well, first off, let's make this clear, are we extracting JUST thc, or are we looking to make hash oil?
If attempting to just get thc, i assume your boiling water method would potentially work, but in that case you might as well make bubble hash. Your yield from your product will be very low and there will still be many cannabinoids left in the plant material.
I'm fairly certain that doing an extraction similar to making cacti resin will be inefficient...you will get something, but for what you get you shoulda made butter/hash oil or smoked/vaped your product.
I'm not sure if butter is the best example, dunno what the exact chemical processes are, so let's forget about that at the moment. whether discussing pure thc or hash oil and solvents, water will not provide maximum results. I'm pretty sure it has to do with the lipophyllic or some similar quality of the terpinoids/cannabinoids. I'd illustrate it as similar to making ayahuasca with boiling, but not acidified water; you're leaving alkaloids in the plant. I can't give you an exact explanation, suffice it to say that my personal experience has shown me that even after using butter, there are still some (very few) actives in the weed. In the case of NPS extraction, you pretty much exhaust everything, same with D-Limo, you just gotta give it plenty of time to leach out.
allow me to reiterate, pure thc extracts are incredibly inefficient as far as % extracted compared to plant material (thc is only one psychactive in the plants, other cannabinoids play a role as well). For bubble hash that's why they use sugar trim and the like. THC may very well convert into an oil at boiling temperatures, but I have never heard tell of anyone getting anything even resembling decent results with just water. I had a dumbass neighbor last year who kept trying hairbrained stuff on his schwagg trying to get a better cannibinoid/thc product and his water only extract was laughable.
For hash oil you need non-polar solvents or you will be leaving all kinds of goodies in the plant material. I feel like butter is the same, but like I said, I have more familiarity with the process of the chemical solvents, butter is butter and it works, that's about all i know. Water is water and it doesn't really work. That is, from what I have seen in my brief years on this planet, just using water for this extract yields an inferior amount of an inferior product.
For D-Limonene, again, allow me to reiterate, my interest is in full spectrum oils. Pure thc is inferior in health benefits to full spectrum cannabis essential oils and personally, I enjoy the other cannabinoids as well, so I'm never looking to make thc oil. I collect kief for pure thc, and if my grow op ever gets to the size i'd like it to be one day, I'll be making plenty of Bubble hash with icewater and the like for that stoney thc high.
Cannabinoids are soluble in D-Limonene and it has actually been shown to potentiate the effects of CBs due to terpene/terpinoids having a low affinity for the CB receptors...
Touche, there's a thread on here, mebbe two on this and there are reports around the web, let's see, here is a link to one of the Nexus discussions: