I take cuts from the mother plant, about the wrist to finger tip in length. To be shortened later. They go straight into a glass of water to prevent them from drying.
From there. I will trim off excess fan leaves and side growth. I do snip the tips of the fan leaves I leave for 2 reasons. Firstly, to fit better in a clone dome tray. Secondly to track new growth. The new leaves will have their tips.
I will try to shorten the cut to a pair of nodes close together. That way one node is in the plug and the other is usually right on top when I put them in. I also stopped doing the 45 degree cut on the stems and only do 90 ish now.
I will then use a clean razor to score the skin of the stem gently, only the part that will be in the plug. Score gently, to me, means I brush the blade across the skin of the stem at 90-45 degree angles. I do this as if I were dragging the blade across my own skin. Just hard enough to break skin but not cut into.
Then I dip them in clonex and insert into the plug, then I remove them and reinsert and push it a little further to secure the plug to the stem. The double dip/insert is to put a light coat of clonex inside the plug and to make sure too much doesn’t get wiped away on the first insert. I have tried using a syringe to “jelly fill” the plug, but there is such a thing as too much clonex.
Then they go in the clone dome/tray. In the tray I add a solution of nutrient water. I fill the tray with enough solution that it reaches the bottom of the plugs and keeps them wet. The solution I use is Megacrop at 4g per gallon. It has worked well for me with my tap water. The solution prevents most fade while the cutting is starting to form roots and will also feed and promote root growth after they have formed.
I have pulled clones out of this solution with roots that have grown down into the solution and have gotten over a foot long.