Update November 2024: Soon after we published this review, the Lil’ T Trimmer website went offline. The Lil’ T Trimmer is now back at a select few stores, but the price is now $695, which is significantly higher than the roughly $400 it cost when we reviewed it initially. We still think it’s a fantastic device, but when reading this review, keep in mind that it was written when the price was lower.
by Nebula Haze
Ever spent 10 hours in cannabis “trim jail”? I know I have!
After a big cannabis harvest (like this Purple Ghost Candy and Amnesia Haze)…
I used to spend hours and hours trimming buds.
I felt like I was stuck in “trim jail”!
But is there a faster, easier way to trim your buds? Yes, there is.
If you’ve ever languished for hours trimming bud after bud to remove all the extra leaves (“trim jail”), then I want to share a solution that can save you a ton of time. This particular product is aimed at cannabis growers that get enormous yields, where trimming buds by hand is extremely time-consuming. For smaller harvests of just a few ounces where trimming doesn’t take that long, this machine is probably overkill.
Why do cannabis growers trim buds? When a cannabis bud is harvested, it typically has extra leaves which need to be trimmed off. Leaves are harsh to smoke, can give buds a grassy smell if cured with buds, and have low THC compared to buds. Most growers remove all the extra leaves before putting buds in jars to cure. Big fan leaves are easy to remove, but the tiny “sugar leaves” that are interwoven into the buds can be tricky to get rid of.
The 4 Most Common Methods to Trim Cannabis Buds
First let’s cover all your main cannabis trimming options from most time-consuming to the least time-consuming:
- Hand-trimming (Slowest) – Use scissors or spring-loaded pruning snips (Fiskars spring-loaded microtips are the most popular choice by far, but also bonsai snips or even hair trimming shears) to manually cut off all the extra leaves. This is the most time-consuming method to trim cannabis, but also the most accurate. A great choice for growers who are very specific about how their cannabis buds look. Hand-trimming also maximizes yields because it reduces the chance of buds being accidentally cut away into the trim pile.
- Electric hand trimmers – Essentially like scissors, but mechanized. A popular example is the Trim Daddy. The blades move much faster than any hand. These can be used to shave off leaves very similar to a shaver taking off a beard. Some people like them, some don’t care for the experience. They are definitely faster than hand-trimming, but not nearly as accurate.
- Bowl Trimmer – Put your well-dried buds into a bud leaf bowl trimmer, and turn the crank for internal blades to trim leaves. These essentially work by “smoothening” the outside of your buds. This method is very fast and produces beautifully trimmed buds, but I’ve found it tends to waste the most bud of all the methods. You’ll end up with smaller buds and bigger trim pile than necessary.
- Commercial Trimmer (Fastest) – This is the most expensive option, but takes your trimming time down to almost no time or effort. You load your buds into a specially made tumbler, and it automatically “smoothens” the outsides of buds using rolling and friction (no blades). If you’ve ever seen a rock tumbler to make stones smooth and shiny, that’s essentially what you’re getting here, on a big scale. This trimming method can finish a pound of weed in under 20 minutes, and wastes less bud than a bowl trimmer or electric hand trimmer (though not quite as efficient as hand-trimming). A nice side effect is the rolling process causes buds to become denser and tighter compared to the other options.
For a deep dive intro all your options about trimming cannabis, check out our full cannabis trimming tutorial.
The Complete Guide to Trimming Cannabis Buds.
This next section is a product review of the Lil T Trimmer. This machine is aimed at commercial cannabis growers and home growers with particularly big harvests. Learn how to increase your yields here. If you find yourself trimming for more than a few hours each harvest, you may want to invest in a tool to help.
My Review: Lil T Trimmer for High-Yielding Cannabis Growers
Disclosure: We were given this trimmer to try for free, but are not affiliated with this company and don’t gain any financial compensation from them. At the time of this review, the trimmer cost $400, but now it costs $695, so please keep that in mind when reading this review.
As home growers who maximize yields, we get alarmingly big harvests at times. In the old days, our household used to spend days together in trim jail cutting away all the leaves from buds after a big harvest. At some point, we switched to a bowl trimmer, which saves a ton of time vs hand-trimming, but also wastes a lot of bud. At the time, losing extra weed to the trim pile seemed a fair trade compared to hand-trimming pounds of weed for hours. And you can always turn all that extra trim into edibles, extracts, and concentrates.
Fast forward to 2023. I heard about the Lil T Trimmer machine when the owner of the company wrote GrowWeedEasy.com about it. They offered to send us a free trimmer. If I’m honest, I was not holding my breath on it being the best new trimming solution. I was pretty happy with the handy bowl trimmer, despite the fact that it tended to lose a lot of unnecessary bud.
But if you’ve followed GrowWeedEasy.com for a while, you may know I’m determined to try every new growing gadget. I’ve been surprised in the past at what works and doesn’t work. This seemed to be a reputable company that had been around for a while, so we agreed to give it a go on our next harvest.
Is the Lil T Trimmer the solution to “trim jail”?
We got the Lil T Trimmer, and it’s like a rock tumbling kit for weed. Essentially you put your weed in a big plastic roller with some spiky plastic balls, and turn on the machine to spin the roller. It doesn’t have any sharp blades, but gently “buffs” off the extra leaves. Since leaves are more brittle than buds, they tend to fall off the bud when pressure is applied.
Can You DIY a Similar Trimmer at Home? I asked the owner about this and here was his reply, “The reality is the home grower can make a machine themselves just like we have out of simple materials. As a lifelong tinker elf I applaud that. However not every grower wants to build their own, for those growers we offer Cure 43 Li’l T Dry Flower Trimmers.”
Here is what the buds we had looked like going into the machine. At this point the buds were fully dry and removed from the stem, but not trimmed.
Fully dried buds (no trimming yet)
We loaded several ounces of untrimmed buds into the Lil T Trimmer then turned it on.
It took 3-5 minutes for each “batch” to be fully trimmed, and we were able to trim over a pound of weed in under 20 minutes. If we’d been hand-trimming the buds, this would have taken us all day.
Here’s the pile of plant matter that was trimmed away. You can see it looks like mainly leaves. One of the things that I really liked about this machine compared to a bowl trimmer is it doesn’t seem to accidentally trim away big chunks of high-quality buds.
And here’s how the buds turned out.
The trimmer not only removed the leaves, but the rolling action seemed to increase the density of buds (obviously there were other factors contributing to the bud density, like that we used an extra powerful HLG 350 LED grow light, and the Purple Ghost Candy strain naturally tends to grow dense).
So much time saved vs hand-trimming!
Here are what the Purple Ghost Candy buds looked like after curing in jars for 2 months. S+ tier!
Final Assessment of the Lil T Trimmer
Disclosure: We were given this trimmer to try for free, but are not affiliated with this company and don’t gain any financial compensation from them. At the time of this review, the trimmer cost $400.
Pros
- Fastest Way to Trim – Saves hours vs hand-trimming. Each load takes 3-5 minutes, and we did 5+ ounces of bud at a time (they claim it can take 10 ounces, but we didn’t test that). For us, a little over 1 pound of weed took less than 20 minutes to trim.
- Low Effort – This is the process: Remove dried buds from the stems. Load buds into the trimmer. Check the buds frequently. Remove them when they’re trimmed to your liking.
- Professional Trim Quality – Produces professionally trimmed buds. The tumbling seems to help improve bud density.
Cons
- The Cost – This is an investment. For example a Bowl Trimmer costs much less. I probably would not have purchased the Lil T Trimmer on my own before I realized how effective it was. But now that I’ve used it, I believe it is worth the price for the amount of time saved and quality of the trimmed buds.
- Takes Up Room – It’s not huge but obviously this takes up more room than scissors. I live in a condo where space is at a premium so I’m mindful of things like that. If you don’t spend a lot of time trimming, that might be a consideration.
- Requires Attention – If you leave this on too long, it will start grinding away at your buds. You must pay attention and turn it off at the right time. Our loads each took 3-5 minutes in total, so we started checking after 2-3 minutes.
Note: Buds must be fully dry before trimming. The machine doesn’t work as well if buds aren’t fully and completely dry first. The sugar leaves should feel a little crumbly before buds are ready to be put in the machine. So this isn’t suitable for growers who want to trim their buds before drying them.
Overall, the Lil T Trimmer is an innovative and effective solution to help cannabis growers who are wasting too much time trimming buds. I now use this trimmer for every big harvest, and I would happily buy another one with my own money. Overall, I highly recommend the Lil T Trimmer for any cannabis grower who wants a fast, easy way to trim a lot of buds and get professional results.
Happy growing!
Nebula Haze
P.S. Let us know what you think about the Lil T Trimmer, and don’t hesitate to share your own favorite method or tool for trimming cannabis buds.
