I wanted an A/B that was simple. Reading TEK's does not let the process sink in, I have to re-write it for myself and then I start to "get it." So I re-write an A/B TEK written by Pictaris a couple months ago because it seemed the most straightforward. In writing it out for myself, I adjusted quantities and made some changes that seemed reasonable based on all the other TEK's I've read. But, since I'm a newbie, making any changes worries me and so I'd appreciate a review of the TEK I plan to follow.

Also, I have added steps that I think may not be needed, but are extra cautious since I don't want to screw anything up. If anyone sees where I can remove steps or shorten them, I would appreciate hearing about it. I also included some of my own thoughts, concerns and questions as "notes" in the body of the TEK. I will take pics of this as I do it, so I can share later.

DAY ONE:
1. Add following to stainless steel pot, bring to boil for 30 min.:
- 300 grams of pre-powered MHRB
- 4 liters of distilled H2O
- 4 tablespoons of distilled white vinegar
NOTE: ratios & process from Pictaris A/B TEK.
2. Pour off red liquid, but no sludge, into glass container, cap, let sit overnight.
3. Add another 2 liters of water & 2 tablespoons of vinegar to sludge, boil for 30 min.
4. Pour off red liquid, but no sludge, into 2nd glass container.
5. Add another 2 liters of water & 2 tablespoons of vinegar to sludge, boil for 30 min.
6. Pour off red liquid, but no sludge, into 2nd glass container, cap, let sit overnight. Save sludge in a jar.
NOTE: I added 2nd and 3rd boils (steps 3-6), since I was worried the 1st boil would leave a lot of dmt behind. But to the extent the 1st boil got most of it, I’d rather not dilute it, so I plan to keep the 2nd and 3rd boils separate from the 1st. At the end of Day 1, I have 2 glass containers with red liquid, and the remaining sludge in a jar.

DAY TWO:
1. Pour contents of 1st glass container into stainless steel pot. Pour contents of 2nd glass container into a 2nd stainless steel pot.
2. Bring both pots to boil, reduce liquid volume of each to about 1/3 of original volume (from about 4 liters to about 1.3 liters). Expected to take about 2 hours.
NOTE: I am thinking that the red liquid in the 2nd glass container will be less concentrated than the 1st glass container, and that perhaps I should reduce it more to compensate. I’ll decide this as I do the TEK.
3. Pour liquid from both pots into separate HPDE milk jugs or suitable glass jugs.
NOTE: I’m paranoid about glass jugs after reading that strong base liquid can etch and crack glass. If anyone knows for a fact that certain glass jugs are immune from this, such as wine or apple juice jugs, let me know.
4. Wearing goggles, slowly add 8 tablespoons lye to 100mL distilled H2O with stirring.
NOTE: These ratios are taken from Marsofold, since Pictaris was unclear on the lye-water ratio (Per Pictaris: “He dumped there some water with two table spoons of lye...”). In fact, Pictaris may even be suggesting adding lye directly to the reduced MHRB solution, it’s hard to tell. Also, Marsofold calls for adding the lye to HOT water, but I cannot fathom why that would be good, since the reaction will already heat up and this seems like it would just be asking for trouble. If anyone knows different, please clue me in.
5. Add half of lye-water solution to each of the HPDE jugs.
6. Verify pH is 13+, and mixture is black. Slowly add additional lye 1 teaspoon at a time, directly to jugs as needed to raise pH.
NOTE: Pictaris suggests a pH of 14, but everything else I read says 13 is more than high enough. Also, checking pH may be overkill, and I may skip this if the mixture looks dark enough.
7. Put jug in stainless steel sink full of hot water. Wait 1 hour.
NOTE: Pictaris has no waiting period, but I figure it could not hurt. I may try waiting with 1 jug and not with the other to compare results.
8. Put water about 1 inch deep in electric wok (or in pan on electric burner or hot plate). Put 450 mL naptha in heat-proof glass container in wok. Bring water to boil, thereby heating naptha.
NOTE: Pictaris seems to want to use the heat from the lye reaction to heat the naptha, but I don’t like the idea of rushing while working with lye, and also that’s not really an option if I let the lye-MHRB mixture sit for an hour. Heating the naptha in a bath of boiling water seems like it would work just as good and ensure I have hot naptha for my pulls. One question I had is that there seems to be some conflict whether naptha needs to be heated or not. Some posters seem to say that room temperature naptha is fine to pull DMT and will pull it exclusively, while hot naptha will start to pull other substances, which means that if I want to get pure white DMT, I’d be better off NOT heating my naptha. Any thoughts?
9. Add 75mL of hot naptha to each jug.
10. Shake for 10 minutes.
NOTE: Per Pictaris, this should not result in any emulsions, which I think means you do not need to worry about doing the gentle tilting method of mixing. However, if emulsions do form, then I will probably change this step to gentle tilting and rolling in lieu of shaking.
11. Extract naptha using glass turkey baster or whatever from each jug, put in separate glass jars.
NOTE: Here, too, Pictaris moves quickly, since many TEK’s suggest letting the naptha sit for an hour or more before extraction. I may try it both ways to see if more time is better.
12. Repeat 9-11 twice more, keeping the naptha extracted from the 2 jugs separate. At the end of this, I expect to have 2 glass jars each with about 200mL of naptha (since it is impossible to extract every mL of naptha without getting any sludge).
13. Do two sodium carbonate washes on the naptha in each jar.
NOTE: This is from Whatcha’s STB TEK. Not sure it is needed. I’ll see if the first sodium carbonate wash seems to pull any color and, if not, I’ll probably just scratch this step.
14. Set jars aside to evaporate down to 25% of original volume (about 50mL per jar).
NOTE: I’m guessing this will take about a day, but I really don’t know.
15. Pour contents of 2nd jug into 1st jug, add sludge (saved from day 1, step 6).
16. Wearing goggles, slowly pour 2 tablespoons lye into 50mL distilled water with stirring.
17. Add new lye-water solution to 1st jug and shake vigorously for a few minutes.
NOTE: What I’m doing here is preparing for final pulls to squeeze all the remaining spice out of everything left over, and it seems more practical to combine all remaining MHRB liquid and sludge at this point, basify the hell out of it, then do a few more naptha pulls.
18. Add 100mL heated naptha (per day two, step to 1st jug, shake vigorously, let sit overnight.
NOTE: I think sitting an hour would be enough, but I figure this has already been a long day and more time can’t hurt.

DAY THREE
1. If jars have evaporated enough, put lids on them and put them in freezer.
2. Pull naptha from 1st jug, do sodium carbonate wash, put in glass jar for evaporation to 25% volume.
3. Add 100mL heated naptha (per day two, step to 1st jug, shake vigorously, let sit overnight.

DAY FOUR
1. Remove jars from freezer, quickly pour off naptha, turn jars upside down over coffee filter on plate, return to freezer (so crystals can dry further without risk of going back into naptha).
2. If 3rd jar has evaporated enough, put lid on and put in freezer.
3. Pull naptha from 1st jug, do sodium carbonate wash, put in glass jar for evaporation to 25% volume.
4. Add 100mL heated naptha (per day two, step to 1st jug, shake vigorously, let sit for a week, shaking vigorously a couple times a day. I will like try to re-use the naptha I poured off from the 1st two jars to make up part of the 100mL at this stage.

DAY FIVE:
1. Remove 1st two jars from freezer. Crystals should now be dry, stuck to bottom / sides of jar. Scrape off onto paper on plate, set aside to dry further at room temp. (to ensure dryness)
2. Remove 3rd jar from freezer, quickly pour off naptha, turn jar upside down over coffee filter on plate, return to freezer (so crystals can dry further without risk of going back into naptha).
3. If 4th jar has evaporated enough, put lid on and put in freezer.
4. Shake 1st jug.

DAY SIX:
1. Put crystals from plate into shot glass.
2. Remove upside down 3rd jar from freezer, scrape crystals onto plate for final drying at room temp.
3. Remove 4th jar from freezer, quickly pour off naptha, turn jar upside down over coffee filter on plate, return to freezer (so crystals can dry further without risk of going back into naptha).
4. Shake 1st jug.

DAY SEVEN:
1. Put crystals from plate into shot glass.
2. Remove upside down 4th jar from freezer, scrape crystals onto plate for final drying at room temp.
3. Shake 1st jug.

DAY EIGHT:
1. Put crystals from plate into shot glass.
2. Shake 1st jug.
NOTE: At this point I have all the crystals from what is effectively 5 naptha pulls from 300g of MHRB over a 3 day period, with a final sixth pull in the works. Hopefully the crystals are very white. Hopefully the quantity is at least 3 grams.

That’s pretty much it. I plan to recrystallize with heptane. Also, after the sixth pull, I plan to do a jungle extraction on the MHRB mixture with d-limonene. I’m a bit concerned because this is a mishmash of various TEK’s, as well as some ideas I got from various TEK’s, and I’m new to this, so I cannot be sure my modifications will not have adverse consequences. I think most of my modifications make the TEK extra-cautious, meaning I probably am spending more time on stages, and using more solvent (and hence doing evaporation) that might not be the most efficient way to proceed. The only purpose with keeping the first 2 jars separate until the crystals form is to learn just how much of the dmt was removed in the 1st boil as compared to the 2nd two boils, to see if maybe 1 boil really is enough, as Pictaris seems to indicate.

Hi!

DAY ONE :
1. I advise you to use more acid. You could also try citric acid.
2. Boiling the sludge a second time is definitely worth the effort. A thrid boil won't contain that much spice anymore so you could omit this step. Also, I would boil a little longer,maybe 1-2 hours. Also, make sure it really does boil, 100°C won't affect your yield.
3. Why don't you discard the sludge? What are you going to use it for?

DAY TWO :
1. You may use a lab bottle. Those are quite resistant to lye and heat,also the are not as pricey as one may think
2. Don't throw anhydrous lye in hot water. This will likely splash highly corrosive lye solution all over the place.Slowly adding lye directly to the solution (before dissolving it in water) warms the basic solution and also the naphtha you'll be adding soon and therefore improve solubility of spice in naphtha.
Measuring pH is good, but usually at the point of the color change the pH is high enough to proceed with first pull.
3. You may omit the extra heating step by adding lye directly as stated above.
4. Seperately heating the naphtha is not really necessary since water (and therefore your tea solution) is very good at maintaining temperature and will inevitably warm the naphtha as well.
5. 75ml per jug isn't much. Use at least 100ml, 150-200ml is better. More naphtha isn't saturated as fast - decide what is more important to you - saving some mls of naphtha or being able to pull the maximum yield.
6. The best way to get rid of emulsions is adding enough lye,plain and simple.Using enogh you can shake the jug/bottle as vigorously as you can it will nevertheless seperate in no time.
7. I always pull the first few pulls rather quickly, whereas letting the last pull sit for a few hours.
8. Sodium carbonate wash is not necessary. Use more naphtha instead throughout the decanting phase and just leave the last bit of naphtha in there and after the last pull discard the remainder (you may lose very few since you extracted the majority already).
9. Why do you add the sludge??? This is really unnecessary and is likely to create a mess.
Decide which way you wanna go a/b or STB,but do not combine these :-) You can omit the whole a/b if you add lye to the sludge (which is wet mimosa powder) and do the STB if you want to.

DAY THREE to EIGHT
1. Evaporate or freeze precipitate . Personally I prefer evap'ing over freeze precip'ing because filtering out the crystals and maintaining the temp. of the naphtha low is quite tricky. Coffee filters also didn't work too well for me. As your product already is quite clean, evap it and maybe purify by redissolving.
If you recrystallize anyways just forget about DAY FOUR to DAY EIGHT. Your product is likely going to be glassy white needles of spice that may have or have not a barely visible bright yellow tint to them.

Regarding the jungle : I never worked with d-limonene, but I use Xylene (paint thinner) in the 4th and last pull to pull a mix of jungle and normal spice that's left in the jar/bottle.

Use two boils in the first phase, just to make sure.

Spice extraction is definitely quite easy and you can do hardly anything wrong if you are familiar with the basics.
Also, that much purification won't be necessary unless you want to produce injectable spice(which also requires pharm grade chemicals and further processing).

Excellent planning, especially for a nursery post.

Since SWIM has only once done an A/B with lye he won't try to correct any of the step.

He will however give a couple tips on 2 things he has done a lot.

1: Freezer precipitation:
SWIM uses an 8"x4" pyrex baking pan and all of his crystals always stick to the edge.
At least enough that he can just gently decant off the naptha.
If you click on his tek (not pushing it or even recommending it, you seem well prepared with this one) you'll see a picture of the crystals in the pan.

2:Jungle pulls:
Using 300-400ml of d-limonene is probably good, it can be re-used over and over and over and over so don't be too stingy.
You only need to let it soak for 20-30 minutes, agitate it 3-4 times (or more) and it will be saturated quickly.

While you could wait weeks and waste the d-limonene by evaporating it and get a pretty impure product...
You could just salt out the jungle with vinegar. It will end up being gooey but very smokable.
This part it would probably be best to take a gander at SWIM's tek. It is Tek 2's "Acid Wash/Salting" Step

Good luck, with that much planning you can't fail!