Hi guys,

I was back at my favorite restaurant this afternoon and overheard a guy describing for his friend the results of his first DMT extraction, and thought it might be of interest here. This was his second extraction ever, his first being Mescaline from San Pedro a couple months ago.

Anyway, he described a very straight forward STB approach yielding 1.188 grams of what he believes to be DMT, from 100 grams of powdered MHRB. Luckily, I jotted down the url where he uploaded some pictures, and I was able to retrieve those before losing the napkin upon which they were written.

I'm sure this guy would welcome any feedback or suggestions the forum has. I'd imagine he's probably learned a lot from the members here, and greatly appreciates the wealth of knowledge and experience he finds on these boards.

At any rate, here are the steps he described:

Basification:

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1) To 100g of powdered inner bark was added 1.4 liters of distilled water.

2) This was allowed to stir under an overhead mixer until liquefied. Table salt was added as foam appeared which dissipated quickly.

3) While mixing, 200g of NAOH was slowly added.

4) Smooth but vigorous mixing was allowed to continue for 2 hours, after which it was stirred gently for 22 hours.


Solvent Extraction:

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5) To this was added 200ml of Naphtha, which was vigorously stirred for 1 hour on the mixer, stirred gently overnight for 12 hours, then allowed to separate.

6) The Naphtha was drawn off by vacuum and filtered using medium paper.

7) Steps 4 through 6 were repeated four times and the Naphtha pooled. As separation became slow, the mixture was allowed to sit in a hot bath (45 degrees C) for up to 5 hours. He described the hot bath as an old slow cooker or low-temp crock pot.

Only minor emulsions formed, and those were settled with light stirring of the Naphtha layer at the interface with a glass rod.


Freeze Precipitation:

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8 ) The naphtha was allowed to sit undisturbed in small, cheap, freezer at -20C for 28 hours, after which white precipitates were seen at the bottom and on the sides of the beaker.

9) A flask and Buchner funnel with medium paper were allowed to sit in the freezer to cool. The beaker was swirled, and after the precip settled to the bottom, the naphtha was poured through the filter. Most of the precip stayed in the beaker.

10) A cold plate had been allowed to cool a glass plate to roughly 5 degrees C. The precip was scraped on to the cold plate, behind which was placed a box fan on low. The residual Naphtha was evaporated over an 8 hour period. The fan was removed after 2 hours to avoid blowing off powder flakes.

11) The dried precipitates weighed in at 1.188 grams. The taste is hard to describe. It's a little bitter, harsh tasting, and burns the tongue quite a bit. No blistering or irritation occurs, and the burning subsides after a couple minutes.

Re-Crystallization:

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12) He said this is yet to come. I hope to be able to report these results soon.

nice job

Nice job! I like your clean style of reporting results. Please continue!

Good job! You got a nice home lab there.

Thanks guys. SWIM has found these extractions to be quite frustrating at times, but overall they're actually a lot of fun.

SWIM has collected quite an assortment of equipment over the years from other experiments he's done, thank you ebay. I think the most important pieces for extractions are the overhead mixer, the stirring hotplate, the crock pot (heat bath), and a good cheap freezer. Vacuum and filtration weren't as important for MHRB as they were for cactus. Solvent pours off cleanly and easily from MHRB, but it's tough to pour off Xylene from a STB cactus mix without pulling over some of the sludge.

Wow - very impressive!

SWIM just finished his first DMT extraction, which happened to be the first extraction or home experiment for that matter of any kind. Yield was really low, and he wasted a shit-ton of DMT. SWIM is inspired by these results and hopes to have more luck next time

Lookin' good so far, but I wouldn't smoke crude STB extract without cleaning it up first and I wouldn't let anyone else smoke it either. Simply re-dissolving the spice in clean naphtha and doing a freeze-precipitation should remove any excess lye from your spice.

Does anyone know if crude STB extract is soluble in vinegar? SWIM has been toying with the idea of a vinegar-based cleanup tek for crude STB extract, but has never gotten around to it. His idea is to do a microscale A/B tek; dissolve the crude extract in vinegar, defat with naphtha, separate layers, basify vinegar, extract with naphtha (or bestine). Some might find this easier than Re-Xing, some might not. SWIM hasn't attempted this and doesn't plan to for quite some time.


But please: Clean up your spice.

dmt is soluble..some greases too..so i really dunno if you could clean up your spice that way..

Thanks Newfound. There will definitely be a clean up here, and an attempt at re-crystallization also. No one will touch this until it's crystal clear... (with fingers crossed that that actually happens)

Thanks MrMan. I think anyone who gets any yield at all on their first attempt is to be commended, so nice work there my friend. It will only get better!

Great and concise thread. I love the pics.

For step 6 are you using a buchner with a vacuum pump or ?? Where do you get this filter paper?

For step 4 were you using just a cake mixer?

Thanks Myco.

The vigorous mixing in step 4 was performed with the blade from a Kitchenaid hand-held mixer mounted in a bench top drill press spinning at 1650 rpm. The hand-held mixer had worked great on a cactus extract, but the motor finally gave out. The drill press worked great though. A cake mixer would probably do the trick too I'd imagine. The gentle over night stirring was done with a magnetic stirrer - that's what's pictured.

I think mixing and stirring are important parts of these processes. During basification, I think it promotes physical contact between the OH ions and the the cell walls of the MHRB, helping to break them down and expose the alkaloids. And during the extraction I think it promotes physical contact between the alkaloid bases and the solvent, helping them to migrate to the organic layer. Physical contact is important for both of these steps I think.

For step 6, this was actually a two part process that I should have broken out:

The first was the vacuum extraction of the solvent through a homemade apparatus. Basically, it was flexible Teflon tubing run through a 12" long 1/4" copper tube to stiffen it. The copper tube was clamped in a support stand, and the Teflon tube lowered through the copper into the solvent. The other end of the Teflon tube ran through a single hole stopper into a side arm flask connected to a hand pump. Only a few pulls of the hand pump are needed to draw the solvent over. However, inevitably, some of the base tends to come over also - which leads to step two "filtering".

The filtering is performed just as you mention - a Buchner funnel attached to a side arm flask and the hand pump. Medium filter paper is added to the funnel and the solvent drawn through. Although, for MHRB, decanting was probably sufficient. It's pretty easy to pour off the solvent from the small amount of base that comes over - not like with cactus, where filtering was essential to getting clear solvent. Medium filter paper was used because that's what was on hand. But, any grade is probably fine for this I think. You pick up filter paper for your Buchner online - Amazon and Ebay for instance.

Thanks for the support, ha!

SWIM will be attempting another DMT extraction soon, and he has really been dying to talk to someone who's managed significant yield...

Your crystals are beautiful, and SWIM can't believe you produced 1.8% DMT! IF you don't mind, SWIM has a few questions about some details he's trying to work out with his extraction technique;

First off, are you using pre-powdered root bark? Because is Noman's tek, it says one needs 25-30ml water per gram of root bark, and you're using 14.

Second, what is the best way to separate the naptha from the base? SWIM is currently trying to use a turkey baster, and too much of the lye/water gets in the jar. Then it freezes, and when SWIM tries to dry the jar to get crystals, the ice turns to water and dissolves his spice

Thanks in advance! And thanks for posting these results in the first place

re-X pics pleeeeease

Well done.

IMHO and IME what you have in that picture needs no ReX, it is ready to go. Judging by your pictures and your write up it is very obvious that you are meticulous and thorough. I'd vape it just the way it is.

once again,

Well done

Very nice work. How I yearn for a hot plate and stirrer.

What you have there looks perfectly smokable as is, but I don't really see any tek as complete without recrystallizing at least once. Use heptane, not naptha. Try one freeze precipped cycle and then a second one slowly evaporated, and your end product should resemble translucent shards of glass.

That's a good point actually, swim didn't predetermine the amount of water that would be used. Rather, water was added while mixing until it looked well liquefied. That just turned out to be 1.4 liters. It could be that adding more water would have produced better results. I would definitely recommend strictly following the instructions of the TEK you're following, though.

Yep, this was pre-powdered bark. There was the option to use whole bark, but powder just seemed like it would be easier to work with.

Hmmmm, the best way to separate the Naphtha from the base... good question. I don't have nearly enough experience to offer an informed opinion on this, but so far, it seems that a vacuum approach is superior to trying to use something like a sep funnel. The base is just too viscus to drain cleanly from the funnel I think. That said, any vacuum approach is going to require a lot of practice to perform cleanly. Personally, I'm yet to see a case where no base comes over. That's why the subsequent filtering is important I think.

It definitely takes practice to get these techniques down. Once you do though, they'll last a lifetime.

Absolutely! Swim is still studying the technique, but will definitely post the results. This will be his first re-X attempt, and he can't wait to give it a try.

Thanks Ice. Learned a lot from this and had a great time working through it. Swim will try to ReX a portion of it to see what happens, but not all of it in case it goes bad. One small step at a time...

Thanks Art. You said it perfectly - "translucent shards of glass" are exactly what I'd like to see, if for no other reason than to see the process successfully worked. Thanks for the tip on the solvents. Do you know of a general consumer source of heptane? A brand or product?

Yeah, the stirrers are awesome. You get a nice gentle stir over long periods of time, which I think is very beneficial to these processes. I get almost all of my stuff used from Ebay - you can find incredible deals there sometimes.

BTW - great forum name!