Going to be doing my first extraction this weekend i hope, plan on using VM+P naptha and lye found in rooto drain cleaner (said to be 100%) also plan on doing the ammonia wash. would like any helpful advice for the process. also has anyone had experience using that particular lye? is it safe? it was quicker and i felt had less risk involved then ordering food grade lye online as it it readily available at a local hardware store

-doing the Noman tek, also i dont have a separatory funnel so advice on that would be good!

Thanks in advance!
Dtab

Dont know about the lye, if its 100% then all is good to go.

Forget the amonia wash, rather do a re-x on the goodies once you have extracted.

was planning a re cryst., but thought the ammonia may be helpful as i'm not 100% comfortable with the lye unless i've heard someone tell me they've used it in the past with good luck

Well, if you do you extraction right and dont pull any lye solution then there should be no reason to worry about the lye.

I personaly have never used ammonia wash, just re-xtal.

But take a read through nomans tek, it has a good explanation on re-exting and getting rid of the ammonia wash if you plan to re-x https://wiki.dmt-nexus.me/Noman%27s_tek

yeah i think i will in fact skip the ammonia wash, just got my supplies finished up and ground the heck out of the bark in a coffee grinder.. me, thinking im a hardass (i've been around chemicals and dust in my work for a long time and never wore a respirator) decided to skip the dust mask.. not a brilliant idea! - as far as getting to a powder, is a small amount of fibrous material left ok? i've got probably 99% fine dust and what looks like tiny hairs in the mix. after grinding and shaking the mix for another 3-5 minutes it doesnt seem to want to get the hairs into powder.. is that OK?

Ye dude, no worries about a few tiny hair looking fibrous material there.

Happy extractions

I've used Rooto in extractions before. It's 100% lye, so it's all good.

A little fiber is perfectly OK. 99% dust sounds excellent to me.

It seems that people were having trouble with the ammonia wash. If you insist on washing your crystals, use sodium carbonate instead, it seems that it has worked better for some people.

man.. lye+water+mhrb= handwarmer in a jar.. i like it!

so, as an alternative to a currently unavailable separatory funnel I'm thinking that using a liqour bottle turned upside down with a pour spout attached, uncap the pour spout when separating and recap when down to the top level. any thoughts/opinions on this concept? i can post a photo if helpful (assuming i am able to here)

EDIT: Upon further thought, the pour spout would just stir the product as it allows air to enter the bottle, one would either need to cut a hole in the top (bottom) of the upturned bottle. Or one could attach a straw or tube to the airway inside the bottle extending upwards past the highest level of liquid.

man this a beautiful process. im spending about 3 minutes rolling a jar round on the floor gently (one song ) then about 15 letting it sit. time spans sound ok to those with more knowledge?

So, 6 hours later in a -18 freezer i still seem to have a good amount of liquid naptha left and some salts/cyrstals attached to the glass. i cant find clear instructions on what now. do i drain off the naptha and scrape the crystals off the bottom of the glass? then use those to re cryst?

Do you have your container covered with clingfilm/cellophane? If so the naptha wont evap, you dont want it to evap in your freezer.

You should have done as follows:

After you took all your naptha and put into a pyrex dish, this should have been let to evaporate till the solution gets cloudy when you blow on it, about a tenth of the original amount or about there, this leaves you with a super saturated solvent which makes it easier for the spice to crash out. Then you take the cloudy naptha, cover with clingfilm/cellophane and pop into the freezer.

Leave in the freezer for at least a day, you should have nice looking x-tals in there, then(be quick here) take your dish out the freezer, unwrap a small corner and pour out the naptha into a separate dish. Quickly cover your frozen pyrex dish again and leave to get to room temp( you dont want any condensation forming on the inside of the dish). This should take about 30min-1hr, just to be safe.

Now you can take the clingfilm off your dish and scrape up them x-tals.

You can either re-use your naptha or evaporate it all to get whatever spice is left in there.

Read through these teks to get an understanding of whats required https://wiki.dmt-nexus.me/Vovin%27s_tek & https://wiki.dmt-nexus.me/Marsofold%27s_tek, check the freeze precip part.

Once you have scraped up them xtals, then you re-x.

Hope that helps

hmmmm so i skipped the evap, and put direct in freezer. my thoughts: drain off excess and use for re-x (to get any leftover xtals)?

p.s. gamm, you've been amazing

Hmmm, I think that maybe using the dirty naptha for re-x will sort of defeat the object of re-x'ing. Evap the rest of the naptha, there should still be a bit of spice in there, once the naptha has evaped, scrape up the xtals, add to the xtals from the freeze precip and then re-x with clean naptha/bestine/heptane.

Read up a bit on re-x so you 100% sure of what needs to be done, or just ask in the thread.

after going over the link to the vovins tech you put on there (a/b teks scared me away at first so i didnt read any of them stupid me!) i am now ALOT more clear as to the evap and freeze precip part. i've read several teks about the re-x but i think i'll spend some more time reading! my biggest problem is i dont learn very well from reading i love to read but cant learn technical things easily without doing them (which is why i only started out with 15g of mhrb for first xtraction)

Hehehe, I must have read for about a year or so before I did my first extraction, then when doing my first extraction I must have had about 4-5 threads open to read through through as I went along with the tek.

Good thing to start low, once you are a little more sure, and actualy understand what your doing, then move on tho bigger quantity's. You will get a better understanding of what you are doing after your first extraction.

Read, read and READ. hehehe

so after doing two pulls (first one in large bowl, second in smaller bowl)

And doing my mistake method (freezing whole amounts of naptha without air evaping then pouring out naptha and letting remaining tiny amount of naptha evap)

this is what i've got. after looking at some of the other pics of peoples first attempts at this it seems as though i have too much spice (if thats possible!)

i'm def. going to re-xtal after doing one more pull on my solution but the question is: this seems amazingly white, and in high amounts, smells like spice, looks like spice, but did i screw something up and have bad spice? i'm attaching a close up of the spice as best as i can get, it "LOOKS" white..

let me know thoughts on the matter please. i'm re-xtaling tomorrow after my 3rd pull on my solution (17g mhrb, 17g lye, 250ml water, 15ml naptha)

Looks good to smoke

I dont think there is any need to re-x.

i like your thinking. seems like alot considering the small amount of mhrb i was working with. ill try one or two little pieces tonight and see what happens.

gammagore: thanks a million times over for your assistance. good karma to you for life

Hehehehe, your welcome bro.

Do you have a scale? It would be nice to know an exact weight of that spice you have there.

Well, anyway, load up your smoking vessel, take a few pulls and report back

Happy days.