SWIM is doing some MHRB extractions in a mason jar, using Noman's tek (with added sodium carbonate wash from Vovin's tek). For the first batch of mimosa soup 50g lye, 750ml water and 50g MHRB (shredded, but powdered in SWIM's blender) were used. after 3 Naphtha pulls were done the solvent was collected in another jar and put in SWIM's freezer.

The next day, he and I noticed a layer of small, nice looking white/translucent crystals coating the jar up to the level of the naphtha. He opened the jar and poured the solvent off, and we brought the jar to his house (up to this point we had been at another friend's house) but in the 2-3 minute car ride, all the crystals had melted. At this point he didn't really know what to do with his melted crystals so we put them in his freezer in the sealed jar to store them until we could attempt to retrieve them.

(My thoughts at this point are that opening the jar before it warmed to room temperature may have caused condensation on the inside which dripped onto the crystals. And at this point SWIM was unaware of the upside down jar trick to let the solvent drip out of the crystals so i am not surprised that the melting happened.)

SWIM then attempted to recrystallize the melted crystals in an eyedropper bottle by moving what he could of the melted crystals from the jar into the bottle. of course it was re-melting by the time he started to move it so he ended up with just a small amount of melted crystal goo in the bottom of the eyedropper bottle and some dripping down the sides. He put this in a heat bath and added solvent until all of it seemed to be dissolved (everything in the bottle had melted down to a liquid by the time SWIM was adding solvent so very little additional solvent was added)

After this he taped a piece of coffee filter over the top of the eyedropper bottle, and set it by his freezer for perhaps 6-8 hours, after which time he moved it into his freezer.

The next day SWIM found the eyedropper bottle had some crustier looking opaque slightly pinkish-white crystals in it. so he removed these and placed them on a coffee filter to dry them, but after a minute they began to melt onto the filter so he moved it into his freezer in an attempt to give himself time to figure out what to do.

Also during this time SWIM had put the naphtha from the first batch back into his precipitation jar and that into his freezer. After about 24 hours he noticed there was a layer of slightly more discolored crystals on the inside of the jar, similar to what we found after the first precipitation. I informed him about letting the jar sit upside down to let the solvent drip out of the crystals and he let it sit like this for over 30 hours (SWIM is afraid of unwanted attention to his project and works on it on a sporadic schedule that i am very frustrated by). it was my understanding from reading these forums that this is much longer than is needed for the solvent to drip out.

So SWIM and I attempted to dry out these crystals and retrieve them. We opened the jar, secured a coffee filter over the top to keep dust out, and placed it near his air conditioner so the airflow would hopefully help dry the crystals. we noticed some condensation forming on the inside and wiped it off with a paper towel. it stopped forming soon as (I assume) the jar warmed to room temp. After 15-20 minutes or so we saw no liquid building up in the bottom of the jar, so we started to get (a little too) hopeful of our apparent success, since all our other crystals had quickly melted within 2 or 3 minutes, even while still in SWIM's freezer with the door open.

But it was not to last, for the crystals soon did start to melt. when we first noticed a bit of liquid pooling in the bottom of the jar we poured it off into the container with the used solvent. it created a small layer under the solvent so i assume this was water that we poured out (it looked and behaved like the water did during the sodium carbonate wash). My thoughts are that condensation formed on the crystals and the water began to dissolve them.

What has SWIM been doing wrong?? he is getting very frustrated with these melting crystals and there seems to be no way that any of our freeze precipitated crystals will become stable as a solid.

Right now our plan is to consolidate the melted crystals in the precipitation jar and on the coffee filter, and attempt to properly recrystallize this mess, using evaporation instead of SWIM's freezer, into a stable crystal as evaporation is the only thing he hasn't tried to get some smokeable spice, and it makes sense to me that a crystal formed by evaporation at room temp would have an easier time staying solid than one formed in a freezer.

To conclude:

A) Is it likely that the condensation that may have gotten into the melted crystals on the first precipitation would have remained in it and screwed up his attempt to recrystallize?

B) by leaving only a coffee filter over the eyedropper bottle after dissolving the melted crystals and during their subsequent time in the freezer would also mess up the recrystallization by not having the container sealed?

C) any thoughts on trying to retrieve what is soaked into the coffee filter at this point by putting pieces of it which the crystals melted onto in with the rest of the goo when SWIM tries to redissolve (before decanting the naphtha off to be put into an evaporation container)? i am thinking the filter may hold an amount worth retrieving since it is the first precipitation of this batch.

D) He removed the little bit of water/melting crystal that we poured into the jar of used solvent and put it in a small glass to attempt to evaporate it. would this still yield the product (and whatever impurities are with it)? Is there a better way to salvage water that may have some spice dissolved in it? (Water could potentially dissolve DMT, right?)

E) Is there a way to produce stable crystals by freeze precipitating? how would one go about drying them while avoiding condensation problems and oxidization?

Or if you have any other thoughts about any other part of SWIM's procedure or the plan I would very much appreciate any input! He is following the tek well and the only problem seems to be retrieval of the freebase from the solvent. None of the teks i have read go into much detail about how the spice should be dried. Every crystal produced by SWIM that he's been wishing to smoke has just melted into goo within a few minutes.

I can post the result of the attempted recrystallization once it is done. but so far SWIM has tried what I have found on these forums and in the FAQ with no success. Please help him get some smokeable spice out of this!

Hi there Dhoe,

I'm not going to answer every question, just going to tell you what SWIM does at the last stage when I remove the container from the freezer.

First, it is highly recommended that a wide glass container is used, not a bowl, preferably something with a flat surface like a pyrex baking glass dish. SWIM finds that it the crystals can be retrieved easier than any other surface. Once the crystals are ready to be collected, SWIM uses puts a coffee filter in a funnel, which then goes in a glass jar, such as a mason jar. There are many floating crystals as well as some at the bottom of the glass. The unevaporated solvent carrying the floating crystals is then poured through the filter, that way the solvent is collected for later use and the floating crystals are trapped on the filter, the filter is then placed on top of a paper tower, opened in a space that is well ventilated but no air floating around (otherwise the crystals on the filter will fly away), the glass container is immediately placed upside down over more paper towels and let to dry, SWIM prefers to let these dry overnight so there are no traces of solvent left, everything is evaporated. In the morning, both the glass container crystals and the coffee filter crystals are dry, give it a smell test. If you don't smell anything, they are good to go. SWIM uses a razor blade to gently scrape the crystals off the filter, they come off easily, they are left on the coffee filter, then move on to the crystals on the glass, SWIM likes to remove the bigger ones first by gently lifting them off the glass with the corner of the blade. Lift as many as possible off the container and when done with the big ones, put them on the coffee filter with the others. Then SWIM goes in on the dish and agressively scrapes off the rest on the dish. It is done that way because the dish will be a bit sticky and if the decanting wasn't clean then when the agressive scraping happens it will be slightly less pure than the bigger, easier to collect crystals and the floaters. Some don't care. SWIM likes to separate by quality and color. SWIM likes to keep the crystals in the coffee filter (which is then put in a ziplock bag and kept in the freezer for later use) because it is easier to scrape off with a razor blade, where as jars seem to retain a lot of the crystals behind with no way to get them out.


Perhaps a razor blade would help retrieve those crystals trapped in the coffee filter you mentioned?

So SWIM tried GordoTEK with 3 different pulls almost successfully, but almost zero success. SWIM did everything GORDO said exactly and when it's in the freezer SWIM getS a large amount of gorgeous white crystals piled up on one side in a big giant heap that gets him really excited. SWIM turn the pie plate 180 degrees, drained the Bestine solvent, and then still left it tilted to drain anymore away from the dmt for another 2 days. When SWIM takes out this 1-2 grams of dmt and put it under his oven vent, SWIM watches as some solvent starts to come out of the larger clumps and just dissolve and/or evaporate every drop of dmt until SWIM has a clean pie plate and maybe like 20 mg of dmt. SWIM just wants to curl in the fetal position and cry.
How come everyone else is taking theirs out to dry and coming out with a bunch of dmt, but his solvent stays in there and then gets rid of all his dmt?
What is SWIM missing or not doing to stop this?
Gordo replied to his email back when SWIM purchased something from him on ebay, but it's been a week since SWIMS first pull and GORDO hasn't replied back to his email for SWIM to get this figured out. If there was a way SWIM could get all the solvent out of the dmt while it's still in the freezer so it won't dissolve the dmt when he takes it out of the freezer, that would be awesome. But he's no chemist so I can't imagine how he'd do that or what else SWIM could do to fix this. Someone please help him! Thank you all for your time and consideration.

Do you think that if SWIM turns the plate upside down when drying to get the solvent away from the dmt that somehow that will separate it without melting the dmt like it has been when it's not upside down?

If you live in a humid/tropical area then make sure you prepare a thoroughly air-conditioned room to do your crystal drying, otherwise the crystals will melt as they dry. I've had this issue before.

SWIM live in Missouri, which can be humid. What does he need to do to create this air conditioned room because his vent over his oven wasn't working to create that? should SWIM point a strong fan directly at the bowl with the dmt? should he tilt the pan at an angle, leave it flat, maybe turn it upside down so solvent drips down instead of pooling around other dmt to dissolve it?

Regarding the stuff that melted into the filter, wash your filter with melted crystals with solvent to retrieve your dmt and evap that

Regarding melting crystals in general, ater condensation isn't an issue since DMT isn't soluble in water anyways, and the water will eventually dry off.

If the FAQ tips on melting crystals don't work and you still have melted crystals, don't worry about it, spread it over a pyrex glass tray and scrape/rescrape it occasionally. You can add a fan too to help speed up the process (though wind might blow dust over your product). It will most likely eventually harden up if you insist on it, might not be shinny crystals but a bit more waxy solid. Doesn't matter though, DMT is DMT regardless of how it forms.

Lastly, if for some reason you insisted for some days and you still have some goo, you can just dissolve a bit in for example ethanol or acetone and evap it onto herbs to make enhanced herbs/changa. Make some estimate calculation based on initial amount of extracted plant material and considering, say, 1% yield, so that you add around 1g herbs per 1g goo.

One additional consideration is the evaporation rate of your solvent, which would only apply if you're using something with a very wide range of compositions. If it doesn't evaporate quickly, it may redissolve the crystals.

As an aside, emzone lighter fluid (a new brand AFAIK, replacing Ronsonol at some locations in Canada) can take a ridiculously long time to evaporate compared to other lighter fluids (and left a residue).