I am after some help to guide me into the right direction.
I have been doing the straight to base TEK method several times but without too much luck.

I am using 100g Mimosa Hostilis, 100g Pickling Lime and am using Shellite

Once I have done the first pull I end up with a nice cloudy substance. I evaporate this till approx. 1/3rd is left, then I cover it with clingle foil and put it in the freezer overnight. The next morning I see nice white drops sticking to the glass bowl. As soon as I take it out of the freeze I poor the liquid Shellite in a separate jar and let the glass tray dish dry. Once it start drying I can see the condensation coming all over the glass tray dish and the “white drops” dissolve in the condensation and evaporate. This has happened now several times and am not sure if it has to do with the ambient temperature and humidity or that I am simple doing something wrong.

Once you begin the drying process, it helps to turn the dish upside down. I usually prop it up a bit and place a slow fan.

Sometimes these white dots will desolve or melt. You will still have some goo to scrape up. That goo is ok to vape. If you are going for crystals, perform an Rx.

I could be mistaken here, but i feel like pickling lime isnt strong enough of a base for STB teks. From my understanding, you need a pH of at least 13 for a successful extraction, so in my opinion, that might be why you are having trouble.

Im not super familiar with using pickling lime though so i could be wrong, but i dont think something made for use with food would have that caustic of properties. So it could just be that, if the pH is low enough, it may not be breaking down the cellular structure of the bark enough to release the dmt freebase.

Or, alternatively, it could also be that the dmt IS being released, but because of the low pH, it's actually dissolving into the water instead of free-floating.

Shnuffles, pickling lime should be fine, my friend apparently uses it and reportedly gets a pretty good yield so it does seem to be a good base. I myself have used washing soda as a base with Mimosa and Acacia, and using 99% isopropyl alcohol as the solvent and was able to make some fine Changa from the freebased oil, so as far as basing goes, you don't need lye. Although when i did my extractions for Changa, i'd basically just brew up the Mimosa/Acacia root, filter and reduce down to a small amount and let it cool off to room temp, then added the washing soda powder to dry up the liquid and make a paste, and then when it was dry it was scraped up, put into a jar, and pulled from with 99% iso while sitting on a candle warmer and stirring here and there, did a few separate pulls and evaporated them down in a dish, the freebased oil was then redissolved in fresh iso and evaporated onto an herb, all went well.

ShamenStamen, but the process you describe doesnt sound like an STB, almost more like an ATB in a way. Either way it sounds like almost an entirely different process. I think i remember reading somewhere that sodium carbonate doesnt work for an STB because you cant get the ph high enough. Again, i could very well be mistaken.

You can look on drytek on the wiki, it's exaclty the same maner as wet tek, i can do stb or AB, the main difference is that you will deal with a cake, nor a liquid.
Depending on what materials we dispose, it can be very reliable in the kitchen.
I found drytek very simple to learn, i find you interact more with the matter (modeling your cake is great!) than wet teks, but of course it's subjective.
This thread speak about an extraction with sodium carbonate, to have tested it, i can say it's effective as a classical wet AB with lye & naptha.
You can do a drytek mostly with one dish, one glass, one funnel & filter and a spoon.



You can try to scrape what you have on the dish, it may solidify with air. Sometimes you can have some solvent trapped, then the mix of the water (condensation) can form pasty things.


http://pix.toile-libre.o.../original/1552300042.jpg

Pastanostra, thanks that was very interesting! I was not aware you could do that, looks like fun!