This really should go into the just some xtals topic, as a reply to this post, but cannot yet post there.

When I rextallized some of my spice, I found that there are two very different crystal geometries present, and at first I got nothing like the nice big pointy ones I usually see. Instead I was left with elongated rectangular ones, with a flat termination and often a hollow inside. After a second run of warm heptane, I got both geometries (see pic below), and doing slow RT evaporation, I got beautiful big pointy ones.

What could be the factor determining the geometry? Size (cubic ones were smallish), solvent cooling rate, impurities, something else? Just seems like an interesting thing.

Some stereo-microscope photos taken through the oculars with a compact camera at 30x magnification - not the best quality, but still nice:

Small xtals:


Two different geos side by side:


The big one:

those are some very nice crystals :]

I gotta get a microscope. Nice work bro

Potential problem-I'm not sure if i could bring myself to smoke it!

Damn! I need to get some Heptane so I can grow some glass like that!!

Nice looking xtals you have there, congrats

Thanks all. I only wish they were as big as they look, this is 30x magnification after all - even the big one is only like 5mm-s...
Anyone has some input on the different geometries btw?

well- here is my input - all theory - heh.

ok iv never had the rectangular ones - ever - iv tried many ways and still i havent got em.
i got a feeling spice xtals only reach a certain lenght - about 1cm or so - then they just get fatter
i recon after a time of fattening the overall shape would be a small transparent transparent window.
please try figure out how you got the rectangular ones.

From what I know about crystals, Id always been sure that the lattice shape of a crystal defined how it grew, and it grew only in that shape.

What it means:

If salt lattice grows in cubes (which it does), then a saturated salt solution will crystallize into a Cubic crystal formation. The same goes for everything else.

Now im not 100%, but arent spice crystals almost exclusively needle shard shaped?

I found online a machine that can change the lattice of a crystal, but its like a billion dollars..

Id like to know more if anybody's got it. and feel free to correct my stupidity

-gir

great pictures! many thanks

Did some research on the subject, and it turns out that most molecular crystals are prone to polymorphism, so there usually are multiple metastable crystal structures in addition to the most stable structure. Also: solvent, temperature, impurities, stirring conditions, evaporation rate, nucleation events and level of supersaturation all influence the structure to a certain degree, so I am surprised we don't see even more variance in structure.

From my experience, in heptane smaller xtals grown fast tend to form (sometimes hollow) tetragonal coloumns, while bigger, slowly grown ones grow the pointy, thin shards.

BTW in the meantime I recrystallized all the small xtals and got some pretty nice glass shards, new pics on the way.

saturation of the solvent and how slow it evaporates can affect the xtal shape of the xtals... also heat may be... but how supersaturated ur nahpta is that small and dense xtals u get.. the best amount of solvent per gram of dmt i use is mostly 40-50ml for the xtal growing... try different ratios u may endup wih different xtals.

LOVE THE PICS!
Is there any reason to do this besides the beauty and purity? Does it affect you trip at all? I'm just wondering because I want to recrystallize some of my spice and make those beautiful structures. Am I going to be loosing weight and not getting any benefits? I am interested, but I'm wondering if I'm going to be spending a lot of extra money here just to get some fat Xtals.

Nice pics!! Keep up the good work

Well, an almost totally pure product such as that produced by crystal-growing teks will generally feel different from a mix of DMT and DMT N-oxide produced by a rushed extraction and forced/heated air evaporation. However, it's not too hard to get pure, clean DMT without going to such extreme lengths -- just freeze precip, or evap without heat and forced airflow.

The psychological effects of involving so much carefulness, patience, and perhaps even love into the extraction, purification, and crystal-growing process are unknown. It likely varies from person to person, with some people taking the attitude that "DMT is DMT," some taking the attitude that "The more TLC and preparation you put into the process, the more you get out of it." For people whose opinions more closely match the second one I gave, they would likely have some pretty powerful and awesome experiences with DMT made so carefully and patiently.

Thanks for crystal pron.

I think I'd like to try a recrystallization. I got old mimosa bark from a different vendor so my spice is slightly yellow. My last extract was completely white. I think this probably changes the experience. Either way, I'd like to have some fat ass crystals sitting in my freezer right now.

SWIM did a double re-x on about 1.2g of spice to 50ml heptane. used the oily gunk to make chernobyl changa and let the cleaned spice slow evap in a glass goblet with a cd over it.

it's been sitting for three days now and he can see condensation going on at the bottom of the goblet. there's about 1g of super pure spice in there. pics soon

Crystallography of any substance is still a very mysterious subject in the chemistry / engineering community. We know many of the factors that DO affect crystallography, The material itself being the most important in determining crystal structure. Isothermal Compressibility, Heat Capacity, and thermal expansion coefficients are the "restrictors" on crystallization process.

The next biggest factor in determining solids packing is the solvent - different solvents provide different neighborhoods for crystals to agglomerate. Impurities in the crystal and solvent will also "force" a crystal in one particular structure.

The third most important factor in crystallization is heat (and mass) flux, or the rate the solution is cooling and evaporating. A good way to think about crystallization is consider the molecules phase change from aqueous / solid as a probability function. At certain temperatures and pressures (and solvent, solution concentration, impurity, etc) certain crystal structures are more "probable" than others.

If it was possible to create a perfectly valid equation of state for DMT (or any) liquid/solid, the necessary inputs such as temperature, pressure, heat flux, mass flux, concentration, could be inputted into the differential equations that govern our universe. Interestingly enough, the equations that govern mechanics, acoustics, thermodynamics are all in fact the same ones with different coefficients - solving the evaporation rate for a solution, one can simply apply a dimensional analysis to scale for the heat transfer without solving the equation again. If someone were able to do this, they could make a plot in the number of dimensions of uncertainty (P, T, X, Q, etc) and determine "regions" that converge to a certain crystal structure. Some of these regions overlap, it what is called an unstable solution of the EOS: at exactly that point, the system is stable: any fluctuation can send it toward a different, stable region. Because we can't hold a freeze precipitation completely constant, we may be operating in one of these regions, in which case you can see two different crystal structures near each other. I find this fascinating.

Sadly, the math and theory behind this is beyond our understanding and measurability. Some things, however, can be tested. If I had the equipment, I would do a massive extraction, spilt the solution into many different tanks, and precipitate them at different temperatures, pressures, solvents, and concentrations, and timeframes. These 5 properties are the biggest in determining crystal structure. It would be rather riveting to see a 5D phase diagram of DMT and its crystallography.



However, only a devoted community like us could manage this endeavor - modern science is still doing this for water, and I believe that have found 14 or so different packing structures for ice, and new ones are being discovered every year. We have still come a long way to determine what we know about forced airflow, heating, concentration, and temperature.

I believe that Crystallization is a form of art, and I applaud and thank you for your pics! Someday in our future we will see these hanging on walls in galleries, coffee shops, and malls; whether people know that they are looking at spice or not, isn't important, because those enlightened will

Edit: I forgot to say, this is my first post on the nexus; I am happy to be here and am thankful for the welcoming energy you all provide, an oasis in the deserts of the internet, as I view it! I have about a half dozen or so textbooks PDFs on Crystallization (applied and theory) if anyone is interested, as well as a library of about 2.5 GB of chemistry and engineering textbooks and .5 GB on psychedelics and entheogens. PM me if you have any interests!

Gotta love chemistry

Just a thought...

It seems that the slow evap is done at room temperature...

Maybe when doing re-x's... document what the actual room temperature is and how fluctuations in the temp could change the crystal formations?

Relative humidity might influence the growth as well.

Just something to think about.