Hello again fellow nexians. I'm on my 3rd extraction now after my second was basically a disaster and yielded almost nothing from 50g of rootbark. I followed noman's tek to a T and so my first extraction wasnt all too bad, enough for a couple lifts off into hyperspace but now im stumped. My third extract is doing the same as my second. I let my jars evaporate a little so they saturate then freeze precip. Now after about 3-5 days only one jar is starting to produce tiny little crystals all along the jar. Would you say it is my rootbark maybe? It is of the mexican variety. I think I will go Brazilian next time from the same source. Does it ever take about a week to see crystals for any of you? I just don't see what im doing wrong :/ I yielded basically nothing from 50g on my second attempt. But my first from the same batch was decent (for me atleast)

Unless your freezer is broken you should see crystals form overnight. Both extractions were from the same rootbark source? If one went well then I don't see why the others wouldn't (so I don't see how it could be your bark unless something happened to it in between the extractions). Double check your process.

Hey everyone.
I'm preparing for my first extraction (probably in the coming week), and I thought I'd ask a few questions regarding the materials used in the extraction. For my first attempt, I figured I'd go with a really basic tek, and chose the Lazyman's tek (STB). If that works out fine, I'm probably going to try to get a more pure product using Vovin's tek.

The last few weeks I've been gathering all my resources for my first extraction (distilled water, NaOH, naphtha, electronic pH meter, 2 500ml erlenmeyer flasks, MHRB) , but I still had a couple questions.

1) I see a lot of people using mason jars, not only for the freeze precipitation step, but also earlier on for the extraction itself. I picked up my erlenmeyers since they seemed ideal for a seperation. I forgot that you are supposed to gently tumble the container over to get the alkaloids to settle in the naphtha. Obviously the erlenmeyer has no lid, and working with corrosive chemicals I'm very hesitant to improvise with this. Can I simply gently swirl the erlenmeyer flask around for a while and get the contents to mix right, or should I use something to stir the contents? Or should I just be better off using a mason jar with a lid?

2) The one thing I have yet to acquire is something to do my pulls with. I was thinking of a sort of dosing syringe, but I can't seem to find any in local hardware stores (I'm trying to purchase as many of these things locally so that I don't have to wait for orders on the internet, pay for shipping and all that). I know a lot of people use turkey basters, but I've read that it isn't really all that ideal to work with. I take it the material needs to be at least HDPE plastic or (ideally) glass? Any suggestions on what I could locally obtain in a hardware store that is useful and safe?
In the long run I am aiming to get a good seperatory funnel.

1.You need something with a lid....you will need to shake/roll to get the Nap to 'touch' all of the mix...I use a 1l glass drinks bottle..

2. standard turkey baster works just fine..supermarket for a couple of bucks. No need to make it too difficult for yourself

Here's my kit list pic

Just a note for the turkey baster: make sure it's either glass or HDPE2. If it's cheap plastic or silicon, the naphtha will make it crack rendering it useless.

Thanks for the very quick and useful replies. Glad to see I don't need to specially order any lab materials straight away, though I am still thinking of going for the seperatory funnel when I'm more at home with the extraction process.
I'm sure these questions have been asked a lot before, but the search function didn't come up with many relevant results, so I figured I'd post in here as opposed to making a new topic for it.

Much appreciated, I'll make sure to post a report of my upcoming extraction

Really no need to get specialist gear..
Thats the beauty of kitchen chemistry...I managed to get all the necessary bits and bobs in a few hours of wandering around town..Charity shops are especially useful and cheap...and $ stores...big pickle jars are also useful.

Alright, I am going to attempt my first extraction using the STB Lazyman's tek in a few hours.
Could anyone verify if these proportions are correct? I've seen a lot of people posting extraction reports and failing due to too much/too little naphtha/lye. Especially since the Lazyman's tek is such a crude process, I want to make absolutely sure I get this right. In any case, I have an electronic pH meter, so I don't think I can really mess up the water/lye proportions.

My materials:
110g MHRB (powdered) (400-500g used in the original tek)
50 ml liquid NaOH (calculated as 200mg / 4)
500ml distilled water (calculated as 2L / 4)
50+ml naphtha (calculated as 250+ml / 4)

I am dropping the potato masher step since my bark is already powdered.
Does this seem about right, or does anyone think these measurements are a bit off?

I would use 750ml water with that amount of bark
and use around 50g of lye and pull with 50ml of Nap

Thanks for the reply. I divided my materials into two mason jars, I'm shaking them vigorously over the course of half an hour. Material looks quite broken up already but I'm letting them sit for at least 15 more minutes before I add the naphtha.

Edit: Just pulled my naphtha from the mason jars after another 30 mins of tumbling them over as much as possible. Naphtha looks 100% clear, I hope everything went right

Off to the freezer!

Hi there, SWIM told me:"

i wanna start my first extraction but im having some language problems, since english is not my mother tongue. I wanna start with Noman Tek.
Do i get it right that basically all you have to do is get the dmt into the naptha and then let the naptha disappear?
Im still a bit confused about "evaporating" and "freeze precip" and the coffee filter in the noman tek.
Do i HAVE TO put my naptha into the freezer or could i also just put the dish somewhere in my home and let it evaporate freely?

In the tek it says in Step 7. " Leave the last NP extraction in the jar for a day or two"
What does NP stand for? Naptha?

Step 8: "Go to bed. You should have a collection of snow globes waiting for you in the morning."

Snow globes means DMT crystals, right?

What will it be like in the freezer? A layer of naptha and crystals at the bottom?

Im confused about Step 9. It says "Pour each jar of naptha out through a coffee filter."
What about the crystals, will they stay at the bottom of the jar or will they stick in the coffee filter? If in the coffee filter it seems so hard to me to get the dmt out of it.

Now some more basic questions which still confused me.

A "pull" just means to suck up the naptha with a turkey baster for example and then put that naptha into a different container, correct?



Ok enoguh about DMT and next question about LSA.


Ive read the PanoraMIX HBWR Extraction method and it says "Do a naptha wash, so add napta until 5cm above the seeds.->Repeat step"
What does the "wash" exactly mean. I tried to search around with google but it all still confused me. Wash means to seperate something from a substance by adding another substance if i get it correctly.

But in this LSA Tek what do i do? Add Naptha, pull it off, add naptha again? Do i have to shake it or something?
The naptha just removes something bad from the seeds? It seems to be different than the DMT Tek because it says "discard the naptha" later.
The real deal is done with the IPA correct? So the IPA for LSA is like the Naptha for DMT, correct?"

Thanks

Bump for lerpoxel, I too have the same questions

No experience with LSA so I can't help you there.



Correct.




You can choose between a freeze precip or an evaporation. Either one separates the DMT from the naptha which is what you want. Many people will freeze precip first to get nice white crystals and then evap to get the rest. Don't ever just throw out your naptha.



Correct



You will have crystals stuck to the sides of the glass as well as hopefully a nice fluffy layer at the bottom.



The coffee filter is because even though you will have many crystals stuck to the sides of the glass, you will also have some free floating at the bottom. After a freeze precip, you'll want to empty the naptha into your evaporation dish, using the filter to catch as many crystals as you can. You will lose a little bit to the fibers of the filter, but not much.



Correct.

I is not hard to get dmt crystals out of a coffee filter. The whole idea behind "freeze precipitation" is to get the solution of dmt and naphtha to 'precipitate', or fall out of the solution. Naphtha and dmt will homogenize, but at cold temperatures, they will not. After a bit in the freezer, you will have crystals that you can see with your eyes in the naphtha


With a freeze percip, you can also re use naphtha. from what ive herd, you can use it for 2 or 3 pulls.

Just a couple quick questions.... How many grams of root bark can be used if one is using a gallon size jar for a STB extraction? Also, what types of stores have 1 or 5 gallon jars? Gone from home depot to target and cannot find any pickling jars or anything of that sort... Still using a gallon jar found at target from a few years back, but cannot find anymore!

Thanks for your replies!

Just one more question:

After freeze precip SWIM gonna put the jars upside-down to get rid off all the naptha and put them back in the freezer, lids closed. Works?

@IT Gnome

Just browse ebay a lot and u will find something useful (HDPE etc.)
How much bark you can use depends on how much water you are going to use. Just do the maths and you should figure it out.
With noman Tek 200g Bark would need 3000ml Water so your jar should be quite full cuz u still have to add the lye and the bark itself...

I can figure out the math when it comes to the liquids... but converting liquids and solids confuses me. Also do the HDPE bottles have to be HDPE 2? Most just say HDPE bottles, but also say they can hold chemicals and such.

ps- I wish I could change my username because it now seems immature

As long as you have enough water to make the mix 'watery' and not 'sludgy' then your OK.
enough lye to turn it all black or dark...
3litres for 200g bark is wayy to much IMO.

If its your first time extracting then start small (50g). If you mess up on large amounts...you will kick yourself.

Read on..

There is only one kind of HDPE. The "2" is just for identification.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...esin_identification_code



You dont have to convert anything. e.g. noman tek, 50g bark, 750ml water 50g lye ---> 100g bark, 1500ml water, 100g lye. and so on. just double wabble. But better start small in case u screw up D:

All the filtering is getting tedious! I'm not very good with chemistry, so... what I've read in the teks (unless I missed something), there's quite an emphasis on filtering, but no explanation as to why this is so important.
Possibilities include: Solids are the source of concentrated toxic uterotonic alkaloids such as viscine OR
solids are nausea inducing but not at all toxic OR
solids detract from aesthetic purity of harmala/harmaline, but are otherwise harmless- steps are the result of predictable anal-retentiveness from chemists OR
even microfine particles are unsmokeable and teks are geared towards smokeable product- harmless for drinking anahuasca/pharmahuasca OR
particles simply interfere with steps following- product harmless but results in a goopey mess OR
The are other possibilities. Despite generally being a science guy, I don't want to overprocess the harmala because I want to preserve a some spiritual connection in communing with the plant teachers. I don't want to treat the harmala as just a drug, it seems a little disrespectful. No matter how nonsensical that may be, it's in my head and I need to pay attention to these thoughts in preparation of the spice experience. Thank you.