I did read the thread through and those were the questions I was left with.

My friend went ahead and started the extraction with 150g. of cactus he dried earlier in the week. He just sliced into half inch stars and cut out the core but left skin and spines then tossed in food dehydrator. From 3 pulls he already has 1.685g of red resin will continue to pull until the cactus says uncle.

So far all is going as planned with no hiccups.