I recently received 20 grams of very noxious smelling JWH-018.

Following the advice of dumbstruck a gummy odorless clear/opaque wax was recovered.

1. 500mgs of JWH-018 was heated on a pyrex dish in a double boiler.

2. The JWH melted and was spread out with a toothpick and left to sit for a minute or two.

3. Let it cool, scrape up and it weighed 476 mgs.

The resulting material isn't quite as nice to work with as a powder but it could easily be picked up with a solvent, after it is melted and cleaned, and then applied to an herbal substrate.
That or perhaps recrystallizing with another solvent.

Thanks again Dumbstruck for the help.

ooo...b careful with that!

that's gonna be strong..

I'm super happy it worked. Pure JWH is a bit gummy so that could explain the resulting product.

Thank you Opiyum for doing all the work. This would have sat untested in the recesses of my mind helping no one if not for your efforts.

This method works primarily for removing naphthalene, which causes JWH-018 to have an unpleasant odor like mothballs. It is fairly volatile so it evaporates off quickly. If your JWH-018 or JWH-073 (or most other than JWH-250) smells of mothballs then you should certainly do this. Naphthalene is a proven carcinogen, so best to get it out. It will also improve the taste.

Naphthalene is the most common impurity in most JWHs. This is because the last step in the synthesis (at least for the known 018 one) is the addition of a naphthalene moiety. Chemists lacking in skill or equipment can easily leave much of this left unreacted in the final product. The best suppliers will explicitly wash this out to leave you with a pure product. Unfortunately the synthesis of JWH-018 is notoriously easy and therefore attracts a lot of sub-par chemists. There has been cases of chemicals being over 50% unreacted that I have read about -- in this case your JWH would be EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.

Opiyum, did this change the color at all? Naphthalene is usually white but I have heard brown or other colored naphthalene being referenced before. I'm not sure if this is an impurity in the synthesis of naphthalene itself or just another form of the chemical. Pure JWH is off-white and I have even heard it called a pale yellow.

That's exactly what happened. It was a white powder. It melted into a clear liquid. Then when it cooled it never changed in it's appearance it still looked just like it did when it was a warm runny liquid just no longer runny.
If you look in the picture it only developed color once it was scraped up into a ball. Now that it is a dense little ball it would best be described as a pale yellow gummy wax but it's crystally too if that makes any sense. It's like a sharp sort of wax. It only seems to have color because it's dense.

That is PERFECT! That seems spot on with the descriptions of the purest JWH out there. If your JWH is snow white and fluffy crystals (that don't stick to each other or the sides of bags) then your JWH is cut to make it that way. Pure JWH, in it's raw form, is a rusty brownish red. Upon oxidizing it changes color and texture radically to a gummy pale yellow / off white. It can oxidize much further back into a horribly gummy brown color, but this product would still be >95% pure.

I have read that 2 of the leading US companies selling JWH-018 were tested (by HPLC) and found to contain food grade starch. Samples tested by this same person were found containing up to 10% cut that is either starch or another powder cutting agent depending on which sample. If there is an easy method to make your unpleasant looking, poorly synthesized JWH into a sparkly white crystalline material, and increase weight in the process, then this seems like a method most vendors would do if aware of it.

edit: I was thinking you might be able to freeze the resulting JWH and then crush it back into a powder. Well I *know* you can do this, I'm just not sure it can be done in a home freezer. I am going to clean up a buddies JWH in the next day or two and I'll give it a try. Would be nice for those looking for an easy to use powder.

As per Dumbstruck's suggestion the little pale yellow ball of JWH-018 was placed in the freezer on it's coldest setting for about an hour. Immediately after taking it out I crushed it with a mortar and pestle and it immediately returned to it's powder form. The first picture is what happened after hitting the clump once with the pestle very lightly. I didn't think it was going to work but was immediately surprised as it basically burst into powder.
As it returns to room temp it wanted to solidify into a solid mass again but it helped to just keep crushing it up as it warms.

All thanks goes to Dumbstruck for being the brains behind this endeavour.

Coooooool. I'm surprised it tried to lump back together. I guess to get to a fine powder might require spreading out while it warms up or something. But I don't think it should be sticky at room temp. "Slightly gummy" like pure JWH (also pure THC), but I don't think enough to really stick together into a solid mass. Ah well, I'm more than happy with how it turned out either way! Thanks so much Opiyum for all the work!

Yeah if I hadn't left it sitting in a pile it wouldn't have been an issue. Simply spreading it out as it warms would be the best solution.

I wrote this TEK up for another forum and added some stuff. Lots of information, other proven and likely usable cannabinoids, alternative methods to make a double boiler, clearer explanations for some of the steps and pictures, and just a bunch of huff and puff I guess. Made it nice and organized -- explicit but lengthy. I guess main differences are alternative easy ways to make a double boiler and ways to find out if your cannabinoid can be helped with the procedure. No real additions to the procedure so you can follow Opiyum's OP and the freezing step a few posts lower and get to the same place.

Be forewarned it is in SWIMmish type format, but if you're interested this is the link.