what factors lead to the formation of the lovely pin needle xtals in some of the pics in the other thread? as opposed to the white flaky iridescent kind which i seem to be getting.
is it due to over shooting titrations? or simply in the way they crystallize in the acetone bomb? temperature / amount of liquid there in? id love to know as the needles are so pretty

not sure but you can take all the combined material and do one last acetone crash

a slow change in temprature or polarity makes for nice xtals.
fast precip gives tiny needles sometimes so small that it looks like a powder when dry

a pearly shine defines good mesc imo

well i got lots of pearly shininess and very flakey, almost reminscent of pure cocaine!

so ive no doubt its pure, i just love the look of the pin needles thats all..

maybe i will try one more re-x on it see what happens!

acetone bombing is not a tried and tested way to get nice xtals -

but if doing so, it could be best to add room temp acetone to the water and mescaline slowly while decreasing temperature,

or by slowly adding cold acetone and using a large Pyrex container large enough but also thin enough to sink some of the low temperature when the liquid is minimal in volume but small enough so that when at capacity it is not acting as a heat-sink anymore.

the vessel would then be placed in the freezer - other standard xtal techniques like rotating between fridge and freezer to melt small xtals on each fridge cycles and regrow on larger ones on each freezer cycle - etc...

one may even have more success by - and iv not tried this so its just an idea

the following is a common mek re-x one could replace it with ethanol, acetone, ipa, etc... with varying results

500ml(or 1l) of dry mek and 1g mescaline are added to a jar
solution is heated and stirred well and continuously while single drops of water are added very slowly - like 1 drop per minute with much stirring - as soon as the mesc has dissolved no more water is added - the solution is then allowed to cool slowly in an area free of vibrations(use a diy tea cozy kinda setup - but insulate it well) xtals should form.

the tiny needles seen in some of my photos are easily broken leading to exactly what you have.

actually it is
absolute minimal water- sulphate salts- and acetone
very much tried and tested to form needles

heh - i love being corrected on the nexus - it reminds me i still have much to learn (and a bit of catching up to do) so thanks dg

i have had good results with hcl salts and acetone bombing in terms of xtal growth - but i had not seen a tek posted that defined the method.

i cant wait to work on some more cactus

I will try to grow some crystals from resin with acetone washes. Well see how it goes

please post your results if you can

typically minimal success w/hcl salts as they are rather water soluble- whereas sulphate slats are almost totally insoluble in cold water

Ya the key to getting nice needle shaped crystals is using sulfuric acid in your saltings. Hcl wont give needles, just a powder. Swim has hcl gased mesc from freebase toluene solution, and even that just forms a fine white powder.

Crash the sulfates out of a ratio of acetone and water while chilling in the fridge to give needles, its pretty simple.

ive been using sulphuric acid, and bombing with acetone, reducing the water to as little as i can get then adding acetone, i then leave to cool put in fridge for a bit then onto the freezer, iver tried it 7 times now and every time it comes out identical once filtered through proper filter paper its a white iridescent flaky sheet all stuck together until i break it apart no needles. why is this if you say you get needles? what could i be doing different...

That could be becuase you need to remove impurities in the extract. If you try drying the extract first and then washing it with some dry acetone or MEK and filtering out the crude crystals, you will have a purer product to crash out of acetone/h2o which will likely form the needles you seek.

Also, are you heating up the acetone water at all? Swim have found it works well to add acetone to the mesc and then slowly heat with adding small amounts of water until it completely dissolves, then allowing to cool and precipitate out.