or yours aged out of theirs, you may have a scale among the toys you haven’t quite found the time to purge. (We’re definitely not speaking from experience here.)

We know a DIY scale isn’t a long-term solution to the problem – nothing’s going to beat the convenience of having a pocket scale ready for action – but something you can whip up on pretty short notice sure beats waiting for an online delivery when you want to get your cannabis portioned as soon as possible.