Well, my buddy has some experience with working with mhrb, though has never pulled jungle and is interested. He knows most people do pulls with xylene/tuolene once they have exausted the mhrb with naptha...

He's wondering if anyone has done straight xylene/tuolene pulls on a stb(no naptha pulls first)?
If so, what were the results?

also is their a difference between using xylene or tuolene?

Thanks to anyone who can help..

You can go STB with tolulene if you evaporate it.
Salting will give a purer product though.

Have you done it before?
Kush has experience with getting purer products via a/b/stb/fasa ect...

I'm wondering what the consistancy/color will be like after evapporating...

Will it be able to become solid once dried or "gooey" Thanks!

I haven't tried it.
Curious to learn how it goes though.

SWIM just did an A/B extraction on 30 grams of mhrb a few days back. Instead of pulling with hot heptane, he pulled directly with toluene. He had been looking for toluene for a while because he knows it evaporates faster than xylene, so when he found it he was very excited to do a full range extraction. He did his A/B, only pulled three times with 25 ml hot toluene, and evaporated off the toluene from his pyrex tray in about an hour. SWIM should note his toluene was not colored yellow during his pulls like he had previously read, instead it was rather clear. Once the toluene evapped he was left with a pyrex tray that had a very strong floral smell, but no crystals or even a sign of crystals. SWIM then went to bed and woke up to an amazing sight. Fat, hard, crystals covering the tray. Each crystals bottom layer was sort of opaque white, with a thick upper layer of yellow coating the top. It was beautiful!
SWIM scraped up with a razor blade, chopped up, and the crystals seemed to turn a red, pinkish color, and boy did that tray smell STONG! He then weighed the crystals, to find he got .84 on 30 grams with three pulls! He then did an acetone wash on the crystals, re-evaporated, and scraped up to get lighter red/orange crystals weighing 780 mg. Excited, he loaded his machine up with 20 mg and blasted off. He did not break through because he did not hit the machine as hard as normal, but got the feeling that his experience seemed a bit faster and the effects lasted somewhat longer than normal before he felt totally baseline. If he hit it hard he believes the ride would have been wild. SWIM thinks this stuff is more powerful than the pure white stuff SWIM usually pulls, and he really liked it. Try it out if SWIY gets a chance.

Every time I've tried pulling with toluene first I've gotten just goo.
It seems that when jungle and NN are together they're just gooey and they don't firm up until they're separated.
That has all been with STBs though and I've never tried an acetone wash on it.

Never noticed much of a difference between toluene and xylene other than toluene doesn't smell as bad and evaps faster than xylene.

Hey Noman,

SWIM had tried this experiment with a STB using lye and pulling with xylene, and did not get the same results. He got something gooey like SWIY did. This next time he did an acid soak for an hour, used potassium hydroxide as a base and pulled with hot toluene. The bark solution was very warm but not hot when he did his pulls. After about 10-12 hours of evaporating SWIM's tray was FULL of beautiful hard crystals. No goo or anything. This was not a fluke either, SWIM has since repeated the experiment with the exact same results. He REALLY likes this full range he's been pulling, but still loves pure spice. Nice to have options though.

Good to know. I'll have to scare up some KOH.
Just one 1 hr acid extraction?

Yup. I basically do the first two steps of q21q21's tek and soak bark in hot vinegar for 10-15 minutes, then add an equal amount of hot distilled water to my beaker and let soak for an hour, stirring pretty often. I don't strain the tea from the bark after either, I just base with a 30% KOH solution purchased from a local hydro store to raise pH. It really doesn't take too much. I then let the basified bark solution sit in a hot water bath for another hour with my first pull of toluene added, once again stirring frequently. I then continue to do my pulls, and evaporate toluene off in front of a fan. About 12 hours later, the crystals are unmistakable.


BTW, sorry to add my experience with an A/B tek using toluene in the STB forum. SWIM was just very excited after his first two extractions this way, and he wanted to add his two cents, but failed to realize he not only posted in the STB forum, but did not really answer the original posters question...