So my first ever extraction attempt seemed to be a great success.

I did Q21Q21's Tek 1. Everything went smoothly, I took notes, was organised and all that. The Tek is petro-chem free, entirely foodsafe and much easier to perform than I had expected. Loading the resulting material into my newly built machine, I felt an expectancy sure, but I did not expect such a success first time. It's as easy to attain full blast off with this as any other spice I've ever tried. But I'm ahead of myself.


After collecting all the vinagary spice-water I began evaporating it in a pot on low heat. There was about 100 ml of fluid, fairly clear at first. Right away, when it began to heat up I noticed two cream colored/off white filaments materialise within the fluid. Hmm, I thought the JimJam was supoosed to be all red. Prodding these two filaments (thin, less than an inch long, I thought they may be DMT crystals of some ilk at first) they currled up and became little glogules, smaller than a match head each. At the end I have red goo (highly active and the experience was fabulous) and also two little whitish bits.


Looking over my gear--the trukey baster I used is plastic, not glass!

Can D=limonene dissolve plastic so fast? I dipped the baster into solvent four times. First to grab all the spice vinagar out from under the Limonene, second to cleanup and grab whatever I missed the first time, then same with the water. Brief. Or is there any chance that these whitish bits are merely wholesome plant alkaloids?

Fishing 'em out, they snap in half a bit too readily, bending very little. A glimmer of hopeful doubt?

Then again, the baster has a slightly melted tip. This is after sitting, with a drop of solvent at the end of it's resivoir for hours--so it's not 100 percent conclusive that it definately did melt whilst dipped into the spice/solvent. Still....


I'd say the globs are plastic.


The brief seconds of plastic to solvent contact could only have melted the tiniest bit.


The globules formed immediately under heat--thus the extreme majority of that tiny bit of contamination can easily be sorted out.


Blech, I aint smoking plastic with my spice, no matter how nominal the amount. I just can't do it knowingfully.

Still, it hurts to throw out a decent batch, my first exraction, when the contamination evidence is not airtight.



*Edit* The D-limonene used was Grumbachers Grumtine. An artists paint thinner, brush cleaner. It evaps clean, msds only lists D limonene. Other ingredients used were white vinagar, powdered MHRB, mrs wages pickling lime.

don't get offended, but...

what made you assume that so-called 'food-grade' teks are without complications?
d-limonene is notorious for degrading polystyrene, and it affects polyethylene to some extent as well. I'm glad you feel eco-friendly for avoiding petro-chems such as xylene (which is actually considered a "green chem" by convention), but it doesn't make the chemistry any easier.
it's actually a hell of a lot easier to just use lye and naphtha with glass.

you can clean your product with acetone...and it doesn't have to be "food-safe". you're not going to eat your product, are you?

Hey Run.

No I'm not offended at all.....but why do you think that I made such assumptions about food grade teks?



I don't even assume food grade teks to be truly eco-friendly. If the materials were all harvested locally, that would be one thing. Materials shipped in from afar, however, some of them even produced in a factory setting--there is clear environmental impact going on here.

Still, I found an easy way to at least avoid petro-chems. Maybe naphtha does make things easier--that's what petro-chems do, they seeming make things easier in the short run, quicker, cheaper and all that.

Now despite my follish plastic ommission, this tek actually did go off without any complications. A few hours, nice yeild, potent stuff, effortless one toke blast-offs.

oh nice, good deal.

sorry about the rant, I've just seen so many 'food-safe' teks gone awry.
it's one thing to prefer using certain chems over others, but a lot of people
blindly go with ineffective hippy fad teks, simply because they fear chemicals.

and why do they call it a "food-safe" tek anyway? most people vape, shouldn't it be called a
"vape-safe" or "smoke-safe" tek? drugs are NOT food.

Global warming, endless warfare, disease, deprived topsoils, birth defects, cancer, asthma, a low-energy crummy diet, the utter and total enslavement and mindnumbing of the entire human populace *yawn....* polar icecaps, ozone holes, climate change, the death of all mortal things.

Perhaps there is reason, very good reason, to fear the petroleum derived chemicals.

... parkinson's, multiple limbs, palsy, tay-sachs, road-rage, hoarding, OCD, ADHD, tourettes...

but seriously, responsible people don't combust nor pour their solvents down the drain (and I should hope they don't drink them) they distill them; don't lull yourself into a false sense of security thinking these "food-safe" chems are without consequences.. you may have vaporized some plastic, like you suspected. a mass spec analysis would probably confirm this with a polymer pattern spectra. heh, your turkey baster is a petro-product.

and there's never a good reason to fear anything (this is a form of ignorance), understanding is a better proposition.

The term "food safe" means little to me. Lye is cool. I heat my home with a wood stove, and find many uses for the wood ash--making soap is on the list for this winter.


Petroleum derived chemicals are everywhere in our lives. Doing harm wherever they go--and this aint fear mongering on my part. This is all about understanding. Wash your hair with shampoo, wash your skin with bar soap--these are harsh, harmful detergenets (petro chems baybe, petro chems). Your skin is porous....you wouldn't eat sodium laurel sulfate. But you would put it on your skin everyday for your entire life?


http://www.diynatural.com/homemade-shampoo/

---this is how one moves from fear to understanding. By educating ones self and then acting accordingly.

For example, may people have fear about what petroleum and round-up is doing to our food source and soil. Educating ones self about organic gardening, aquiring some seeds and proceeding along consciously leads one to as higher understanding.



It also makes you an enemy of business, and an enemy of Tex Richman, the muppets new villian.

https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=27711

your skin has a phospholipid bilayer that permits small polar molecules and nonpolars through it, not surfactants. you're comparing applying an amphipathic quaternary salt (a surfactant) on your skin to imbibing it? this makes sense how?

wood ash alone does not make lye, it makes potash. as has been mentioned by other members (in the main forums), it's heated with slaked lime to create lye.
your concept of the chemistry is rudimentary, which is fine.. we all start from somewhere
and I enjoy a conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but if you're going to preach to the choir, at least do so in a credible manner, especially when the argument turns scientific.
I'm not a lobbyist for the petrochemical industry, I have no agenda..but I am familiar with
chemistry and biochemistry. I know what's effective and efficient, and what isn't.

I'd love to have a thread of just polite and productive arguement with you benzyme. But that's not why I started this particuliar thread.



I am just now starting my relationship with this fine bark. Very early on I f'd up and contaminated some fine material with plastic, or at least some polymers, some garbage that leaked into my material. I feel like it's an insult to the plant if I have to throw this extract away. Only 100 grams--I think we'll get along okay after this. Still, I'm trying to do what's best.

I shall make some tea with bark from the same batch, ask the plant directly for guidance on this matter. In the meantime, I can at least show enough class to seek out wisdom from the most experienced and wise extractulators that I can find:


Anyone know of a way to remove any stay bits of plastic that may invisibly be in my spice? Or a way to test the yield and see if it is indeed contaminated?

put it on a filter and rinse with cold acetone

Word. If I gt that route, I'll be sure to test the baster with acetone first--as I understand it acetone can melt some plastics.


And danku.

d'nada