StillSmart

Hi there, new to the forum, and interested in making my own essential oils.
I know the questions have been asked before - but not for a while, so wondered if anyone can advise me how to do this with the Smart Still (my main reason for buying one!)

Hi daisy, have you checked out YouTube for videos, there are quite a few good set ups shown. I think the main issue you will run into is that it appears to take quite a lot of plant material to get a little oil. The small capacity of an air still might make this problematic.

I have no experience of extracting oils or air stills, so could be off the mark

This may help: http://homedistiller.org/flavor/oils

I suspect you also need to do a fair bit of reading, because there's a number of different ways to make oils and it depends on what the plant is, as to how its done i.e. some with heat/steam, some with alcohol, some with water etc etc......

Hello Daisy
I wondered about making homemade, quality, essential oils too and a couple of years ago I started asking questions and I went searching for info....
Here's what I can add:
if its for homeuse or maybe domestic market/stall sales only, you may be able to use a smallish still (ie bigger than a homebrew shop model; you'll get very little from them; but less than a distillery size) to obtain a 'reasonable quantity' of finished product.
You will also need to deal with significantly different quantities of base botanicals for different oil extraction...and the only 'true' way is to use a basket somewhere on the top of the liquid in the boiler i.e. in the vapour path.
There are often issues regarding the purity and effective shelflife of finished oils too. If you are considering sales, you will need to be meticulous about base botanical source and also the distilling process undertaken (time/temp etc). There will also be potential problems with 'output' contamination if the distillations are varied.
if its for anything other than a homebased output (ie homeuse levels), you will be confronted with significant setup costs and possibly 'red tape' (ie government interference).

All this is not too say its impossible or even inadviseable, just not easy. Good luck and I would love to know how you go.