Hi all,

Someone's cousin's friend is trying to extract some spice and is having some hangups. He is following the ratios in Noman's tek, but is following the mixing methods of Lazy man's (i.e. crushing the MHRB in a ceramic mixing bowl and all that). He's working with about a half pound of MHRB, and as such, added roughly 200ml of naphtha to the mixture. After thoroughly stirring the mixture and letting it sit for awhile, he was only able to pull maybe 50-60ml of naphtha off the top, which did produce some spice after a freeze precip. After the precip, he dumped the used naphtha back in the mixture and added another 150ml of naphtha to bring it back to 200ml again, however, this time he could pull off virtually no naphtha off the top of the mixture. He added another 40g of lye and heated the mixing bowl in a warm water bath, which resulted in about 30ml of naphtha separating, which he pulled off and freezed again for another small yield. He wants to know, how can he get the rest of the naphtha out of the solution? He knows it should contain spice, so he's eager to get it out of there. He would add more lye, but he doesn't want to risk wasting lye unless he knows that it will do the trick.

If anyone has any advice, I'll be sure to relay it to him.

Thanks!

You could add more Naptha, you barely used any at all.

Tell your cousin to pour the mix into thinner containers that way the naptha layer will be thicker and more easily got at. 1L milk jugs are quite good

You litlerally stole the words from my mouth

From experience SWIM can say, no matter how much you think you're crushing the bark, it's still not as good as powdered. There's more DMT hidden somewhere. SWIM doesn't use such large amounts of bark, but nothing gets the naphtha out like one of those spore type syringes with the needle.

Is there an emulsion or has the naphtha "dissapeared"?

For half a pound 200ml of naphtha is plenty. Thinner containers advice is spot on. Don't sweat it, the further pulls will get everything that is

Hi again,

He'll try putting it into a thinner container. There are no emulsions, there just appears to be very little if any naphtha on the top of the solution - he expected there'd at least be a small layer with 200ml, but apparently not. He might have some difficulty pouring the mixture into a smaller container given that the MHRB is in a big soggy pile within the ceramic bowl, but he'll figure something out I'm sure. Just to be clear, is it safe to pour this mixture into a PLASTIC milk jug? Or must it be a glass container? No further lye will be added to the mixture, it'll just stay as it is.

Thanks again everyone.

Someone's cousin's friend is reporting that it's STILL not working, even after putting it into a smaller container and even adding a bit of extra naphtha. Any naphtha that goes into it simply does not separate at all. He's already made one decent pull from this mixture, so he knows the MHRB is good, and he is using proper VM+P naphtha. So... any more ideas? This mixture should be full of spice-rich naphtha, but he can't get any out!

This problem has come up before. Sounds like your roughly shredded/unshredded plant material has sucked up the solvent and doesn't want to let go. Other than patience, or some trick somebody knows, maybe your best option is to filter out your plant material, allow it to air dry and then pulverise it as best you can, obviously being very careful because of the NaOH involved now. Then start over, your goodies are still there somewhere Less someone has a better idea...

I suggest putting some more water into your mix. The problem could be that you didn't add enough causing the naphtha to get trapped. i have heard of others having problems with the naphtha not separating and adding more water did the trick. No harm in trying.

I agree with the last two posts. More water definitely.

More water and let it sit longer. I noticed after letting my jug sit over night that there was a lot more than after just sitting for an hour or 2. I also work with 1/2 lb and in a large mason jar. I also always pour in 300ml for each pull.

But let it sit over night and see if you increase your naptha

Water was added, and it indeed began to separate. He noticed it actually took several nights for it to separate as much as possible. He noticed a significant increase in separated naphtha from day 2 to day 3. He is waiting on a freeze precip now to see the fruits of his labor

Tell your friends cousin that he can pour half of his solution into another container, add water and it should seperate rather quickly. SWIM thinks this should be added to all the TEK's regarding this step at it seems to be a recurring theme.